I was tasked with compiling a concise history of the University of Coropori for the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the university, including sections for each branch and school within the university. Dean Noriko Taichiki, fifth dean of the university, first and for many years the only female dean, is still well known as the singular most prolific inventor of our world. In my research on the School of Chemistry, I discovered that before she was instated as the dean, she was the one who started the School of Chemistry as a department of the university.
The dean prior to Dr. Taichiki was the well-respected Dr. Clairgeeta, a professor of philosophy who specialized in studies of the World of Light. Many of his works are still considered the leading works on the topic and many are held as canon scripture of those who follow that philosophy. My research for the anniversary of the university was being done in reverse, from the current time and back in history so I could properly reconstruct the timeline, then publish it in its correct order. Because none of Dr. Taichiki's works speak on the World of Light I only thought there'd been a mere passing of the baton, as it were.
I was given permission to view the closed personal collection of Dr. Clairgeeta's on the World of Light that he had drawn his theories from. Many of the records are as many hundreds of years or more older than those I have used in my own research. Some were his own transcriptions of records five hundred or more years old when he read them. I asked for and received permission to re-transcribe his collection as they are very old and crumbling. It seemed such a shame to lose them entirely.
I was quite surprised to learn from Dr. Clairgeeta's own hand from his research data books that Dr. Taichiki was highly influential in his later research and publications. He mentioned her quite frequently as the source of more detailed thoughts into the World of Light. It wasn't until I reached one of the last books in the collection that I learned why.
Dr. Taichiki's personal journal from the years before she came to the university and instituted the Department of Chemistry is now well known world wide. While many argue if it was fiction from my mind or truth because it is so difficult to conceive that the island princess is really from another world entirely, I staunchly maintain it is all from her own hand, save the final chapter which I freely admit is my fanciful idea of what happened to the Awakening and the Sky Demon of legend at the end of the life of Dr. Taichiki.
When I went one more time to the shelves where the collection of Dr. Clairgeeta is housed to return the manuscripts, I was surprised to learn I had missed one final small journal at the end of the shelf. It was a simple book of dark leather cover that was near to rotted and took some effort to pry from it's location against the wall of the shelf without ruining said cover. I thought that even if it was early notes of Dr. Clairgeeta's, it would be worth preserving what was written within.
Imagine my complete astonishment and utter delight to open to the first page and learn that I held within my hands the one and only copy of Izark kia Tarj's journal from that same time. You, dear reader, now hold in your hands a treasure of history: the story of the Sky Demon from his own hand, and his transformation into the being of Light that the Awakening brought him to become, according to the Legend of Light. I have transcribed it faithfully, no wording any different than what he wrote, so that the controversy that surrounds The Dangers of Being Intellectual can't be applied to this work.
May you find what you seek, and may Light and peace always reign within our hearts so that it may be present in our world to the good of all.
- Jiryü Räsen, Historian