Rain hammered the library roof like a thousand impatient fingers. Chen Yuze adjusted his glasses, blinking through the reflection of flickering fluorescent lights. It was nearly midnight, and the city outside had dissolved into a smear of headlights and rain. Everyone else had gone home hours ago, but he stayed, crouched over a desk buried in yellowed papers and digital printouts that smelled faintly of mould and machine oil.
The Codex lay open before him—or what he thought was the Codex. The book wasn't catalogued. No author, no ISBN, no title on the spine—just black leather, cracked at the corners, with a symbol embossed on the cover: a circle of mirrored roses.
When he first touched it, the lamps flickered. He had told himself it was a coincidence. He was still telling himself that.
"Jesus…" he muttered, pressing his thumb against the symbol. The leather was cold, like the skin of something long dead. "This is the weirdest damn archival project I've ever—" The words choked off.
Ink bled through the page, not onto the paper but through it—rising like smoke underwater. Lines shaped themselves into words, twisting and reforming.
THE ARCHIVIST RECORDS. THE FOOL REMEMBERS. THE WORLD FORGETS.
Yuze's throat went dry. His first instinct was to laugh—a tight, brittle noise that didn't sound like him. "Great. Either someone's got a projector hidden in here, or I've finally lost it."
He reached for his phone. The screen wouldn't turn on. Neither would the lamps. Only the book glowed faintly now, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. Something beneath his skin itched—a crawling sensation, as though his veins had become threads being tugged from afar.
WRITE YOUR NAME.
The words appeared again, this time on a blank page. "Not a chance," he said aloud, though his hand was already reaching for the pen. "This is some Lovecraft bullshit, and I am not—"
WRITE YOUR NAME. OR BE UNMADE.
"...Shit." His hand trembled. The ink in the pen shimmered black-red—no, rose-red—as he scrawled the letters:
C H E N Y U Z E
The paper drank it in. Then the letters warped, melting into something elegant, foreign, and impossible. The name reshaped itself until it read:
L U C I E N H A L L O W
He staggered back from the desk, and the Codex snapped shut. Every light in the library died. For a moment, there was only the sound of the rain and the distant hum of the city—then a new sound joined them: a whisper. A voice, quiet and layered, spoke not in his ears but inside his thoughts.
"Archivist acknowledged. Welcome to the Banquet."
The floor gave way. The world turned inside out. And Chen Yuze's scream vanished into the echo.