The night felt longer than any before. The clock ticked slowly, each beat measuring a chilling silence. A gray shadow stretched from corner to corner, as if the room itself was grieving. Piro sat on the side of his bed, in a room that now felt colder and more alien. The iron chest in the corner, which held the cursed book, seemed to suck all warmth and light from the air, leaving a residue of a biting cold. But the most immediate threat was no longer in the chest; it was in Piro's own hand.
Piro stared at his index finger. The blackness was no longer just a stain, but had crept up to the base of the nail. The surface of the blackened skin looked like scorched wood, the veins beneath it seemingly trapped in an endless darkness. The piercing cold had crystallized in his nerves—a thousand frozen needles severing all feeling. An eerie numbness spread, a stiffness like a piece of dead wood that made the finger feel alien, no longer his own. Physical pain would have been a relief, but what he felt was absence.
He tried to move his finger, and in that numb silence, he heard a whisper. Not the Conqueror's whisper, but a subtler one, coming from within himself. A whisper spoken not in words, but in vibrations. He felt that absence, and in that absence, he felt a communion. The finger was not just rotting flesh, but a cathedral of cosmic sorrow. Piro heard the fractured hymns of dead stars. He heard the screams of realities that had been unmade. He realized that this corruption was a false enlightenment—a path to knowledge corrupted by terror.
The shackles of guilt were an invisible iron weight. He remembered the day he found the book. Not just the sight, but the sensory details: the smell of an old tomb, the strange pulse on the book's surface that felt like a heartbeat. He saw Zego's enthusiastic smile, his eyes sparkling with the discovery he had been promised. He saw Silvi smiling beside them, her eyes bright with the stories she was waiting to hear. Now, Zego lay in a coma, and Silvi was terrified. An alternative scenario flashed in his mind, a shadow timeline where Zego laughed by the fireplace and Silvi's eyes were bright with stories. But he couldn't go back there. He had made his choice. And now, he had to live with the consequences.
As he was lost in his regret, the door to his room opened slowly. Sophie stood, haloed by the hallway light, a tray in her hand like an offering against the dark. Her face looked tired, but her eyes still showed the same resilience, a resilience that was the only light in this darkness. She saw Piro's blackened finger, but showed no surprise or disgust. She just nodded slowly, as if to say, "I know."
"How is Zego?" Piro asked, his voice cracked.
Sophie placed the tray on a small table next to Piro. "Zego is still unconscious," she replied, her voice calm and gentle. "The doctors at the hospital are confused. They suspect some kind of dark magic has sealed his consciousness. His soul... seems to be trapped."
Piro looked down, clutching the blackened finger. "And Silvi?"
"Silvi is awake, but still very much in shock. She just needs rest," Sophie said. "The doctors explained that because of her weak mental state, her energy was vulnerable to the unpure energy, causing her to faint. It's not a permanent corruption, but a kind of systemic shock. She will return to normal after her energy is restored," Sophie said, trying to reassure him.
Piro felt a little relieved, but it didn't last long. "So, Zego's mind is stronger than Silvi's, but he was still more severely affected," Piro muttered. "What happened to Zego is something much deeper. That book, that entity... they targeted his soul."
"That's right," Sophie said, then she pulled up a chair and sat in front of Piro. "And what happened to your finger is proof. I want to examine it."
Piro held out his blackened finger. Very carefully, Sophie touched it, her fingers tracing the veins that were now black. She didn't just feel the piercing cold, but also a strange energy pattern.
"I'm going to try to analyze this energy," Sophie said, taking a piece of translucent crystal and a spectral prism from her satchel. She placed the crystal on the purple fluid that was still on the rag. The crystal absorbed the energy from the fluid, emitting a faint light. Sophie aimed the prism at the light, and strange spectral patterns appeared, warping and shifting.
"This is not blood," Sophie whispered, her eyes sharp. "This is... dimensional ichor. The fluid of a non-reality entity. And the spectral pattern... these are signs similar to a 'time frostbite' on artifacts from the Astalon era."
"Time frostbite?" Piro asked.
"An infection that not only freezes matter, but also a moment in time," Sophie explained. "I've never seen it directly, only in ancient texts. But what's most worrying... this pattern is also on your finger."
Sophie then pressed the same crystal to Piro's finger. The light from the crystal didn't dim, but exploded, creating a small holographic projection in the air. It was the image of the same desert Piro had seen in his vision, with shadows moving against the wind. The image pulsed, as if alive, before finally disappearing.
