The quiet was shattered by a distant scream.
And then another.
The living room rushed back into existence, and the ceiling fan hummed overhead, its blades turning slowly as if nothing had changed.
Jon's chest rose sharply. His gaze remained fixed on the silver book opened across his lap.
'This...' He blinked several times, his mind struggling to process what he had just experienced. There were no words for it.
The first page looked exactly as it had before.
Just a circular silver rune.
Yet when Jon focused on the strange diagram, he felt that familiar sensation again. For a brief moment, it was as though he were standing in that dark space, with the crescent moon hung above him and the same deep calm surrounding him.
But this time, he wasn't transported anywhere. He was still sitting in the living room.
Jon slowly lifted his gaze from the book.
"Did you see something?"
Icarus's immediate question caught his attention.
Jon looked toward the young man seated across from him and studied him briefly.
There were several things that stood out.
'He doesn't look surprised.' There was no shock on Icarus's face nor any sign of fear. It was almost as if he had already experienced whatever was inside his own Record.
'The only explanation is that he opened it before us.' Jon's eyes shifted toward the golden eye.
'And then, the book never told us that it was a Record.'
Yet Icarus had known what it was from the beginning.
Most likely, his eye had told him. But how?
Jon wondered how the strange eye actually worked. Then he pushed the thought aside.
He shouldn't leave Icarus waiting.
"Yes." Jon looked down at the silver book. "I saw a crescent moon."
What he hadn't realized yet was that only a few seconds had passed. The thoughts that had filled his mind had come and gone far faster than he perceived.
Jon looked back at Icarus. "What did you see?"
"Nothing."
"Come on now." Dinah cut in, her voice carrying a hint of excitement. "You don't have to lie."
'She must have seen something amazing.' Jon glanced at her, noting her excited voice, before looking toward Trudy.
Trudy remained silent, her Record still open, but on the third page.
"I mean it," Icarus said. "I saw nothing."
"Then... you don't have a Trait?" Dinah tilted her head. "Or what?"
Icarus shook his head, then he pointed toward his eye.
Everyone followed his gesture, even Trudy. His newly mutated golden eye stared back at them.
Jon's brows furrowed. 'What does that mean?'
The same confusion appeared on Dinah and Trudy's faces. Whatever they had all awakened was something they had experienced internally; why was Icarus' external?
Thankfully, Icarus seemed to have an explanation.
"Based on what I've been able to see so far..." He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. "Traits that manifest outside the Record seem to learn from the world around them."
"I don't understand." Dinah frowned.
Trudy turned toward her, wincing slightly as she shifted her injured shoulder. "What he's saying is that, for him, the Trait he saw inside the Record manifested physically."
She pointed toward Icarus's eye. "His eye. And because he said earlier that he can't see anything within himself anymore..." Trudy continued, "his Trait seems to be focused outward instead."
Dinah's eyes slowly widened. "So the reason he knew this book is called a Record, and that diagram is a Trait..."
She looked at Icarus. "...is because his eye told him?"
A brief silence followed, then Trudy nodded.
Dinah looked shocked, then turned to Icarus, viewing him differently now.
In a collapsed society where common sense had vanished and unimaginable things happened by the minute, someone who could understand even a fraction of what was happening was extremely valuable.
A guide was necessary. Perhaps more necessary than anything else.
Jon, however, wasn't convinced. He didn't need Trudy's explanation to reach the same conclusion.
'But he must be heavily limited.' Jon concluded. The reason he thought that was because Icarus himself was still trying to understand what was happening.
The silver light. The reason behind it. The infected creatures. What had caused their transformation.
What was waiting for them. The purpose of any of it.
Icarus knew nothing about those things.
'So far, he's only figured out that the infected resemble zombies, that this book is called a Record, and that the first page contains a Trait.'
That was useful, but it wasn't enough.
Jon's attention returned to the silver book in his lap. He was about to turn the page when Trudy spoke again.
"Why..." Her voice was quieter this time. She turned toward Icarus.
"Why do I keep seeing the man we killed?"
The atmosphere changed immediately.
Dinah's fingers trembled, and Jon's expression stiffened.
'So I wasn't seeing things.' He thought grimly. The image had been real. Or at least, real enough for all of them to experience it.
Icarus stared at the three of them.
Only then did he fully realize that everyone in this living room, except him, had already crossed a line.
They had killed. Whether directly or indirectly.
He eventually sighed. "Unfortunately, I can't give you the information you need."
His golden eye flickered. "I haven't experienced what you have."
He was careful not to say more.
The room fell silent afterwards.
As if planned, Jon and Dinah briefly exchanged glances, then both lowered their gazes.
They opened the third page.
Unlike the first page, which contained a strange circular rune, the third page appeared almost empty.
A single horizontal line rested near the top.
Jon's heart began to beat faster as he focused on it.
Nothing happened at first.
Then the line shifted. It split into two.
Jon focused on the left side, and before he knew it, his surroundings changed.
The scene rippled, and the stadium appeared.
His victory at the Tri-School race replayed before him.
Except...It wasn't the way Jon remembered it. He saw details he had never consciously noticed. The slight tightening of his shoulders before the starting gun or the way he had instinctively measured the breathing of the runners beside him.
He saw the shift in his weight and the exact moment he had decided to accelerate.
None of it felt like a memory.
It felt like observation, as though he were standing somewhere outside himself, watching what had happened.
The fragments flashed past, then disappeared.
'Coach...'
The thought barely formed before the scene ended.
Jon's attention then shifted toward the second line.
The stadium appeared again. Only this time, after the silver light had descended.
He watched the chaos, witnessed the screaming, his escape to the house, the one he was currently in, and the fight.
His actions replayed before him.
He watched himself choose the quieter path instead of following the panicked crowd. He watched himself stop running long enough to think. He watched himself hesitate before striking the old woman.
And then...
He watched himself deliver the final strike.
Jon remained silent.
Without explanation, Jon understood what this page was trying to do.
The page wasn't judging him, nor was it praising him either.
It simply showed him what he had done, the choices he had made, and what followed from those choices.
No explanation was necessary. No voice told him what it meant.
The Record simply preserved it.
'A record indeed.'