The Obsidian Athenaeum did not rise from the waves—it unfolded.
Kael’s boots slipped on the algae-crusted ruins of Lysara as the library emerged, its spires piercing the storm-wracked sky like the ribs of some colossal beast. What he’d mistaken for black stone from afar revealed itself up close as something far worse: millions of book covers fused together, their spines warped into buttresses, their gilt-edged pages compressed into shingles that rattled like teeth in the wind.
And the doors—
"Gods below," Darien choked.
They weren’t doors at all, but two massive jaws hinged with tendons gone slack with rot. Between them, a gaping maw of darkness exhaled air that stank of brine and decaying parchment. The "threshold" was a tongue of cracked marble, its surface etched with words that rearranged themselves as Kael watched:
Welcome back, Kael Arcanis.
Sylva’s bandages lashed suddenly around her arms like agitated serpents. The ink beneath her skin swirled into a new warning:
IT REMEMBERS
The fishing boat’s captain—her teeth still filed to quill points—laughed as her crew shoved crates toward them. Not provisions, but books, their covers bloated with seawater.
"Your payment," she crooned. One volume slipped from a sailor’s grip, hitting the water with a sickening plop. For a moment, it floated. Then the black tide convulsed, and the book was dragged under—only to resurface seconds later, its spine now stitched shut with glistening tendrils that pulsed like veins.
Darien backed toward the boat. "We’re not—"
The captain barred his path, her knife flashing. "You begged for this knowledge," she hissed. "Now swallow it."
Behind them, the library’s doors groaned open.
A breath of air sighed outward—warm, damp, and laced with the metallic tang of fresh ink.
II. The Breathing Archives
Inside, the air clung to Kael’s skin like oil.
The atrium stretched upward into shadow, its vaulted ceiling lost in gloom. The walls weren’t stone, but tightly packed bookshelves that shivered at their approach, their contents emitting faint, whimpering noises. The floor, at first glance marble, was in fact countless blank pages pressed together, their edges lifting slightly with each step as if trying to read their footprints.
Veyra’s silver mask reflected the eerie bioluminescence of floating ink droplets that drifted like fireflies. "Rules," she said, her voice echoing strangely. "One: never read aloud. Two: if a book opens itself, burn it immediately. Three—"
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
A sound like a thousand pages turning at once echoed through the chamber.
Shelf Fourteen stood before them.
Not a gap this time, but an obsidian monolith, its shelves carved from what Kael realized with dawning horror were finger bones—yellowed phalanges stacked like bricks, their joints forming alcoves for the books. And these volumes bore no titles, only portraits on their spines:
-
Kael’s own face stared back from one, his mouth sewn shut with black thread.
-
Darien’s showed him drowning, his lips blue, his hands clawing at an unseen surface.
-
Veyra’s was blank.
Sylva reached for hers—
—and the library moved.
The floor buckled like a struck drum. Shelves twisted like serpents, their contents spilling forth in a cascade of screaming paper. From the darkness above, something unfolded:
The Librarian.
Kael’s breath caught.
It was a nightmare of layered parchment, its body constructed from countless shredded pages compressed into a mockery of human form. Where a face should have been, text swarmed and reformed—a shifting collage of stolen words in a hundred hands. It tilted its head, and the sound of rustling paper filled the air as it spoke:
"You’re early."
Not to them.
To the thing standing behind their group.
Kael whirled.
The doors slammed shut.
III. The Unseen Reader
Darien had his knife out. "What the fuck was it looking at?"
Veyra remained eerily calm. "The library has… other patrons."
A cold draft licked Kael’s neck. The floating ink droplets shuddered, forming brief words before dissolving:
behind youalways behind you
Sylva’s bandages lashed around Kael’s wrist, her inked skin boiling with fresh script:
DON’T LOOK
Too late.
Kael turned.
At the edge of the bioluminescent glow, a shadow deepened. Not for lack of light, but because something stood there—something that drank the light. The shape of a man, if men were made from the negative space between letters on a page. It held a book in hands that weren’t hands, its head cocked as if reading.
Then it turned a page.
The sound was like a bone breaking.
IV. The First Test
The Librarian’s parchment fingers snapped.
"The Memoir Wing," it intoned. "All visitors must be cataloged."
The shelves parted, revealing a corridor lined with mirrors—except the reflections didn’t match. Kael’s showed him older, his eyes sewn shut. Darien’s reflection clutched a bleeding throat. Sylva’s was—
Gone.
Just an empty frame where her image should be.
Veyra stepped forward. "We seek the Elder Codex."
The Librarian went very still.
"That," it whispered, "is not for readers."
Then the mirrors shattered.
Not inward, but outward, glass shards embedding themselves in the walls, the floor—in Darien’s forearm. He yelled, but the sound cut off as the shards in the walls pulled, stretching his reflection like taffy until—
Pop.
Darien’s mirror-self stepped free.
It smiled with too many teeth.
"Let’s see what you’re made of," it hissed.
And the real Darien screamed.