Ran

After leaving the castle and breaking the centuries-long covenant of Father’s bloodline, I had immersed myself in the knowledge of the outside world. A part of me had believed that the whole notion of the Internet was just a cruel joke that adults tell children, in the same vein as ghost stories and tall tales. But it was real, and as much of a near-infinite wellspring as everyone had made it out to be. Besides playing around with the devices that Father’s guests had brought to show my family, I had never learned to use a computer or a smartphone. I could never have imagined that the millions of tomes’ equivalent of knowledge on an old hard drive could be dwarfed by the torrent of data flooding each and every second through a fiberglass cable connection.