**Grand Veridian Library — Elias's Office — Day after the discovery**
The mark wouldn't stop pulsing.
Elias stared at his thumb, watching the faint circular indentation throb in rhythm with his heartbeat. Or was his heartbeat following it?
He couldn't tell anymore.
The unmarked tome sat on his desk, innocent and inert. Dark leather. Blank pages. As if nothing had happened yesterday when it had burned that impossible symbol into his vision and branded his skin.
But his skin told a different story.
He'd tried everything. Rubbing it. Scratching it. Pressing it against the cold metal bookshelf until his thumb went numb. He'd even considered dousing it in the ice-cold water from the washroom, but the thought of explaining wet sleeves to Clara had stopped him.
Nothing worked.
The mark remained—a stubborn echo of the impossible symbol, like a water stain on reality itself.
"This isn't real," Elias whispered to his empty office.
The mark pulsed in response.
*Mock me all you want*, he thought bitterly. His meticulous mind, that well-oiled machine of categorization and logic, was spinning uselessly. This wasn't a misfiled book. This wasn't a rare first edition with questionable provenance.
This was impossible.
Blank pages. Shimmering symbols. Whispers in his mind. And now a permanent brand on his skin—a mark that seemed to pulse with meaning, connecting him to something vast and unknowable.
He was an archivist. A man of facts. Not some protagonist in Clara's penny dreadfuls who stumbled into adventure and emerged victorious.
Elias glanced around his office, half-expecting cameras. Maybe this was an elaborate prank. Young Clara with her mischievous glint would love this. Perhaps she'd recruited others from the lower floors.
But no. Just dust motes dancing in filtered light. The distant thump-thump of the automated book-retrieval system. The library's familiar hum. The faint whistle of wind through the ventilation shafts.
Just him and an extraordinary book.
He reached for the tome again. His fingers trembled as they touched the leather—cool now, no longer humming with that unsettling energy.
Just a book.
Elias opened it, breath held.
Blank pages stared back at him.
No symbol. No whisper. Nothing.
Relief flooded through him, warm and intoxicating.
*It was all in my head. Some stress-induced hallucination. Too many late nights cataloging.*
Then cold dread followed, sharp as ice.
Except for the mark. The undeniable brand on his thumb that pulsed even now, proof that something had reached across the boundary between the written and the real.
He pinched his forearm hard. The sting confirmed he was awake. The mark confirmed he wasn't mad. Or if he was, his madness had developed the ability to alter physical reality.
Something impossible had happened.
And Elias Thorne, who had spent his life filing away the known, had no category for this.
He couldn't just put it back. Couldn't file this under 'Miscellaneous Curiosities - Devoid of Content' and pretend nothing happened.
This was personal now.
Intrusive.
Terrifying.
It had touched him—physically and mentally—in ways nothing else ever had. The tome had chosen him somehow. Marked him. Made him part of whatever mystery it represented.
Elias tucked the tome under his arm, its weight a constant reminder. He headed for the door, then stopped.
The pull hit him.
Not physical. Deeper than that. Like a frequency only his marked thumb could detect.
Direction.
The whisper returned—clearer now, less formless. Not words exactly, but meaning. Pure intention translated directly into understanding.
*Come.*
*Find.*
*Know.*
Elias's hand went to his marked thumb. The pulse had strengthened, guiding him like a compass needle pulled by magnetic north.
Toward something within the library itself.
Deeper.
Older.
He looked at his office door. Beyond it lay the familiar halls—well-lit, frequently visited, safe. The world he understood. The cataloged sections. The indexed collections. The known.
But the pull urged him elsewhere.
Toward forgotten corridors. Dusty archives rarely disturbed by human hands. Places where the air grew cold and shadows stretched long—the sub-basement levels where old collections went to sleep.
Places where things were buried for reasons.
---
**Grand Reading Hall — Midday**
Elias walked through the grand reading hall, acutely aware of the disconnect.
Scholars pored over illuminated manuscripts. Students hunched over data-slates. Faces earnest, focused, comfortable in their certainty.
They were searching for answers in the known. In the documented. In the verifiable.
He'd just stumbled upon a question that shouldn't exist.
The familiar scent of old paper now carried something else—a faint undertone of ozone and age. Like petrified wood. Like dried blood. Like stone that had absorbed centuries of whispered secrets.
Like secrets long buried.
His footsteps echoed louder than they should. Each footfall a leaden thud in the vast silence that seemed to press in around him. Or maybe it was just his heightened awareness. Everything felt sharper now. More present.
The mark pulsed.
Stronger now.
Warmer.
Almost... insistent?
He should report this. Head Librarian Theron would want to know. Books didn't just appear. They didn't mark people with glowing symbols. There were protocols for anomalous items. Procedures.
But even as he thought it, Elias knew he wouldn't.
Couldn't.
Something had changed. Not just the mark. Something deeper. Like a door in his mind had cracked open, and he could hear frequencies he'd never known existed. Like he'd been deaf his entire life and only now realized sound existed.
And he was terrified of what might come through.
Yet curiosity warred with fear.
Sharp. Irresistible. The archivist's instinct.
His life was dedicated to uncovering forgotten knowledge. To bringing light to the obscured. To ensuring nothing was lost to time.
And this felt like the most forgotten piece of knowledge of all.
A secret buried not under dust, but under time itself.
Waiting.
For him.
---
**Outside Elias's Office**
Elias stood at the threshold of his office, staring down the corridor.
Two paths.
One led back to normalcy. He could lock the tome away. Ignore the pull. Pretend his thumb didn't throb with otherworldly rhythm.
Retreat into the comforting logic of his cataloged world.
The other path led... where?
The mark pulsed again.
*Deeper.*
*Older.*
*Darker.*
Elias Thorne, meticulous archivist, took a shaky breath.
He'd always preferred the quiet certainty of facts.
But the Veridian Veil outside taught a different lesson—some truths weren't quiet.
They screamed.
His hand tightened on the unmarked tome. The leather felt warmer now, as if it approved of his decision.
The pull grew stronger, a magnetic force he could no longer ignore.
Guiding him toward the forgotten depths of the Grand Veridian Library.
His quiet life had ended.
The real archiving was about to begin.
And Elias had a chilling feeling that this time, the books wouldn't be the ones getting cataloged.
He would.
He took the first step down the corridor, toward the restricted archives. Toward the basement levels where even senior archivists rarely ventured—the old sub-basements that predated the modern catalog system.
Toward whatever was calling him.
The mark blazed hot against his thumb.
And somewhere in the distance, deep within the library's ancient bones, something stirred.
Waiting.