Christopher's search leads him beyond the veil. What began with a trance now carries him into a place that should not exist. Into a library that breathes, that judges, and which remembers. This entry captures his first steps inside the Labyrinth of Books.
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I have crossed.
The boat slid without sound, parting mist so thick I feared it might never lift. Yet at last it did, and the mountain rose before me.
A summit vast and ancient, jagged peaks clawing into the heavens as though they would pierce them. At its stone face spilled a waterfall so high it seemed to pour from the sky itself, torrents of silver cascading into the lake. Even from the shore, I could see that the water was not ordinary. It glistened with starlight, as though each drop remembered the night it fell.
The boat kissed gravel, and I stepped out, my boots crunching against the silence. Before me stood a door of granite, colossal, untouched by decay yet weathered by ages. Symbols writhed upon its surface, intricate and ceaselessly shifting. They whispered in tongues I could not know, yet somehow I understood every word.
When I drew closer, the carvings brightened, faint at first, then burning gold. The hum of it entered my bones, rattling me hollow. I knew what it was doing. Measuring me. Weighing the worth of every thought, every sin, every secret.
Only those whose reflections matched their true selves would pass.
I stood there, trembling, waiting for judgment. My reflection stared back from the stone as though the mountain itself had become a mirror. I thought of Andrea's fire, of the unborn child she carried. Of the Sepulcher, which called and called, though I did not know why.
The light flared.
And the door opened.
Inside was not stone. It was alive.
The Labyrinth of Books breathes. I can feel it even as I write. The air tastes older than time, and the shelves spiral upward until the eye cannot follow, reshaping themselves in slow, deliberate motion. Pathways open and close at their whim, as though the building itself decides where I must go. Globes of golden fire drift overhead, casting a glow that feels more sacred than warm.
I have entered a place that remembers more than man was ever meant to. And still, it remembers me.
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The Labyrinth does not open for everyone. Its doors shift, its shelves rearrange, its very air measures the soul. Christopher passes within, unsure whether it has accepted him as a guest or as something less. What he discovers here will shape the road ahead, though he does not yet understand how.