Lucien moved closer, his fingers grazing the small carving in the wood, as if trying to memorize its grooves through touch alone. He had never seen anything like it; not in sacred symbolism, nor in the more familiar signs used by ordinary people for good luck, protection, or healing.
The symbol was formed by intersecting curved lines, each ending in a small circle. Whoever had carved it had done so with great care. Lucien took a step back, slowly realizing that it wasn't a simple decorative motif repeated on other shelves, but a deliberate mark, as if meant to indicate the precise place where a particular tome belonged.
As though the carving were an arrow, the young monk lifted his gaze to the book resting directly above it. At first glance, it seemed unremarkable; no bright colors, no elaborately written title. It looked exactly like all the others.
Yet when Lucien reached for it, he suddenly stopped.
Something in the air felt different. A quiet voice inside him whispered that this was a bad idea. He couldn't have said why; only that a sudden, uneasy sensation tightened in his stomach, urging him to pull back.
Lucien frowned, confused by his own reaction. There was no reason to feel such unease before a plain, untitled book, identical to countless others, simply because of a slightly elaborate carving beneath it.
Still, he hesitated.
Trusting his instincts, he reached instead for the tome beside it and stepped back toward the lantern, opening it to the first page. Relief washed over him when he saw that it was written in the common language; quickly followed by disappointment. This wasn't what he was looking for.
Brother Rowan had asked for Philosophy and Fire, written by Father Agaris during the third era after the Gods' ascension to heaven, a rare and demanding read. What Lucien now held was a geography book.
He let his long fingers trail slowly over the faded map of the world as it had been known to the monks of old, lingering on familiar names and others that no longer existed, lost to time. He would have liked to study every page, but he had a task to complete.
He returned the book to its place, the soft rustle of pages the only sound filling the room for a brief moment. Lucien picked up more volumes, opening them and setting them aside with growing dissatisfaction.
Time passed unnaturally in that dark, windowless place, swallowed by the murky bowels of the monastery. A single moment seemed to stretch into eternity, only to slip away just as quickly.
Lucien opened and closed books, setting them aside the instant he realized the language was unfamiliar, or allowing himself the small luxury of flipping through a few pages when it wasn't; forcing himself to stop before he lingered too long.
And yet, no matter how many pages he turned, his emerald gaze kept drifting back to the tome resting above that strange symbol.
After closing a particularly heavy volume -the dull thud echoing against the stone walls- Lucien found himself staring at the carving once more. He knew that if his instincts were warning him so insistently, he should listen. The Gods guided him, after all.
Still, like a moth drawn to flame, he set the book he had been holding down on the floor and stepped closer to the marked shelf. Holding his breath, he reached out and slowly slid the tome free.
It was lighter than most of the others. Its cover bore no symbols, no markings, no title; nothing that could justify the tight knot of tension coiling in his chest.
Lucien lowered himself to the floor, letting the warm glow of the lantern spill over the pages. When he opened the book, disappointment washed over him, dull and immediate, replacing the unease that had gripped him moments before.
The pages were blank.
He flipped through them quickly, disbelief settling in. All that tension, the strange symbol, the visceral pull, and for this?
Then, at last, he stopped.
There was writing. One line, alone, amid the sea of yellowed paper.