Marc stared at the ceiling of his room.
And he had already been staring at his ceiling for several hours now, ever since that new day when he was certain that Goagi—the terrifying entity that trapped people in time loops—was finally gone.
He even wondered if he was stuck in one of those loops again because of his inactivity.
But he was certain he was there of his own free will, and by checking the time every ten minutes, he could see that time was passing normally.
The entity wasn't there… Marc was just lost in his helplessness.
His mother had noticed it. She'd spent the morning trying to understand why her son was so unwell. So she tried to comfort her son, as she so often did.
She tapped lightly on the door as she poked her head inside.
"Can I come in Marc?"
So Marc let her in.
"If you like."
She sat on the edge of his bed, sighed deeply as if she were regretting something, before beginning to speak in a calm voice.
"You know...she was a good girl."
"What?"
"She was kind, thoughtful..."
"What are you talking about?"
"She was like a red flower among roses."
"Mom."
"Wait, let me finish. I know your father and I weren't necessarily for it, but..."
"Mom, we didn't split up. We were never a couple."
Marie's gaze froze. She wasn't in the right at all.
"Then why do you look so unhappy?"
"It really had nothing to do with it."
"But tell me what it was instead of making fun of it."
Marc got up from his bed and sighed heavily.
He obviously couldn't say anything about this world or his opponents. Under no circumstances did he want to bring his mother into this.
So he thought about something else that might just as well help him.
"For you, if you had difficulties too great to overcome but you absolutely had to overcome them, what would you do?"
Mary hadn't expected such a question. As far as she was concerned, her son had always been proud and self-reliant. There was nothing he couldn't overcome. She was proud of this, and a little saddened because he never asked for help. He often kept to himself.
But when she heard her son's question, she wondered if she shouldn't worry a little more.
Now was the time for her to tip the scales.
"Are you in that much trouble? Look, I don't think anything is insurmountable. But sometimes some things require more help than others."
"What if the help isn't enough?"
At those words, Mary looked at her son as if the answer were obvious.
"Help will always be enough."
Marc was now looking at the ground. He knew that even all the help in the world wouldn't be enough.
But he wanted to believe his mother's words.
"Thanks for the advice."
Mary didn't feel she'd fixed things.
"I know what to do."
Marc stood up to get ready to leave.
"Where are you going?"
"To the library."
He figured he might be able to find some books talking about this world. Even if they were in the fiction category, they were still up for grabs...
*
The city library was huge but it was the it's only prestige.
It was a building that had been renovated several times and looked more like a church than a library. If it hadn't been clearly marked, no one would ever have known.
They had managed to make a bit of history by owning a lot of old books. Rumors even had it that there were scrolls preserved there.
"Let me see if I can find something."
Marc didn't really feel he could have ancient books about a hidden world with beings as strange as each other. Even on the fiction side, he could find loads of books talking about a hidden world.
He knew full well that his search was utterly pointless. But he still wanted to know if even the slightest detail might be hidden in a place like this.
However, aside from stumbling upon yet another random fantasy book or yet another story about reincarnation or past-life regression, he was beginning to think that the book he was looking for might actually be of the same genre after all.
That didn't motivate him.
"Hello sir, are you looking for something in particular."
Seeing that he seemed to be having trouble, a librarian approached him to help. She was fairly young and pretty—not the type who knew much about old things—so Marc didn't really think she could help.
But still...
"Yes. Perhaps you have books about another world."
The librarian smiled and motioned for him to follow her with a slight nod.
"We have plenty. Would you follow me, please?"
"Have you ever heard of that word?"
Marc didn't want to sacrifice anyone else. So he jotted down on a scrap of paper the forbidden word that he refused himself to say out loud. He hadn't received any notification, so he assumed it was okay to write it down.
The pretty librarian gently brushed her hair out of her eyes and read the word
"Aregis?"
"Yes."
"No, sorry."
Marc didn't tempt Astreos for obvious reasons.
The librarian led him to a shelf that seemed to open onto an infinite corridor.
To be precise, it already looked extremely long, and at the far end of it were shadows that simply blocked the view ahead, giving the impression that it led nowhere but into the abyss.
Yet, some people were already reading.
"I recommend Jean Silvain. When it comes to otherworldliness, he's probably the best."
"Don't you have something very old?"
"Old?"
From the look on the lady's face, Marc understood something. He didn't know anything about this world. Not if it was ancient, not when it dated. He didn't even know how to enter it or who ran it. The only thing he knew was that it was home to powerful beings accompanied by beings as white as snow.
"Sir?"
"Yes."
"I've got Lavoisi if you want him, who's the oldest in fiction."
"Thank you."
"I'll let you choose."
The librarian left, leaving Marc in the fiction section. He picked up Lavoisi's book and began to read.
"Although this world seems unreal to me, I'm well inside it and I'm not dead."
Marc wondered if this was a joke.
"It all started when I was in my garden. I was singing and dancing in the morning dew. Suddenly, I saw a flower and took it in my hand. It was a strange blue, the color of which I had never seen before. Fear gripped me and I let go of the flower. Its petals scattered to the four corners of the garden, and I watched the spectacle with a childlike gaze. Soon everything stopped and calm returned. But I knew deep down that nothing was over. The flower began to float and glow. There seemed to be stars appearing in its blue, as in the sky. Suddenly, I was sucked in, and all that was left of me on the spot was the wonder flower."
