The library's hidden corridor smelled of old parchment and something else—something wrong. It was a scent Elias couldn't place, a mix of damp stone and the faintest trace of iron, as if the walls themselves had bled secrets long ago.
Master Callian walked ahead, the flickering candlelight casting jagged shadows against the towering shelves. Books bound in cracked leather lined the walls, their spines unmarked.
Elias had spent years chasing forbidden knowledge, yet something about this place sent a chill down his spine.
"You've always been reckless, Elias," Callian murmured. "But there are things even you should not seek."
Elias smirked. "And yet here you are, leading me straight to them."
Callian sighed. "Because you will not stop. You never do."
The corridor ended at a heavy wooden door, unlike the rest of the library. This one was ancient, its surface marred by claw-like scratches. A sigil had been carved into the wood—a swirling, intricate symbol that seemed to shift when Elias tried to focus on it.
"The Hollow Veil is not a place," Callian said, pressing his palm against the sigil. "It is an understanding. And understanding it comes at a cost."
The sigil flared with an eerie blue glow. The door unlocked with a low, shuddering groan.
Elias hesitated. Not out of fear, but because he had seen doors like this before. Doors that were not meant to be opened.
But hesitation was weakness.
He stepped through.
The room beyond was impossibly vast.
It stretched far beyond the library's known structure, the walls dissolving into swirling darkness. Books and scrolls floated in the air, bound by unseen forces. The very air felt thick, like wading through invisible currents.
In the center of the room stood a pedestal. Upon it lay a book—black as the void, bound in something that was not quite leather. Its cover bore no title, only a single symbol that pulsed with faint, rhythmic light.
Elias took a slow breath. His instincts screamed at him to leave, but his mind—the part of him that had always craved understanding—kept him rooted in place.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the cover, the world shifted.
The shadows thickened, writhing like living things. The library walls collapsed, replaced by an endless void. And within that void, something moved.
A voice—low, distorted, yet impossibly vast—whispered from the abyss.
"Who seeks the Unseen?"
Elias's breath hitched. His vision blurred, his mind filled with images not his own—a throne of shadows, a city swallowed by mist, a figure standing where no light could reach.
The Unseen Lord.
The whisper came again, closer this time.
"Do you wish to see?"
Elias clenched his jaw. He had spent his life chasing knowledge, unraveling the hidden. This was what he had always wanted.
He exhaled. And spoke the words that would change his fate forever.
"I do."
The darkness swallowed him whole.