All of Loren's bravado and forced composure shattered. He jerked his head aside, eyes wide with pure terror. A stinging heat bloomed on his cheek. A lock of his pale hair, seared by the intense energy, curled and blackened at the tips, releasing the acrid scent of singed hair and something burnt-sweet, like crisped parchment.
Erika's gaze followed the spark's trajectory—
It hadn't exploded. It simply vanished, soundlessly, into the wall of ancient books behind them.
What happened next made Erika's scalp prickle. Where the spark had struck—where there should have been a solid book spine—the pages and covers rippled like water disturbed by a stone. A visible, faintly glowing wave spread out in concentric rings from the point of impact. Within the ripples, the books warped and blurred, only to snap back to their original, stacked form within a single heartbeat. No scorch mark. No damage. As if nothing had happened.
Not destruction… but… absorption? Or had the space itself simply… taken it?
Erika couldn't comprehend it. The fear born of this profound unknown was deeper, colder, than any threat of direct violence. Instinctively, helplessly, he tugged at Loren's sleeve, his fingers ice-cold. A silent plea: Stop talking.
The man, after firing that warning shot, wore a strange expression. The anger seemed to have receded, replaced by a brooding darkness, touched by a specific word in Loren's retort.
"'My master'… 'Weight'…" he repeated the phrases under his breath, his voice devoid of inflection, yet the air around them grew colder still. He tilted his head back, looking up into the lightless height of the book-well. The profile of his face, carved in the cold glow, seemed both hard and profoundly… isolated. He pulled another cigarette from his coat, lit it slowly, took a deep drag. The smoke shrouded his complex expression.
"Fine!" he said suddenly, his voice low but final, the sound of a decision made. "But if I don't find him alive…"
He cut himself off, the burgeoning agitation visibly forced down, like capping a volcano. A derisive snort escaped him. His sharp eyes swept over the two boys, filled with distrust. "Hmph. For all I know, it's a trap. Those old bastards… they'd try anything."
He seemed to reach a conclusion with swift, cold logic.
"I'll find him myself," he stated, the cigarette held between his fingers. His tone returned to that weary, irritated calm, which was somehow more unsettling. "He can decide… what to do with you."
With that, he ignored Erika and Loren completely. He turned and walked to a cluttered area piled with books and oddments. Instead of rifling through them physically, he raised his grease-stained hand and made a casual slicing motion in the air.
Where his finger passed, the air shimmered. A book materialized, hovering before him. It was massive, its cover a dull metallic sheen, its edges tracing with faint, azure light like data streams. It was nearly half the size of the table, its cover devoid of words, covered only in shifting, incomprehensible geometric patterns.
The man began rapidly pulling specific volumes and scrolls from the physical shelves around him. His eyes scanned symbols or passages at blinding speed. Each time he finished consulting one, the hovering massive book would turn a page on its own, its surface flashing with dense, mutable glyphs—recording, cross-referencing, calculating.
Erika stared, dumbfounded. This was beyond any concept of "knowledge" or "searching" he knew. No calls, no familiar energy signatures. Just this silent, incomprehensible interaction with a book conjured from thin air. This man, this place… it all exuded a cold, efficient strangeness, utterly alien to the Sanctum's flamboyant displays of power.
In under a minute, the man seemed ready. He waved a hand. The giant book dimmed and dissipated into nothingness, as quietly as it had appeared. He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette on a nearby metal plate.
Then, without a glance at Erika or Loren, he walked straight toward a section of the curved wall that looked no different from any other—solid, crammed with books.
No incantation. No surge of energy.
He simply walked into it.
As Erika and Loren watched, disbelieving, the wall's surface rippled like water at the moment of contact. His figure blurred, turned translucent, and was swallowed completely by the stone and paper.
The ripples smoothed.
Silence returned. Only the cold glow of old pages, and the faint, lingering smell of smoke.
The man was gone.
They were alone. Two exhausted, battered, utterly bewildered boys, abandoned at the base of this towering, impossible structure.
Were they safe? Or trapped in a larger, more unknown cage?
The tension that had held Erika together snapped like a cut wire.
"Hah… khhh…" A ragged gasp escaped him first, followed by harsh, body-wracking coughs that felt like they'd tear his lungs loose. He slid down the bookshelf, his back scraping against hard spines, and collapsed into a sitting heap. Every muscle screamed with ache and the fine tremor of total depletion. The delayed surge of sweat broke over him, soaking his inner clothes with a clammy chill. The Marks on his arms throbbed with a hollow, burning pain—like wounds scraped empty and then held to a flame.
A dull thump sounded beside him as Loren gave out completely, sprawling flat on the dusty floor. The noble lay on his back, chest heaving, his fine clothes now just filthy rags, the livid burn on his cheek stark against his pallor. His eyes were shut, lashes trembling. His lips moved soundlessly, forming only fragmented, breathy whispers—the raw exhalations of survival.
No celebration. No relief. Just the primal, physical collapse that follows a brush with extinction. The air still held the smell of smoke, dust, and the faint, bitter tang from Loren's scorched hair. A reminder of how close they had come to being blackened stains on the floor.
A new silence enveloped them—not the fraught quiet of before, but the numb, vacant stillness of utter depletion. Erika listened to their own labored breathing echo in the vast well, slowly steadying.
Thoughts, like sediment, began to stir.
Hong Bo's murderous gaze… Wolfgang's heavy shake of the head…
Erika closed his eyes. Silently, he sent a thread of pointless prayer toward Wolfgang, and toward the few others who had ever shown him a flicker of complicated kindness. He didn't even know which god to address—the Sanctum's? It didn't matter. Here, in this impossible place, clinging to his own survival, this wisp of hope was all the solace he could offer. A… miracle, perhaps?
