The question hung in my mind, vast and heavy, a weight of pure inquiry from a consciousness of stone and time. Why do you seek what is hidden?
My first instinct was to scream, To go home! To project the image of my sun-scorched dunes, my home, my identity. But I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that it wouldn't be enough. That was a selfish reason. A child's reason.
I looked back at Kael, who watched me with wide, anxious eyes, his breath misting in the cold air. His quest was not for himself, but for a truth larger than one man. I thought of the Shadow-Hounds, twisted creations of malice. I thought of the Magi, powerful enough to hunt people across worlds and confident enough to rewrite history itself.
The guardians were not a door to be unlocked, but a scale to be balanced. My answer had to have weight. It had to be true.
Closing my eyes, I leaned my forehead against the cool stone of the guardian. I let go of my fear and focused on the Sandsong within me. Then, I projected my answer back, not in words, but in a torrent of feeling and memory.
I showed them the golden expanse of my home, not as something I merely wanted back, but as a truth, a reality that deserved to exist. I showed them the twisting of that truth—the dark magic, the fear, the chase through a world that was not my own. I sent the image of Kael, his face etched with exhaustion and determination, a keeper of forgotten knowledge. I sent the feeling of my own power, not the grand chorus of the desert, but the small, gritty whisper I'd found in the mud—a small truth holding its own against a tide of lies.
My final projection was not a demand, but a simple, unvarnished statement of purpose: We seek what is real. The knowledge of what was, so we can fight for what should be. I seek the truth of my way home, and he seeks the truth that will give everyone a home.
For a long moment, the silence was absolute. The pressure in my mind remained, judging the weight of my answer. Then, slowly, it receded.
A low, grinding hum vibrated through the stone under my palm. The glowing white lines of the doorway flared with a brilliant, pure light, forcing me to shield my eyes. The two stone guardians, with a groan that sounded like the shifting of tectonic plates, began to move. They did not step aside. They retracted, pulling back into the cliff face from which they were born, their forms melting back into the seamless rock until only the luminous, open doorway remained.
The air that wafted out from the passage was cool and utterly still. It smelled of ancient dust, dry paper, and the clean, sharp scent of stone.
"Iris," Kael breathed, his voice trembling with disbelief and reverence. "You did it."
He limped forward, holding his lantern high, and peered into the darkness. I followed, stepping over the threshold. The moment I was inside, the light of the doorway behind us faded, plunging us into a darkness that was absolute, broken only by the small, bobbing flame of Kael's lantern. The immense grinding sound returned as the door sealed itself shut. There was no turning back.
Kael took a step forward, and the lantern light revealed what was around us. We were not in a simple tunnel. We were in a cavern of impossible scale. The walls were smooth, carved stone, lined with shelves that rose up hundreds of feet into the oppressive darkness above, far beyond the reach of our light. Winding stone walkways and bridges crisscrossed the empty space between shelves, connecting different sections of the colossal chamber. It wasn't a building; the entire library was carved from the heart of the mountain itself.
"By the First Spark," Kael whispered, his voice echoing in the profound silence. "It's real."
He took a few steps, running a hand along a stone shelf. It was empty, as were the ones next to it. In fact, this entire vast antechamber seemed to be an entrance hall, a place to impress upon visitors the sheer scale of what lay beyond.
I felt small, a grain of sand in a stone ocean. This was a place of deep, quiet, patient power. It was Kael's world, not mine. Yet within this overwhelming silence, there was a flicker of hope. The answer was here. Somewhere.
"The challenge was not only entering," Kael said, turning to me, his face illuminated from below by the lantern, looking like a storyteller from myth. "It is navigating. The Library is not organized by topic or title. It is organized by concept, by query. Finding a single truth in this place could take a thousand years if you don't know how to ask."
"Then how do we ask?" I asked, my own voice a small intrusion in the stillness.
"We must find the index," he replied, pointing the lantern down a wide, dark passage that led deeper into the mountain's core. "A central chamber. A place where the Library's consciousness is focused. There, we can pose our questions."
He looked from me to the yawning darkness ahead. "Now, the real work begins."
Together, we took our first steps into the Sunken Library, our tiny light pushing back against an ocean of ancient, sleeping knowledge.