Some of the things that really jumped at me as I read along:The action really seemed to stop as the cathedral is described. It’s interesting details, but would Matthias actually be playing attention to that since he is hurrying so much? Other places the description seemed to get in the way of the flow of the story was in describing the responsibilities of the Reader and Serian. Things keep pausing for an info dump. Try to convey some of the same info through the action, not a block of description, and try to keep in mind that we are seeing things from Matthias’s POV. We only get to see what he is noticing.
Actually, I was never very clear about why he is hurrying. If some service was beginning, or a morning duty that had to be attended to at a certain time was upcoming, I didn’t find that clear.
Some paragraphs seem overly long in that they contain more than one idea. The flow might work a bit better it they were broken up more.
The word friend seems over used in referring to Serian and Michael
I can’t speak for the accuracy of the medieval term usage. I did get the feeling that you were going for a setting of that general flavor. I think the setting flavor will come out even more if you integrate some of the description into the action so that it is one composite.
You have made a nice start in that you’ve planted some seeds for future conflict and introduced what (I assume) are going to be some critical main characters by the way they are presented.
A couple of line items that I happened to pull out (did not try for an exhaustive search):
“Matthias held the position as only person in the abbey who was allowed to read from the Ariatha.” Awkward, and a typo. You’ve got some other typos of missing words as well that I noticed as I read along.
“’He is a brilliant mind and doesn’t have direction.’” ?? – Maybe: He has a brilliant mind, but lacks direction.