My jaw was still on the floor.
"Read it to me."
The words didn't sound like an invitation — they sounded like a sentence passed in a court where no appeal, no pardon, was ever possible.
I looked at the book: leather‑bound, aged so deep it felt almost alive yet long dead to light. Black cover — not ink‑black, but the black of a starless sky; of deep places that never knew brightness and carried an old, bitter resentment toward anyone foolish enough to bring it. No title.
Only a symbol burned deep into the centre: a perfect circle bisected by one jagged, uneven line — exactly like an ancient wound cut long ago that had never truly closed, never truly healed over.
A strange biting frost crept instantly from cover into my fingers and up my wrists, as if the object itself drank my warmth greedily.
"I—"
