Elias remained on the floor for a while, breathing unevenly as the reality of what had just happened slowly settled into him.
The cold stone beneath his palms felt grounding. His pulse still hammered in his ears, and every muscle in his body remained tense, prepared for another collapse that never came.
"…Okay," he muttered weakly, staring at the ceiling above him. "I think I hate this fucking castle."
No response came from the system.
He let out a tired breath and finally pushed himself upright.
The moment he turned around, he froze.
A massive library stretched before him. Far larger than the rooms he had explored so far. Its scale was hidden at first by the density of the shelves themselves. Rows upon rows of towering bookcases extended into the dim distance, packed tightly with books whose spines varied wildly in size, material and age. Some were bound in dark leather cracked with time while others were wrapped in cloth that had faded almost entirely grey beneath layers of frost and dust.
The room felt endless.
Warm light from old chandeliers flickered weakly overhead, though Elias could not tell what fueled them. Shadows stretched long between the shelves, swallowing entire sections of the library in darkness.
"…That's a lot of books."
His voice echoed softly.
Unlike the oppressive silence of the corridors above, this place carried a quieter atmosphere. Still eerie, still abandoned, but calmer somehow. As though the room had been left untouched.
Elias stepped carefully between the shelves.
His fingers brushed lightly against the spines as he walked, reading the titles where he could.
Except, he couldn't.
The letters were completely unfamiliar. Curved symbols twisted together in ways that made no sense to him, written in an ancient language.
Then, the system spoke up.
[ Translating. ]
The text shimmered faintly before his eyes and the symbols shifted, overlaying themselves over the original script until the titles became understandable.
"History of Astral Convergence"
"Principles of Dissonance Theory"
"Collected Poems of the Winter Court"
"…You can translate books too?"
[ Affirmative. ]
Elias blinked slowly.
"…You really pick and choose when to be useful."
He kept walking.
Books on magic lined one shelf entirely. Another held poetry collections, while further down rested shelves dedicated to fiction, myths, architecture, astronomy.
An entire world preserved in paper.
His hand eventually stopped on one particular book.
It was small and thin, bound in pale blue cloth.
Elias pulled it free.
Dust drifted into the air.
He opened the cover carefully.
At first, the pages remained unreadable.
Then the translation completed itself, overlaying the script naturally, as though the words had been written in English from the beginning.
Elias began reading.
Once, there was a princess who was afraid of the dark. The dark that had no edges. Only the endless unknown waiting beyond the light.
So, she summoned a craftsman and asked him to make her something the dark could not enter.
He built her a box. It was seamless, jointless and smooth on every face. The walls were thick and the locks were secure. Nothing from the outside could ever reach her within it. He was very proud of it. She thanked him and left satisfied.
She stepped inside, and the lid closed.
Only then did she realize that the inside was completely dark. Far darker than the abyss she had feared beyond it.
She tried to call him back.
But the craftsman was already gone.
So she remained there, all alone. With no one left to open it again.
Elias slowly lowered the book.
"…Woah, that's not exactly a children's story."
The quietness of the library suddenly felt heavier.
He slid the book back into place.
The next shelf held another thin volume. This one was wrapped in green cloth that had faded almost brown with age.
Curiosity pulled at him again.
He opened it, and read.
There was a gardener who loved his garden the same way people love their children.
Yet every flower he planted rotted overnight.
No matter how carefully he watered them, no matter how much sunlight they received, they wilted and blackened by the following morning.
So he began to watch. He kept records about which beds fell first and which fell last. Over weeks, the lines on his chart converged. They all pointed to the same place.
In the center of the garden stood a great ancient tree. Its roots spread beneath every flowerbed and its branches stretched over the entire garden.
The gardener asked his friends what should be done.
"It's taking everything," they said. "Cut it down."
He hesitated for a long time. But the chart was clear.
He cut it down.
The next day, he woke up hoping to see his beautiful bright flowers blooming. But all he found were the blackened remains.
The flowers fell again the next morning. And the morning after. And the morning after that.
It was only in the second season when he was pulling up the roots of a dead bed, that he realized. The tree had never been the source of the rot.
It was the flowers themselves.
The tree had merely been old enough to seem guilty.
"…Gee."
He closed the book slowly.
"These stories are kinda messed up."
The system remained silent.
He continued deeper into the library.
The shelves eventually opened into a wider seating area, arranged with long wooden tables and reading chairs frozen in quiet stillness. Thin layers of frost coated the surfaces, yet nothing had been disturbed.
It looked as though people had simply stood up and left midway.
One table near the center held a single object.
It was a black journal.
Unlike the other books, it looked worn from use rather than age.
Elias approached carefully.
Something about it immediately felt different.
He picked it up.
The leather cover was cold.
When he opened it, the familiar shimmer of translation began to form across the page.
And then, it broke apart.
A violent burst of crimson static tore across his vision, which made him flinch instinctively. The familiar pale overlay of the system glitched and distorted as lines of text fragmented into jagged shards of red light that flickered erratically over the page.
[ ERROR. ]
The word slammed into view, harsher and brighter than anything the system had displayed before.
[ ERROR. ANOMALY DETECTED. TRANSLATION FAILED. ]
The text distorted into incomprehensible symbols that twisted unnaturally across the page.
Elias frowned.
"…You can't translate this?"
No response came. Not even an acknowledgement. The system simply failed to answer.
That unsettled him far more than the error itself.
Slowly, Elias began turning the pages.
Most were filled with dense writing he could not understand, overlaid with the system's failed translation.
But this time, the text shimmered.
