Kael Arcanis knew the rules of the Celestial Archive by heart.

  Do not speak above a whisper. Do not light candles near the ancient texts. Do not, under any circumstances, open a book that speaks to you.

  Yet here he was, fingertips hovering over a tome that had just sighed.

  It sat alone on a shelf that shouldn't exist—Shelf Fourteen, a gap in the archives that only appeared when the lamplight hit the stacks at a certain angle. The book's cover was made of no leather Kael recognized—darker than midnight, faintly damp, like the hide of a creature dragged up from deep water.

  The title shifted as he watched:

  "The Lost Canticles of the Sun" blurred into "How to Kill a God" before settling on "Your Death, Written in My Hand."

  Kael should have walked away.

  He pulled the book from the shelf.

  The pages were blank at first. Then, as if an invisible quill were pressed to them, words formed in slow, deliberate strokes:

  "Hello, Kael."

  His name. In his own handwriting.

  A drop of ink fell onto the page. Then another. Not from the book—from his nose. Blood-black and thick, it splattered onto the parchment, where it twisted into new sentences:

  "You will be exiled in three days. You will find the Obsidian Athenaeum when the moon turns to glass. You will die there, unless—"

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  The page tore itself apart.

  Behind him, a floorboard creaked.

  Kael whirled, slamming the book shut, but not fast enough. High Archivist Hollis stood frozen in the aisle, his gaunt face lit by the flickering lantern in his hand. His eyes locked onto the book, and for the first time in Kael's memory, the unshakable master of the archives looked terrified.

  "Where did you get that?" Hollis whispered.

  Kael's grip tightened. "It was here. On Shelf Four—"

  "There is no Shelf Fourteen."

  They burned the book at midnight in the courtyard, beneath a sky choked with stars.

  It didn't burn like paper. It fought.

  The pages writhed as the flames took them, letting out a sound like a dying man's last breath. The smoke coiled into shapes—a key, a crown, a door—before dissolving into the dark.

  Hollis gripped Kael's shoulder, his nails biting through the fabric of his robe. "You will renounce your research on the Elder Codex. You will never speak of this night. If you do, the Archive will not protect you."

  Kael watched the last embers die. "What was that book?"

  Hollis's voice dropped to a whisper. "A warning."

  They stripped Kael of his scholar's robes at dawn.

  Five years later, he was a ghost in the slums of Vareth—a disgraced academic turned drunk, selling forged pedigrees and half-remembered myths to nobles who didn't care if his sources were real.

  Then, on the night the full moon hung like a cracked mirror in the sky, she found him.

  The woman in the silver mask stood in the doorway of his crumbling attic room, her gloved hands holding a letter sealed with a crest Kael hadn't seen in years: the eye-and-tower sigil of the Celestial Archive.

  "I need a man who isn't afraid of forbidden books," she said.

  Kael laughed, swirling the dregs of his wine. "You're five years too late."

  She laid the letter on his desk. The seal split open on its own, revealing a single line in ink that glistened wetly, as though freshly written:

  "The Obsidian Athenaeum is waiting. Turn the page."

  Kael's breath stopped. It was the same handwriting as the book. His handwriting.

  Behind the woman, the moon shattered.

  Not a metaphor—glass-thin cracks split across its surface, and for one impossible second, Kael saw something behind it, staring back.

  The woman didn't flinch. "Still not interested?"