The smell of smoke filled Riku Arata's lungs long before he felt the heat.
Flames licked the shelves around him, devouring centuries of wisdom, whole lifetimes bound in leather and ink. Pages curled into ash and drifted through the air like dying snowflakes.
The library—his one refuge from a world that had long stopped making sense—was burning.
Riku staggered between collapsing bookcases, clutching a thick tome to his chest though he knew it wouldn't matter. Knowledge was supposed to be eternal, yet here it was—crackling, shrieking, vanishing in a storm of fire.
He coughed violently, his vision blurring. Maybe it was ironic. A college dropout who had failed at everything except hiding in books, now dying with them.
What a pathetic ending.
And yet, as his knees buckled and the flames swallowed his vision, he thought he saw something impossible.
The fire stopped.
Not as if it had been extinguished—but as if someone had taken a quill and crossed it out from reality itself. The heat vanished. The smoke dissipated. The pain faded.
When Riku opened his eyes again, there was no fire. No library. No ceiling.
Instead, he stood beneath an endless sky of ink-black void, stretching in every direction. Floating in the darkness were shelves—thousands, millions, perhaps infinite. Each one packed with glowing books, their spines shimmering like constellations.
And at the center of it all, a girl awaited him.
Her hair was silver, flowing like moonlight, and her eyes were the calm stillness of untouched water. She wore a robe that shifted between white and black, as if torn between day and night. In her hands, she held an open book, but the pages were blank.
"Riku Arata," she said, her voice neither echoing nor fading, but imprinted directly onto his soul.
"Welcome to the Codex of Infinity."
Riku blinked, dazed. "…What is this place?"
"The last library," she replied. "Here lies every truth that was, is, and will ever be written. Knowledge that gods erased, empires buried, and mortals feared. It is all preserved here."
His gaze swept over the endless shelves, awe gnawing at the edges of his confusion. A universe of books. A library without end.
The girl closed her own tome and stepped closer.
"You are its new Keeper. To you belongs every secret, every spell, every weapon forged in thought and word. But know this—knowledge is not passive. Every concept you understand, you may manifest. And every truth you touch, you may rewrite."
Riku's heart skipped. "Rewrite…?"
Her eyes glimmered faintly.
"Yes. Even the truths of gods. Even the shape of the world itself."
For a moment, silence reigned. He could hear only his own heartbeat, quick and uneven. The weight of her words pressed down on him like gravity.
And then, somewhere deep inside, a laugh escaped him.
It was broken, disbelieving, but alive.
"I die in a burning library," he muttered, "only to wake up in one that never ends. If this is a joke, it's a pretty good one."
The girl tilted her head. "It is no joke. It is destiny."
Before Riku could reply, a tremor rippled through the void. The shelves shook. Some of the glowing books snapped shut violently, their spines darkening.
The girl's expression hardened. "It seems your arrival has not gone unnoticed. Already, the gods stir. Already, the demons hunger."
She extended her hand to him.
"Choose, Keeper. Will you embrace the Codex—or let it consume you?"
Riku hesitated only for a moment. Then, with the fire of his last life still burning in his memory, he reached out and took her hand.
The void shattered.
The next thing he saw was a battlefield of blood and steel, where knights and sorcerers screamed in chaos. A fireball streaked toward his face, faster than thought.
Instinctively, Riku opened his palm. And before him, words appeared, glowing like scripture.
[Concept of Fire: Consumption]
The flames unraveled into nothingness. The soldiers froze, staring in disbelief.
Riku smirked faintly. "If fire exists to consume…"
The letters twisted.
[Rewrite: Consume Yourself]
The fireball turned inward, devouring itself until only smoke remained.
Riku exhaled slowly. His heart raced, not from fear, but from exhilaration.
Maybe for the first time in his life, he felt alive.
And so began the tale of the boy who became the Keeper of Eternity.
The tale of a library that could rewrite the world.