The translation did not break apart. Instead, the symbols shifted slowly, resolving into clear words as though the journal had allowed him to read this one.
He read.
Many days later, the craftsman returned.
He knocked upon the seamless box. But no voice answered him from within.
He reached into his robes for the keys. And realized he had forgotten them.
The locks he had forged could not be opened without them. No blade could fit between the seams. The box had been built perfectly, exactly as she had asked.
Desperate, the craftsman struck the surface with his hammer, hoping only to weaken the seams enough to pry them apart.
Instead, it left behind a small crack.
A tiny hole opened, and through it, the craftsman could see the princess' mouth.
The craftsman called for her again. But, no answer came.
So he destroyed it.
He broke the walls. He shattered the locks. He tore apart the seamless box until nothing remained but splinters and dust.
And within the wreckage, he found her. Or what was left of her.
The princess did not speak. She did not move. But as the ruins of her prison fell away around her, her face, or rather what little remained of it, seemed almost peaceful.
She was not angry. She was happy.
Finally, after so long in that darkness, she was free.
The craftsman did not understand. But, he was happy to let the princess depart happily and peacefully.
Yet far into the future, when the darkness finally arrived, he would come to regret ever forgetting the keys.
Elias lowered the journal slowly.
The page went dark again, the translation fading as though it had never been.
"...He destroyed the box to free her," Elias murmured. "But he thinks he killed her. And she was... happy?"
He stared at the black journal.
"...Well... let's see what the next page is."
Then he stopped.
It was a drawing roughly sketched across two paged.
The Ninth Circle. The frozen wasteland. And a massive crater at its center.
Elias immediately recognized it.
His gaze drifted towards the middle of the drawing.
At the very center, written directly above where the crater was supposed to be, a line of text appeared over the page.
[ REDACTED. ]
The word glitched faintly, as though something was actively preventing it from being seen.
Elias narrowed his eyes.
"What's behind that?"
Silence.
"…System?"
Nothing.
Not even a denial.
The system refused to acknowledge it entirely.
A strange discomfort settled into Elias' chest. This diary clearly held something that the System didn't approve of.
Slowly, he closed the journal and set it back down.
"…Right. Sure. Keep your secrets. And I thought you were finally starting to become useful."
He moved on.
The shelves continued for what felt like forever before finally thinning into a quieter isolated corner of the library.
A piano rested there.
Dust coated its surface thickly enough to dull the black finish beneath. Several keys were stuck halfway down, while others sat unevenly as though warped by time and cold.
A small stack of sheet music rested atop it.
One title caught his eye.
"Nocture in White"
Elias stared at it for a moment.
Then shrugged it off.
He glanced around the empty section of the library.
He let out a deep breath, exhaling all the stress he had accumulated. His mood lightened.
"…I mean, it's not like things can get much worse." He let out a dry laugh.
A pause.
"…Actually no. I should stop saying that. I might jinx it."
Still, curiosity got the better of him.
Elias sat down cautiously at the bench. The wood creaked softly beneath his weight. He rested his fingers above the keys awkwardly, staring at them.
"…I don't even know how to play this thing though," he muttered.
Then, with the kind of confidence only someone completely unqualified could possess, he pressed a key anyway.
A single note rang through the library.
It was soft and clear. Much clearer than it should have sounded in a place this dead. And by a piano that wasn't far from being completely defunct.
Elias blinked.
"…Huh."
He pressed another. Then another.
None of it resembled music. The notes stumbled over each other without rhythm, melody or structure. Yet something about the absurdity of it made him continue anyway.
For the first time since waking in Cocytus, he almost looked relaxed.
Almost.
A creak sounded behind him.
Elias stopped playing immediately.
The sound came from somewhere deep within the shelves.
Wood groaned and the chandeliers above flickered violently.
[ Ambient dissonance levels are rising. Caution advised. ]
The warning flashed across his vision.
The air thickened instantly.
Cold pressure flooded the room.
Elias stood abruptly.
"…No."
The shelves trembled faintly.
Somewhere in the darkness beyond the rows of books, something moved.
It was the sound of dragging. Wet and uneven.
Then, a shape emerged slowly between the shelves.
It was tall. Far too tall.
Its body bent unnaturally, limbs elongated beyond human proportion and joints twisted in directions they shouldn't have turned. Pale flesh hung loosely from its frame in ragged layers, stretched thin over something that seemed to pulse beneath the skin.
The thing barely resembled a human.
Its body looked assembled rather than born.
Some sections of its body had split back open, exposing slick muscle underneath that twitched independently of the body. Blood, dark and half-frozen, seeped sluggishly from the seams and trailed down its limbs in thin strands.
Its chest moved unnaturally.
Convulsing.
One side of its jaw hung lower than the other. Broken teeth jutted outward at uneven angles. Every time the creature inhaled, thick strings of dark saliva spilled from its mouth and slapped wetly against the floor.
One of its eyes remained properly within its socket, blood shot and twitching violently.
The other hung partially out of its socket by torn muscle and strands of nerve, dangling grotesquely against its cheek while still moving independently. It rolled wildly before suddenly snapping towards him, locking onto him.
Elias felt his stomach turn.
"Fuck… I really did jinx it…"
The creature shrieked.
The sound tore violently through the library like dozens of voices screaming though a throat full of blood.
Then it moved. Rather, it exploded forward.
Bookshelves shattered apart as the monster crashed through them. Wood splintered outward in every direction. Books burst apart beneath its weight, and the pages scattered through the air like snow as the creature lunged directly towards Elias with horrifying speed.
All Elias could do was stare for one frozen second as that ruined, dangling eye remained locked onto him the entire way.