I did not rise from the floor.
The floor rose around me.
The pages beneath me writhed, folding and unfolding like breathing skin. Letters crawled from the cracks in the parchment, twisting into worms, then serpents, then words again — bleeding into the air, imprinting phrases into the fog of this library-that-has-no-light.
I was inside a place that had never been built. A library without an architect. A structure held together by belief in knowledge no one should own.
The books were bound in silence. Some stitched in human skin — others in something older. Each shelf leaned like a dying giant, held upright by invisible rules. And I could hear the ink. It wept. It screamed. Some pages whispered truths. Others begged to be forgotten. Some bit.
And in the center of the chamber — no, at its core — there was a librarian.
Not a being. Not a person.
A shadow bent in a dozen wrong angles, its robe made of melted alphabets, its face hidden behind layers of unspoken grammar.
A being made of unread sentences.
And around its head floated masks — seven of them — each one shaped like a different language that should never be spoken aloud.
It didn't move.
But when I stepped forward…
The ground wept.
Ink and blood merged beneath my feet. A phrase etched itself into my skin:
"You must read what cannot be unread."
I knew I was here for something. A reason deeper than memory.
The name — Seth'Riel — still echoed in my bones.
Not a name. A command.
A scar.
And then I saw the book.
It rested on a pedestal grown from fused spines. It wasn't open. It opened itself when I neared it, as if it recognized me. Its cover was metal — rusted, living — marked with a sigil of a tower collapsing in reverse. And above it, carved in nothingness, a title:
"The Step That Denies Heaven."
I touched the first page.
And I became someone else.
A man? No. A creature. Wearing skin I didn't recognize.
Standing in a temple made of mirrors and screams.
Worshippers bowed before me — hollowed out by their own prayers.
I raised a hand, and the stars screamed.
Another page.
Now I was a woman, her face erased, her voice a curse upon time itself.
I stood before a gate made of children's teeth.
Behind it — a god screaming to die.
Another page.
I was a void now. Not a being. Not a self.
Just… absence with purpose.
I floated between Realms. I devoured the names of suns. I fed on meaning.
And then, the last page.
There was nothing written.
But it spoke.
"You are not the reader.
You are what is being read."
The book slammed shut with a sound like a coffin sealed.
The librarian moved for the first time.
It extended an arm — impossibly long — and in its hand, it offered me something.
A pen.
But not made of wood or bone.
It was a feather, blacker than absence, dripping ink that coiled like smoke.
I took it.
And the library shifted.
Shelves collapsed into themselves.
The air thickened into concepts.
The walls bled vowels.
And the librarian nodded, slowly, solemnly — as if acknowledging an unspoken pact.
Then it spoke, not with voice, but with memory:
"You now write your own godhood.
Step carefully.
Each letter has weight.
Each word, blood."
The world broke again.
But this time,
I broke with it —
Willingly.
The pen burned in my hand, branding something into my palm:
A spiral of language, looping endlessly.
And with that mark, I fell.
Or rose.
Or both.
---
I awoke not in the library, but on a stairway made of bone and time.
Each step was a moment.
Each railing — a memory torn from someone else's soul.
I was climbing now.
The ascent had begun.
But above me… I saw them.
Figures. Tall. Watching.
Not gods. Not angels.
Archivists.
Keepers of what never should have been spoken.
Their mouths sewn shut by reality itself.
Their eyes stitched open to ensure nothing escapes.
And yet, they bowed.
To me.
Just slightly.
As if recognizing not who I was…
but who I would become.
And in the silence,
I heard a new voice.
Not from above.
Not from below.
From within:
"Write your path, Elías.
You are no longer bound by the story.
You are the author.
And the Refuge… reads back."