"This is not ordinary magic," Sophie said, her voice tense. "Your finger is a tool. A small gateway that the entity is using to monitor us."
Suddenly, the door burst open. A gruff-faced old guard, Gareth, entered. His sword was already drawn, his aura filled with tension. His eyes went straight to Piro's blackened finger.
"Master Piro," Gareth's voice cut through the cold, "that darkness in your hand... it smells like the Void War trenches."
Gareth approached, ignoring a startled Sophie. He pushed up his sleeve, revealing fractal scars on his skin, like silver veins etched into his flesh. "See these scars?" He touched the wound roughly. "They called it 'Reality Leprosy' in the trenches. It's an infection that twists reality around you. But yours..." His eyes narrowed, filled with vigilance. "...yours is different. It's not eating you. It's rewriting you."
"What do you mean?" Piro asked.
"We had a captain who touched a Void mine. He aged backward while screaming. Turned into a crying babe mid-sentence," Gareth recounted in a gravelly voice. "Mine twisted reality around me, but yours... yours is a gateway, Master Piro. You are the gateway."
Gareth's words planted a new fear in Piro's heart. The blackened finger pulsed, as if confirming every word spoken. Sophie stared at Gareth, her face filled with awe. "A Void War veteran," she whispered. "I never knew you were one of them."
"So, what should we do?" Piro asked, his voice full of urgency.
"We can't just sit here and wait," Sophie said, echoing Piro's earlier words, but in a much firmer tone. "The Last Librarian of Veridia. Astalon. The Void Wars. They're all connected." She looked at Piro. "You're right. We have to be more prudent. We will start our investigation here. I won't let this finger become a shackle for you."
Piro looked at her, a deep sense of respect filling him. In his panic, Sophie had remained calm and logical, looking for a wise way out. "You're right," he said. "We have to be more prudent. We will start our investigation here. I won't let this finger become a shackle for me."
Sophie smiled slightly. "Good. We have a lot of work to do. But for tonight, rest. You have to keep your mind clear. That unpure energy, as the doctor said, attacks mental weakness. You have to be strong."
However, in the middle of their conversation, the door opened again and a woman with white hair and a medical robe entered. She was Lysandra, the palace doctor. Her sharp eyes fixed on Piro's finger.
"I received reports from the nurses who were treating Zego and Silvi," she said in a flat voice. "I need a blood sample from you, Piro. Now."
After examining Piro's blood sample, Lysandra shook her head. "This isn't a disease. Your fibrinogen is crystallizing. This isn't a disease, this is reality rejecting you."
Piro stared at her, confused. "What does that mean?"
"It means your body no longer recognizes its own reality. It's adapting to a higher, older reality. The reality of that book. You are becoming a bridge. A bridge that connects two realities," Lysandra explained. "I can't heal you. I don't know if anyone can."
Piro looked at his blackened hand again, then at the iron chest. He saw the keyhole suddenly exhale a plume of frost, which evaporated into tiny ᛏᛟᛗᚱ runes in the air before disappearing. The room felt like it pulsed. The shadows on the walls were no longer static; they morphed into abyssal trenches. The walls around them seemed to bleed hoarfrost hieroglyphs. Piro stared at the ice runes, and he realized something.
"That's not a warning, Piro," Sophie whispered, as if she had just solved a great puzzle. "It's a coordinate. The East is not a place... it's a time."
Piro, Sophie, Gareth, and Lysandra looked at each other. The situation was far more complex than they had imagined.
Gareth, who had regained his composure, plunged his sword into the frost-crusted floor. "We can't do this alone. We need someone who can see these things clearly. Someone who has seen Astalon's Tomb. We need Malakai the Madman."
Sophie nodded, then took out a small book and began to write. She wrote down names:
* Piro: The key to the entity's world
* Sophie: Dimensional linguistic expert
* Gareth: Void War tactical expert
* Lysandra: Bio-arcana specialist
"We're going to form a team," she said. "We will find Malakai. We will solve the mystery of this book, not by reading it, but by understanding the history behind it. And we will find a way to cure Zego."
Piro looked at his blackened hand again, then at the iron chest. He knew, this journey had just begun. Not a journey to Veridia, but a journey into forgotten history, and into the void beyond reality. And he didn't know what awaited him at the end of the road, but he knew he couldn't back down. He had to find out what he had unleashed, and stop it before it was too late.