"I didn't think books could be so poetic. You'd think that's how he wrote back then. It doesn't give me any clues, but I'll take the book."
Marc closed the book and started looking for others. Strangely enough, the books he found interesting were mostly Lavoisi's.
"The rain fell on his sword, the moon shone on the battlefield. Nothing could tell us that the hero of the war was the one who had made such a massacre."
Marc began to really appreciate it. He told himself that if he wasn't busy with all these things, he would have started writing like Lavoisi.
"The world mourned the hero's death. Even the trees lost their leaves in tears. The only one not crying was the hero, for his soul had gone to more beautiful places."
"Night is the worst enemy of light, for when night comes, light is silent. Ronsvelle's hope was light. Night was everything else. The light fell silent, disarmed."
Although he appreciated Lavoisi's style, reading him provoked a feeling of sadness.
It was as if the author wrote nothing but sad things. There didn't seem to be any joy, either at the end or at the beginning of these stories full of mysteries.
Each of the books was made to cry. And Marc knew that, generally speaking, that meant the author was a broken man.
He picked up all the Lavoisi books he could and told himself not to read any more for the day.
Unfortunately, reading led nowhere. Nothing spoke of such a world. Even Lavoisi had no answers.
Marc remained seated on a chair on the shelf. All his occupants had already left. He observed the long, dark corridor that seemed to stretch on forever and couldn't see its end.
"Maybe I should check out the books at the back."
Marc opened one of Lavoisi's books, just out of curiosity, to see if he really had nothing interesting left to say.
"Those who try nothing, will get nothing but regrets. Those who try the impossible, will only get regrets."
That didn't help him much.
Marc took one last look at the end of the corridor. Never had anything seemed so far away.
So on the way, he thought about Lavoisi's quote.
Maybe the fomer writer was right. That if he stubbornly insisted on trying to do the impossible, he would come to regret it...
"I don't want to know if I'd stop in time. I want to know if I could do it. And if I don't know, I'll try anyway. I already have too many regrets as it is."
After ten minutes of walking, the corridor still didn't end. The books were gathering dust and the floor creaked and the light disappeared more and more.
Marc wondered if this corridor was one of Goagi's traps but then he noticed something.
More and more books were missing. Dust hung in the air to such an extent that he could see less and less. Some of the wooden boards were missing as if they'd never been there in the first place.
The further he went, the more the corridor seemed to be completely neglected. So much so that it was starting to fall into disrepair. Falling into complete ruin.
Marc began to panic.
"What's going on here? Even if this is the end of the hallway, it's supposed to be minimally maintained."
Marc turned to see if anyone was there, but as he'd suspected, no one was in the fictional corridor. In fact, he couldn't even see where he'd really come from. The exit seemed far away, the entrance seemed far away.
"Sh.t"
Marc didn't know what to do.
"I didn't come here for nothing. I might as well pick up some books and look at them."
Marc tried to take some books from the shelves beside him. But to his surprise, the pages of the book he'd chosen were blank.
And it was the same for the following ones...
"This can't be true. They pretend they've got endless books, but in fact three quarters of them are empty."
In his desperate attempt to find a book, Marc picked up the first book by accident he'd chosen from the shelf.
"I've already taken that one. But..."
The cover had changed.
The title was now...
"The Prince of Death."
Marc opened the first page and saw that there were now lines and text.
His heart pounding...he began to read.
"Overwhelmed by his book, He didn't realize that what awaited him at the end of the corridor was..."
Marc finally understood the meaning of the title...
Drops of sweat multiplied on his forehead. The last word he'd just read didn't reassure him at all. He was afraid that the man in black would appear at the end of the corridor, sword in hand.
Marc stood up and began to scan the corridor.
Unfortunately, his fear was realized.
Footsteps were heard. Panic-stricken Marc reopened the book to find out what was going to happen next.
"The footsteps multiplied in number. With their white wings, they chased the black-hearted being into the shadows."
Marc understood what was about to happen.
Even if it was just them, he was afraid.
The first white being emerged from the shadows. The same ones as in the field. One by one, they stepped out of the shadows and began to stare at Marc with their eyes that seemed to shelter space.
Marc watched them for a long time before realizing that he had to run. What followed was one of the most memorable runs of his life.
Marc sprinted in the opposite direction, but despite the power-up he'd received from the other world, he didn't seem to be going fast at all. On the contrary, white beings brushed past him as he ran.
Books fell left and right.
Marc thought he was dreaming, but the corridor was no longer straight at all.
Curves began to appear, and bookshelves fell one by one. The corridor didn't look like it used to. Marc thought it best not to ask questions and to run until he saw one of the books on the shelf fall, hit the floor and start floating for no reason at all.
"Tf ?!"
Marc's sweat drops were no longer falling to the ground, but rising upwards. He looked up to make sure he hadn't been caught in one of those mud puddles, but nothing, apart from the ceiling, erupted into his field of vision.
"What the hell's going on?!"
Marc began to see the light at the end of the dark corridor, but he could also feel the hands of the white beings behind his back. His speed failed to increase as if his legs were chained.
"Oh no. I won't allow you. I'm not going to die today."
With the last of his strength, Marc ran to the corridor exit and threw himself out. If there was one thing he knew, it was that these beings never went out into the real world...