The darkness was absolute. It was a thick, velvet blackness that pressed against Elara's eyes, so complete it felt like being erased. She sat on the cold, smooth floor, her back against a wall, and focused on the only thing that was real: the warmth of the Bibliolect in her lap and the faint, rhythmic pulse of its pages, like a sleeping heart.
Tentatively, she traced her fingers over the open page. The raised, dried ink of its last message,"You are far from silent" felt like a brand. In the void, her other senses sharpened until they were knives. She could hear the whisper of her own blood in her ears, the soft rasp of her apron as she breathed. The air was stale and carried the faint, mineral scent of deep earth and old, old stone.
She needed light.
Her restoration kit was still in her apron pocket. With practiced, silent movements, she found the small striker and the stub of a emergency candle she kept for reading in the deepest stacks. The "scritch-scratch" of the flint was obscenely loud in the silence. A spark caught, and a tiny, wavering flame blossomed, pushing back the endless dark.
She held her breath, half-expecting the Keeper to sense this small defiance of his silence. Nothing happened.
The candlelight revealed a small, circular chamber, no larger than a scribe's cell. The walls were not rough-hewn like the Wyrmways, but were made of the same smooth, dark stone as the floor, fitted together without a seam. And they were covered in writing.
It was not carved. It was "inlaid", a mosaic of countless fragments of clay, stone, and metal, each shard etched with a single, perfect character from languages so ancient they were forgotten before Aethelgard was built. This was a language of earth and ore. The candlelight danced over the fragments, making the metallic scripts glitter like captured stars.
Elara's scribe heart leapt. This was a place of ultimate reverence. A sanctuary.
The Bibliolect grew warm again. New words swirled onto the page, a calm, measured script.
"You are safe here. For a time. This is a remembering place. A place for the First Scribes. Those who listened to the world's first stories and wrote them down, not in ink, but in stone and spirit. The Keeper's magic cannot easily find this place. It is built of Remembering, and he deals only in Forgetting."
Elara looked around the chamber with new awe. The First Scribes. They were myths, figures of creation tales. To be in a place they had built…
"Why can he not enter?" she thought, the question directed at the book.
The answer came slowly, the ink seeming to choose its words with care. "To enter, one must understand that a story is not a thing to be owned, but a breath to be shared. The Keeper believes stories are weapons. Keys to power. The door will not open for him. It opened for you."
The weight of that statement settled on her. She had done nothing. She had just… breathed.
A sudden, low thrum vibrated through the stone floor, a distant, angry pulse that made the candle flame shiver. The Keeper was still searching. The vibration was followed by a faint, acrid smell that seeped through the walls, the scent of ozone and burning parchment. His frustration was a tangible force, even here.
She was safe, but she was trapped. She had no food, no water, and one small candle.
As if reading her thoughts, which, she realized with a jolt, it very likely was, the Bibliolect responded. "This chamber provides. Look to the center."
Elara lifted her candle. In the exact center of the room was a small, shallow basin she had mistaken for a decorative indentation. Now she saw it was filled with clear, still water. And beside it, as if waiting for her, was a small, rough loaf of journey-bread and a clay cup. It was simple fare, but her stomach clenched with hunger at the sight. It was the same bread the acolytes were given for long studies.
She didn't move. It felt like a test.
"It is not a test," the book wrote, its tone gentle, almost amused. "It is a gift. The Foundations remember their guests. Eat. Drink. Rest. You are the first guest in a very long time."
Hesitantly, she crawled forward. The water was cool and sweet, the bread dense and nutty. As she ate, the fear that had been screaming in her veins began to quiet. The simple act of sustenance, in this sacred place, felt like a benediction.
With her immediate needs met, a more pressing problem emerged. She looked at the book.
"What now? I can't stay here forever."
"No," the book agreed. "You cannot. He will not stop. He will tear the library apart stone by stone to find me. And he will use every life within it as a bargaining chip."
A cold knot formed in Elara's stomach. Master Corbin, the other acolytes, even the arrogant ones who mocked her, they were all in danger because of her.
"We must leave Aethelgard," the Bibliolect stated. "There are other remembering places in the world. Sanctuaries he has not yet corrupted. We must find them, and awaken them."
Elara shook her head, a frantic, desperate motion. She gestured to the walls around her, to herself. She was a scribe. She knew the confines of the library, the feel of vellum and the smell of ink. The world outside was a rumor, a thing described in books. She was not made for it.
"You are more than what they told you you were,"the book insisted, its script becoming bold and underlined. "Your silence is your strength. Your hand", The ink hesitated, swirled. "Your hand was not broken. It was sealed."
Elara froze, her bread halfway to her mouth. She stared at the leather brace she had worn since childhood. An accident, they'd said. A fall from a ladder in the high stacks. She had been too young to remember it.
"Sealed?" she thought, the word a thunderclap in her mind.
Before the book could answer, a new sound echoed faintly through the chamber. Not the Keeper's angry magic. This was closer. It was a voice. Muffled, frantic, and punctuated by the sound of someone kicking stone.
"absolutely, irrevocably mad! Talking to a wall. Brilliant, Kaelen. Just brilliant. 'The carvings looked hungry,' you said. 'It's a shortcut,' you said."
Elara scrambled back, pressing herself against the wall, clutching the Bibliolect to her chest. The candle guttered. Someone was outside the door.
The voice came again, higher with panic. "Oh, great. And now I'm talking to myself. The final sign of a fractured mind. Hello? Hungry wall? If you're going to eat me, could you get on with it? This waiting is terribly impolite."
The man's voice was cultured, sharp, and laced with a hysterical humor that barely covered his terror. It was also familiar. After a moment, she placed it. "Kaelen". The disgraced linguist from the Hall of Tongues. A prodigy who could speak seventeen living languages and twice as many dead ones, but who had been demoted to cataloging rusted inscriptions for some long-forgotten scandal involving a duke's daughter and a mistranslated love poem.
He was a chatterbox, a nuisance, and the last person on earth she wanted to find her.
And he was right outside the door.
The Bibliolect's pages remained still for a long moment. Then, a single sentence formed, its letters tight and considering.
"A speaker. How… inconvenient. And yet… perhaps a necessary tool."
Elara's eyes widened in alarm. She shook her head violently. "No."
The book's response was final. "The way is shut. He cannot get in. But he has drawn attention. Listen."
The faint smell of ozone was growing stronger. The Keeper's presence was focusing on this sector, homing in on the sound of Kaelen's desperate monologue.
The linguist's voice rose in a final, pleading shout. "Well, if you won't eat me, could you at least point me to an exit before the ghost of a very angry librarian vaporizes me? I'd rather not be"
A new sound cut him off. The grinding of stone.
Elara watched in horror as the same hidden door she had come through began to slide open. The Bibliolect had unsealed it.
A sliver of the sickly green Wyrmway light pierced the darkness of the chamber, illuminating the frantic, dust-streaked face of Kaelen, his eyes wide with shock and hope.
The book's final message burned into the page, a command for her alone.
"A tool must be sharp. And a speaker can say many things… including a distraction. Bring him in. Now."