**Grand Veridian Library, Section 7B — Tuesday Afternoon**
The book shouldn't exist.
Elias Thorne stared at the unmarked tome in his hands, his pulse quickening. Thirty-two years old, Head Archivist of Obscure Holdings at the Grand Veridian Library, and he'd never seen this before.
Impossible.
He knew every volume in Section 7B. Every crumbling scroll, every rusted tool, every suspiciously stained artifact no one dared touch. He'd cataloged this alcove six months ago. Personally. Meticulously.
This book wasn't there.
The dark leather felt wrong in his hands—too smooth, like worn silk. Too pristine. Not a speck of dust clung to its surface, despite sitting on the highest shelf behind a noseless philosopher's bust that had been gathering grime for a decade.
No title. No author. No classification mark.
Nothing.
"Curious," Elias whispered.
The word felt inadequate. Professional curiosity was finding a misfiled treatise on turnip rotation. This was... different.
He opened it.
Blank pages. Thick, creamy parchment, completely empty. Not even watermarks or signs of age. Just pristine nothingness.
A waste of shelf space.
Elias moved to close it—then his fingers trembled.
Warmth bloomed in his right palm. Not from the book. From within him. It spread up his arm, a paradox of heat and chill that made his breath hitch.
The air thickened.
Dust motes swirled erratically in the filtered light, caught in an invisible current. The alcove's familiar hum faded, replaced by something else.
A whisper.
Not in his ears. Deeper. Behind his eyes. In the core of his being.
*The first resonance,* some instinct named it—though he'd never heard the term before. A psychic echo from something old and vast, bypassing language entirely. Emotion without source. Knowledge without learning.
Formless. Wordless. Ancient.
Profound sadness crashed over him—grief too vast for a single soul. Collective. Cosmic. A memory that wasn't his, echoing from forgotten ages.
His gaze snapped to the page.
A symbol shimmered into existence.
Not drawn. Not printed. It *formed*—delicate lines and curves coalescing from nothing. Like a constellation rendered in moonlight. Like the blueprint of a dream.
It pulsed with soft blue luminescence.
Elias felt the pull immediately. Subtle. Irresistible. His consciousness stretched thin, like a membrane about to tear—a sensation both terrifying and strangely intimate, as though the boundary of his self was dissolving. The symbol hummed silently, echoing the whisper in his mind.
Revelation and ruin, offered in equal measure.
Look away, his rational mind screamed. Drop it. Run.
But his fingers locked around the spine. His eyes fixed on the glowing glyph.
A moth to flame.
**The Marking**
Sharp pain lanced through his right thumb.
Elias gasped, jerking his hand back. A perfectly circular mark glowed faintly on his skin—the exact shape of the symbol. Not burned into him. Growing from beneath, like a star taking root in his flesh.
Alive.
The symbol on the page pulsed once more.
Then faded.
The parchment returned to blank innocence. The whisper receded into the library's ambient hum. Only his hammering heart and the mark on his thumb remained as proof.
Elias stared at his hand.
Then at the book.
Then at his hand again.
The mark throbbed—not quite pain, but presence. Foreign and insistent.
And then the cost began.
His right hand went numb. Not the dull numbness of poor circulation, but absolute absence—as if his fingers existed in a space beyond sensation. He flexed them. They moved. But he couldn't *feel* them move.
Panic flared.
He pressed his numb fingers against the desk's edge. Nothing. No pressure. No texture. Just visual confirmation of contact.
"What—" he started to say, but the word caught.
What had he been doing this morning? He'd arrived at the library at... when? Eight? Nine? The memory slipped away like water through cupped hands. He'd sorted something. Filed something. Hadn't he?
Gone.
Small gaps, but gaps nonetheless. Minutes of his life simply erased.
And beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, something worse unfurled.
Nothing.
He should be terrified. He *was* terrified, intellectually. But the emotion felt distant. Muted. Like experiencing fear through thick glass.
