The only thing Leo truly loved about the Grand Meridian Library was the silence.
It wasn't a dead silence, but a living, breathing one. The soft rustle of a turned page. The gentle thud of a book being settled back into its home on the shelf. It was a silence of order. Of things being where they were supposed to be.
He ran a finger along the spine of a thick folio, A Comprehensive Bestiary of the Northern Reaches. The embossed title was worn smooth. He'd reshelved this one seventeen times in the last three years. He knew, because he kept a mental log. It was one of the small, pointless games he played to pass the time.
With a flick of his wrist, a faint, shimmering thread of blue light, his basic Levitation, snaked from his fingertips and lifted the book. It floated obediently through the air before slotting itself perfectly into its gap on the shelf.
Satisfied, he let the magic go. The glow vanished. That was the extent of his arcane ability, the same as almost everyone else. Enough for small conveniences, not enough for anything that mattered. It was normal. Everything was normal.
He tried to read the title of the next book, but the words blurred. He blinked, pushing down a familiar flicker of frustration. Aphantasia. For others, the words might conjure grand vistas. For Leo, they were just words. Shapes on a page. His world was built of text and tangible fact, not images and fantasy.
The great clock above the main desk chimed five times. Shift over.
As he gathered his worn satchel, an old man approached the desk. He had eyes the color of a faded sky and a weariness that seemed to settle on him like dust.
"Can I help you?" Leo asked, his tone neutral.
The old man's gaze was unsettlingly direct. "I'm looking for a text on pre-Weave architectural theory."
An obscure subject. Leo directed him to the right section, and the man nodded, a faint, sad smile on his lips.
"A man who spends his life among books," the old man said, his voice soft, "he learns the weight of words. The power they have to create worlds... or unmake them."
Leo just shrugged. "They're just books."
The old man's smile deepened, etched with a strange, cosmic irony. "No," he said softly, almost to himself. "They are anchors. And I have grown so very tired of searching for a hero."
He looked at Leo, not with judgment, but with a final, weary resignation.
"Let's try an anchor instead."