The ink did not move.
Elias Veyne stared at the brittle parchment before him, his breath caught between disbelief and something worse–fear. The words were there, yet they refused to read. Every time his eyes traced the ink, the letters shifted, rearranging themselves into something that should not exist.
He had spent years chasing forbidden texts, deciphering lost scripts, and digging through the ruins of a world that had rewritten itself too many times. He had seen pages that burned at a glance, sentences that whispered voices they shouldn't have and books that demanded a price in blood to be understood.
But this–this was something entirely different.
The fragment of the Arcane Testament before him did not reject him. It did not blur into unreadable nonsense. It did not lash out with some unseen curse.
No.
It waited for him to understand.
And that was what terrified him the most.
—
Three Days Earlier.
The air inside The Hollow Archives smelled of dust, candle wax, and ink that had long since dried. The library was ancient–older than the city of Valunthor itself. It stood untouched by time, hidden beneath layers of bureaucratic neglect and fear. Few dared to enter, and those who did never stayed long.
Elias Had spent the last six hours buried in parchment, his fingers smudged in faded ink, his mind tangled in half-written histories and contradictions. His search had yielded nothing but frustration.
He wasn't even sure what he was looking for anymore. The Arcane Testament? A fragment of a lost age? Or perhaps just proof–proof that reality had been rewritten so many times that even history no longer knew what was true.
His candle flickered, shadows stretching unnaturally across the stone walls. The silence thickened.
Then he saw it.
A single book that had not been there before.
It rested on the highest shelf, wedged between volumes that had gathered untouched dust for centuries. Bound in cracked leather, with no title in its spine, it called to him in a way no book ever should.
Elias hesitated.
He had been around enough cursed tomes to know better. Books were dangerous in Valunthor. Some whispered their contents into your mind as you slept. Others rewrote your memories so that you had always known them.
And yet, something deeper than curiosity compelled him.
His fingers closed around the spine. The moment he touched it, the air seemed to shift–as if something unseen had turned to watch him.
The book was heavier than it should have been.
Elais carefully pulled it free and set it on the table, brushing away the thin layer of dust. There was no title, no markings–nothing to indicate its origin.
With measured breath, he opened it.
The pages were filled with names.
Thousands of names.
Each written in the same delicate, precise handwriting. Some were scratched out. Others were fading, as if being erased from existence itself.
And at the very bottom of the last page, written in fresh ink–
Elias Veyne.
His breath stalled. HIs pulse hammered against his ribs.
Then, just as he registered the impossibility of what he was seeing, the ink moved.
His name–his very existence–began to shift on the page.
And beneath it, in letters that should never have been written–
A passage that should not exist.
—
The present returned like a crashing wave.
Elias stood in his dimly lit study, the fragment of the Testament spread before him. His hands trembled, his mind racing to comprehend what he had just read.
The words had changed him.
Even without fully understanding, he felt it. Something inside him was no longer the same.
A distant whisper echoed in his ears, the soundless murmur of something unseen, something waiting.
Then, from the darkness beyond his study, a voice–smooth, unfamiliar, yet knowing.
"You should not have read that, Elias."
A shadow moved where no shadow should be.
And the candle went out.