USAGI'S POV
The darkness of my office has always felt like coming home.
Tall shelves of ebony and blackened iron rise to the vaulted ceiling, with each one packed with ancient tomes and scrolls bound in leather darker than midnight.
Torchlight flickers across the spines, catching faint gold-embossed titles in languages long forgotten by most of Elyndor.
Between the shelves stand old statues; those shadowy gargoyles with ruby eyes that seem to follow movement, those winged serpents coiled around crystal orbs that hummed with dim inner light, and the hooded figure clutching a scythe whose blade gleams with an unnatural sheen even in shadow was my favorite.
Heavy black curtains were set to block the narrow windows, swallowing any stray trace of twilight from the outside.
In the atmosphere, one could perceive the scent of aged parchment, the whiff of iron, and the faint, metallic tingle of depleted magic.
