The village of Keredupan was swallowed by a thick fog that seemed to drain the world of its colors. The sky, usually adorned with faint stars, was now pitch black. No moonlight, no twinkling stars—only a darkness that draped over everything like a heavy blanket. The air felt damp and still, as if the universe itself were holding its breath.
Daisuke Seiji sat at his desk in the underground library, a cramped room filled with shelves of ancient books and tattered documents. The pen in his hand had stopped moving across the paper, his eyes staring blankly at the stack of books before him. For hours, he had been trying to archive folktales collected from nearby villages, but his mind kept drifting elsewhere—to the gaps in the stories, the missing pieces, the parts that were deliberately erased or left unfinished.
He sighed, rubbing his weary face. In the corner of the room, the candles were nearly spent, their flickering shadows dancing on the stone walls like living creatures. Suddenly, a cold breeze swept through from a crack in the door, making the hairs on his neck stand on end. But there were no windows here, and the door was securely locked.
Daisuke brushed it off. Lately, he had grown accustomed to strange occurrences—whispers in the air, shadows flitting at the edge of his vision, nightmares that left him waking in a cold sweat. Perhaps it was just exhaustion. Or maybe his imagination was running wild.
But tonight, something felt different.
He stood and walked toward the oldest bookshelf in the corner of the room. It was rarely touched, filled with books that were crumbling, their covers decayed and pages yellowed. His eyes were suddenly drawn to a narrow gap between two thick volumes. There was something there—something that didn't belong.
Carefully, he pushed the books aside and reached in. His fingers brushed against a cold, rough surface. He pulled it out.
A book.
It was unlike the others. Its cover was jet black, made of a material he couldn't identify—not leather, not paper, not metal. It felt like dried flesh, or perhaps bone. There was no title, no writing of any kind on the front, only a faint symbol scratched into the bottom right corner, like the mark of a claw.
Daisuke opened it cautiously. The pages were blank. Completely blank. But as he ran his fingers over them, he felt something—warmth. As if the book were alive.
He snapped it shut, his heart pounding. This wasn't normal. This book didn't belong here. He checked the shelf again, but there was no clue as to who had placed it there or when.
As he turned to set the book on his desk, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
The neat stack of books he had carefully arranged was now in disarray—but not randomly. They were arranged in a pattern: like a staircase leading to the ceiling, or perhaps a path to something else. And at the top, one book lay open, its pages blank except for a single word written in the center:
**"Write."**
Daisuke gasped. He hadn't written that. There was no one else here.
He approached the stack, his hands trembling. The word was scrawled in thick black ink, but it wasn't like ordinary ink—it seemed to move on its own, alive.
He picked up the black book and placed it on his desk. For reasons he couldn't explain, he felt compelled to obey the command. He grabbed his pen, gripping it tightly, and stared at the blank page.
What should he write?
His thoughts drifted to his village, to the dead valley in the east, long abandoned. That place had always intrigued him—a valley said to have once been alive, now reduced to barren soil and black stones.
Without thinking, he wrote a single, simple sentence:
**"This valley was once alive."**
Instantly, the book trembled in his hands. The ink he had used seemed to be absorbed into the page, then vanished. The air in the room shifted, growing heavier, denser. One by one, the candles snuffed out, plunging him into total darkness.
Daisuke couldn't move. He heard sounds—sounds that shouldn't exist. A distant rumble, like the earth shifting, like something awakening from a long slumber.
And then, everything fell silent.
He didn't know how long he stood there, frozen, before he mustered the courage to relight the candles. When the light returned, the book was still open in front of him, but now there was a new sentence beneath his own:
**"And now, it will live again."**
Daisuke slammed the book shut, his heart racing. What had he just done?
He locked the book in his desk drawer, securing it tightly. That was enough for tonight. He needed to go home.
But as he left the library, he felt something watching him from the darkness. Something formless, nameless, but undeniably present—waiting.
And the next morning, as the fog began to lift, the villagers would discover something impossible: steam rising from the dead valley, and strange sounds echoing from deep within the earth.