Marikka felt the pain even before she touched it.
It was a dull, distant burn—like a headache born in someone else's skull and drifting through the air until it found her. She was arranging a stack of mute codices on the stone table, letting her fingers glide across each cover to read their "tone", when something pulsed at the far end of the Hall of Silent Codices.
A brief vibration.A shard of suffering.Then the silence smoothed over, pretending nothing had happened.
Marikka froze mid-movement, her hand hovering inches above the grey leather cover of a tome. She didn't lift her head. She didn't look around. She didn't need to. Her world was made of pressure and skin before anything else.
She closed her fingers into a fist, inhaling slowly. The cold of the floor seeped through the soles of her shoes. The table hummed faintly, filled with the steady breath of the Athenaeum—the muted murmur that the hearing called "silence," but for her was thick with movement.
"Again," she thought. "Not a coincidence."
One by one she placed the codices down, feeling their emotional signatures: calm, tired, empty, mildly annoyed… all routine. None of these volumes were hurting.
But somewhere beyond the suspended walkways, someone was.
She removed her gloves.
The pale shimmer lining the walls of the Deep Silence Level brightened, casting long shadows that stretched like soft ribbons. The dust floating in the air—tiny specks of ink shaken loose from ancient manuscripts—shifted to make room for her, drifting aside as she walked.
Every step was a ripple.Every ripple, a question.
She moved down the central aisle of the Hall. On either side, dark wooden bridges connected circular platforms stacked with shelves, hanging over chasms of books descending into depths unseen. The Athenaeum never really ended; it simply stopped wanting to be explored.
Marikka brushed her fingers along the railing, feeling the metal's vibrations tell her stories: who had passed by, how hurried, how frustrated. Recent memories, fragmented impressions. Nothing painful.
But then—there it was.A sharper sting. Closer.
The direction shifted slightly, toward the northern passage.
Marikka crossed one of the suspended walkways. She never ran—some of the more sensitive volumes panicked when vibrations spiked, and the custodians complained—but her pace quickened. From the next platform, the sensation grew clearer: the pain came from a shelf where no new texts should have been placed without registration.
A minor detail for anyone else.A flashing alarm for her.
At the end of the third row, she found it.
A medium-sized book wedged between two military histories. No title. No markings. Matte black cover that swallowed light instead of reflecting it. No sigils. No catalog tag.
From a distance, utterly ordinary.Up close, like an injured creature breathing raggedly.
Marikka stopped a meter away, hands at her sides, fingertips tingling.No registry mark.No protective runes.Nothing indicating where it belonged.
"This is impossible," she thought.
Every new entry in the Deep Silence Level required approval from a Senior Custodian. Nothing anonymous could sit exposed like this.
And yet—there it was, radiating pain.
She stepped closer. The air tightened around her.
The walls vibrated softly, as if the Athenaeum itself were holding its breath. The drifting ink motes slowed, suspended as though time thickened.
"Alright," she thought. "I hear you."
She raised her hand.
She didn't touch the book immediately. First she hovered her fingers above the surface. Often the strongest emotions radiated into the air before contact—like heat from a flame.
Nothing.Just tension.And a strange sense of… anticipation.
"Do you want me to touch you?"It wasn't logical. It was instinct. Since working in the Depths, she'd learned that books responded better to listening than to force.
Her fingertip slid along the lower edge of the cover.
The world exploded into a whisper.
A jolt shot from her finger to her shoulder—not electric, but made of memory. She felt a flash of red light, the smell of scorched paper, pages torn all at once, and a wave of grief so sharp her knees weakened.
She grabbed the shelf with her free hand. The book quivered, cover trembling as if holding back a scream.
"Easy… easy…" she mouthed—no sound, just lips forming the shape. "It's not now. It's over."
The pain softened into a throbbing ache. Behind it: fear.Ancient, layered fear.
Her mind cataloged automatically:
– intensity: high– emotional coherence: fractured– origin: unknown– immediate threat: unclear
Enough to trigger an urgent report.
But the book seemed calmer now that she was touching it. The vibration aligned, as though her presence helped it stabilize.
Her fingers mapped the surface like reading braille made of emotions. Every book had its own texture of feeling. Some were sap—slow, sticky. Others were stone—heavy, emotionless.This one was a badly healed wound.
Something moved behind her.
Marikka flinched, glancing back. No footsteps, no figures. Just rows of shelves and floating dust. But the floor's vibration had changed—heavy, hesitant steps.
"Cedric?" she signed in the air.
No reply.
She turned back to the book.
Carefully, she lifted it.It felt like holding a bowl filled to the brim—not with weight, but with meaning.
She placed it on the nearest consultation table. The surface hummed faintly beneath it. A good sign. Solid ground meant stable emotions.
She opened the book.
The first page separated like a held breath finally released. Relief flooded out—mingled with shame. Words shifted subtly, rearranging themselves like insects reacting to light.
The lines moved.Subtle, but unmistakable.
The center of the page was smooth beneath her fingers—fresh rewriting. The edges were rough, scarred.
Images surged through her:
A hall of golden light.Voices murmuring.A gloved hand tearing pages.The smell of smoke without fire.
The book had been mutilated.
Marikka's stomach twisted. Books didn't scream. But this one had tried.
As she traced the bottom margin, her fingers brushed the faint shadow of a sigil—erased. Not empty. Scarred.
"They took your name," she thought.
The ink along the edge lifted like droplets, trembling before falling into new patterns.
Then—A word vibrated into her palm:
"REWRITTEN."
Not seen.Felt.
A quick thump on the table made her jerk upright.
Cedric stood opposite her, arms full of scrolls, eyes huge. His mouth shaped frantic words:You shouldn't be here.What is that?Are we in trouble?
Before she could respond, the book pulsed.
A cold, luminous glow seeped through her fingers, and the vibration that followed rippled across Cedric's scrolls, lifting their edges.
For one impossible heartbeat, the entire Deep Silence Level froze.
Ink motes hung motionless.Light sharpened.Walls stopped breathing.
Something shifted in the world.
Another word burned through her skin:
"BEGIN."
The Athenaeum exhaled violently.Shelves rattled faintly.Cedric stumbled backward.
Marikka stared at the trembling book.
And understood:
She wasn't reading it anymore.It was reading her.