The mark pulsed again, and for an instant, the numbness receded. Sensation flooded back—too much, too sharp, overwhelming—before settling into something almost normal.
Almost.
This wasn't a misfiled treatise.
This was something that shouldn't exist.
And it had just marked him.
And taken its first payment.
---
**Minutes Later — Still Section 7B**
The Tuesday afternoon routine of the Grand Veridian Library continued around him—scholars turning pages, the automated retrieval system thumping in the distance, gas lamps casting amber glows despite the midday gloom.
Normal.
Safe.
Except nothing would ever be normal again.
Elias's hands shook as he held the tome. The mark on his thumb pulsed faintly, a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Or maybe his heartbeat matched it.
He couldn't tell anymore.
Outside, the Veridian Veil shimmered through the high windows—that peculiar mist that had shrouded the city for centuries. The supernatural fog that defined their city's borders, neither natural nor entirely of this world. They said it whispered secrets to those who listened too closely. That it drove people mad.
Elias had always preferred the whispers of books.
Books were safe. Categorized. Understood.
But this one...
He pressed his marked thumb against his chest, as if pressure could stop the throb. The circular indentation glowed faintly even through his shirt. His hand felt normal again—mostly. But the emotional coldness lingered. His own fear felt like something happening to someone else.
What had the whisper said? Nothing with words, but he understood anyway:
*Awaken.*
No. That came later. This was just the beginning. Just the marking.
Elias looked around the alcove—Section 7B, graveyard of forgotten artifacts. Broken pottery. Rusted tools. And now, apparently, impossible books that branded unsuspecting archivists.
He should report this.
Head Librarian Theron would want to know. This violated every cataloging principle. Books didn't just appear. They didn't glow. They certainly didn't mark people with mysterious symbols.
But even as he thought it, Elias knew he wouldn't.
Couldn't.
Something had changed. Not just the mark on his thumb. Something deeper. Like a frequency he'd never heard before suddenly became audible. Like a door in his mind had cracked open.
And he was terrified of what might come through.
Or would be, if he could feel terror properly anymore.
He tucked the unmarked tome under his arm. Its weight felt substantial. Real. Undeniable.
The mark pulsed again.
Warmer this time.
Almost... guiding?
No. That was madness. Books didn't guide people. They were inert objects. Paper and binding. Nothing more.
**First Vision**
Elias's leg bumped his desk as he turned. His carefully organized stacks of overdue notices teetered. He caught them reflexively, but his marked hand brushed against a leather-bound biography.
Flash.
The vision struck without warning—reality fracturing like shattered glass. Not memory. Not imagination. *Truth*, raw and unfiltered, pulled from the object itself.
A hand—not his—elegant, strong, wearing a silver signet ring. Writing in a concealed ledger. Fear etched across features he recognized from old portraits.
Governor Alistair Veridian.
The city's founder.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came.
Elias stumbled back, breathing hard. The biography sat innocently on his desk, its official text unchanged. But he'd seen something. Felt something.
The truth beneath the printed lies.
Psychometry, some buried knowledge whispered. Reading the history of objects through touch. But impossibly vivid. Impossibly real.
His thumb burned.
"What's happening to me?" he whispered.
The unmarked tome had no answers. Its blank pages remained blank.
But the mark—the mark was spreading. Not physically. He looked down. Still just a circular indentation on his thumb. But its influence was spreading.
He could feel it.
In the periphery of his vision, shadows seemed to move with more purpose. The dust motes danced to patterns that almost made sense. The very air in Section 7B felt charged with potential.
Elias Thorne had spent his entire adult life cataloging the known. Facts. Histories. Verifiable truths.
Now something unknowable had cataloged him.
And he had a terrible feeling it was just the beginning.
The mark pulsed once more, and for just an instant, he could swear he heard something from deep beneath the library floors.
Something vast.
Something patient.
Something that had been waiting for him his entire life.
And still, beneath the certainty that his life had just irrevocably changed, he felt nothing.
The mark had taken that too.