But the thought was instantly crushed under colder reality.
A miracle? Relying on others? Entrusting their fate to that mercurial, hate-filled man again, or waiting for a possibly-dead Morrison to "decide" their fate?
Erika's eyes snapped open. He looked up into the consuming darkness above. No.
He tried to push himself up, hands flat on the gritty floor. His legs buckled, dumping him back down with a fresh wave of weakness. He gritted his teeth.
"Loren…" His voice was a sandpaper rasp. "We… can't just wait."
Loren didn't open his eyes, but gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod. His throat worked, producing a breathy, "Mhn." He knew. Waiting here meant their next encounter could be their execution. Or worse.
Understand this place. Find a way out. It was the only clear direction, the only lifeline they could possibly grasp, even if it led into a darkness as vast and unknowable as the one above.
Erika tried again. Using the shelf for support, he hauled himself upright. His legs shook, but held. He looked around the impossible space.
No windows. Light came from the books themselves—cold, lonely. The shelves, the volumes… too many. An inconceivable number, climbing into oblivion. The Sanctum could never hide a structure like this. The man's silent research, the conjured book, walking through walls… None of it was right. It defied the world.
He looked down at the thick dust, then at the wall the man had vanished into. It looked no different.
"We need to… look," Erika said to the still-prone Loren, his voice quiet but urgent. "At these books… or for… any sign of another way out."
He took a shaky step, then another, moving with painful slowness toward the nearest shelf. Each step was cautious, as if afraid of waking something that slept deep within this sea of paper. His hand, trembling, reached out toward a relatively plain-looking volume with a leather spine. His fingertips hovered, just short of touching it.
The exploration began. At the bottom of this silent, soaring, unknowable well, two wounded, spent boys began to probe the edges of the prison—or tomb—they had fallen into.
They exchanged a look. No words were needed. Dragging their still-weak bodies, they began to probe the suffocating base of the structure, splitting up.
Erika went first to the wall the man had vanished into. His hand, slightly trembling, reached out. He touched the cold spine of a book—the feel was ordinary, slightly rough, coated in fine dust. He pushed. The wall didn't budge. Unconvinced, he walked a few paces along the wall, testing different spots, even throwing his shoulder against it. The impact sent a jolt of pain through his shoulder and produced only a dull, muffled thud, as if absorbed by the books themselves. The wall remained inert. No ripples. No hidden seams or mechanisms. It was as if the man's passage had been an illusion, or the 'door' opened for him alone. This absolute, incomprehensible refusal sent a chill through Erika.
On the other side, Loren fought past the sting on his cheek and the ache in his limbs, turning his attention to the mountains of books and scrolls. As a well-educated noble, books had always been his tool for understanding the world, for mastering its rules. With effort, he pulled several scrolls from the lower shelves—ones that looked older or specially bound—and a few heavy volumes. Dust plumed around him, dancing in the cold light.
At first, a faint spark flickered in his ice-blue eyes when he saw the script. It was the common script of the Sanctum and the surrounding regions. He knew the characters, the structures.
But as he scanned the content, desperately seeking any mention of this place, the man, or any useful information, that spark died. Replaced by deeper confusion and frustration.
He recognized the words.
But when combined into sentences, into paragraphs, the meaning was gibberish.
It wasn't history, geography, theology, or any subject within his knowledge. The text was dizzying, even inducing a faint mental discomfort. Some passages seemed to describe methods for 'weaving' energy. Others discussed the 'permeability of boundaries.' Some were just long stretches of repetitive symbols or annotations on incredibly complex geometric diagrams.
No titles. No authors. No indices. It was as if someone had stuffed these volumes with fragments of knowledge, delirious ramblings, and utterly indecipherable code.
"What… what are these things?" Loren muttered a curse under his breath and flung a heavy book back onto the shelf. It landed with a solid thump, jarringly loud in the silence. He tried several more with identical results. The books were like a convincing but meaningless facade—or a vast, despairingly complex puzzle with no key.
Erika had found nothing either. He'd examined the floor—only dust and a few fallen pages. He craned his neck to look up into the dizzying height of the book-lined shaft, feeling only vertigo and his own insignificance. This place was a meticulously constructed, boundless prison of knowledge, and the key was clearly not in their possession.
Time bled away in futile searching, each second deepening their physical exhaustion and a growing sense of helplessness. The exploration yielded not hope, but a heavier despair.
Finally, Erika's last dregs of strength gave out. He slid down against the cold shelf and lay flat on the dust-covered floor. The chill seeped through his thin clothes, but he lacked the energy even to curl up. He stared upward at the curved 'sky' of books, faintly lit by their own cold glow. His eyes were empty.
Helplessness. Bone-deep.
Almost reflexively, he lifted his arm and looked at the two faded Marks. Once sources of pain and frail hope, they now lay dormant under his skin—silent, useless ornaments. In the Sanctum, a Mark was power, identity, a rung on the ladder. But here, in this place that defied all sense, brimming with alien knowledge and a mysterious man, they seemed utterly pale and powerless.
The strength he had, the things he'd struggled to learn… None of it meant anything here. It was like a book filled with elegant, beautifully written wrong answers.
Loren had given up too. He slumped down not far from Erika, back against another shelf, and buried his face in his knees. His shoulders trembled slightly—whether from suppressed sobs or simple, depleted shaking, it was impossible to tell.
The profound silence returned. Only dust motes drifted slowly in the faint light.
Two wounded, exhausted boys, trapped at the bottom of a silent well built from incomprehensible knowledge. They had escaped one immediate death, only to be swallowed by another kind of prison—vaster, more suffocating, and utterly devoid of landmarks.
Where was the way out?
Where was the hope?