The knock came again. Harder this time. Wood splintering around the iron bolt. *Thud. Thud. THUD.*
Kael Arvantis stood frozen, the *Ashen Codex* clutched against his chest like a shield.
Its leathery binding felt warm, almost feverish, pulsing against his ribs in a rhythm that mocked his own frantic heartbeat. The words etched onto his wrist – *LIAR* – throbbed with a dull, insistent heat. Moonlight, thin and sickly, bled through the high, narrow window of his prison-tower, painting the room in shades of bruised violet and deep shadow.
Dust motes danced in the weak beams, disturbed by the violence at the door.
*"That's not her,"* the Codex had written. The ink on the page still gleamed wetly, a dark accusation.
"Scholar Arvantis!" Veyra's voice sliced through the wood, sharp as a scalpel, yet… wrong.
It held her characteristic ice, but beneath it, a dissonant note vibrated, like metal scraping bone. "Open this door immediately! By the authority of the Eclipse!"
The Codex squirmed in his grasp, its pages rustling like dry leaves in a gale. Ink bled across the open vellum, forming new words with terrifying speed:
"Authority? She wears its skin. Peel it back. See the hollow."
Kael's breath hitched. His missing finger ached with phantom pain, a constant reminder of the Order's mercy. What would they do if he disobeyed a direct command from the Grand Inquisitor herself?
His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. But the thing behind the door… the *knocking* coming from *within* the walls moments before… the Codex's impossible warnings… Fear, cold and slick, coiled in his gut, warring with ingrained obedience.
*THUD!* The door shuddered violently. A long crack appeared in the aged oak, running jaggedly from the top hinge down towards the bolt.
"Kael!" The voice lost its pretense of Veyra's controlled fury. It became a guttural snarl, layered with something wet and clicking.
"OPEN THE DOOR! LET ME IN! LET ME TASTE THE LIGHT BEHIND YOUR EYES!"
Panic, pure and blinding, surged through Kael. Obedience shattered. He scrambled backwards, his boots scraping on the rough stone floor, knocking over the rickety wooden stool he used at his desk.
The Codex seemed to pull him towards the deepest corner of the room, away from the door and the weak moonlight. He pressed himself against the cold stone, heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The Codex pressed back, its pulse synchronizing unnervingly with his own frantic rhythm.
*"Silence,"* it wrote on its surface, the ink appearing as if breathed onto the page. *"Be stone. Be shadow."*
He held his breath.
The only sounds were the frantic drumming of his own blood in his ears and the low, rhythmic *pulse-pulse-pulse* emanating from the book. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to become nothing, to vanish into the stone.
*CRACK!* The sound was deafening. Not the door breaking, but the sound of something immense impacting the thick wood.
A fissure spiderwebbed across its surface. Through the splintered opening, Kael saw… darkness.
Not the ordinary gloom of the tower hallway, but an absolute, light-devouring void. And within that void, something shifted. Not a shape, but a *presence*, a sense of impossible depth and a chilling, focused hunger.
It pressed against the broken wood, tendrils of pure shadow probing through the cracks like questing fingers made of night itself. The air temperature plummeted, frosting Kael's breath before his face.
*"It smells your fear,"* the Codex wrote, the letters jagged, frantic. *"It smells the ink in your blood. The Void remembers its scribes."*
Scribes? What was it talking about? There was no time.
The shadow-tendrils thickened, coiling around the edges of the door, pulling.
The heavy oak groaned in protest, iron hinges screaming. Kael braced for the inevitable rush of consuming darkness.
Then, a different sound echoed from far down the spiraling stone staircase outside – the clatter of armored feet, the jingle of mail, and a voice bellowing with genuine, human authority.
"Intruder in the Scholar's Tower! To the third level! By the Eclipse, MOVE!"
The Grand Inquisitor. The *real* Grand Inquisitor.
The shadowy presence at the door recoiled as if scalded. The probing tendrils snapped back into the encompassing void beyond the fractured wood.
The crushing sense of imminent consumption lifted, replaced by a furious, silent hiss that seemed to vibrate through the stone floor. The absolute darkness filling the cracks vanished, replaced by the flickering orange glow of approaching torchlight from the stairwell.
The broken door shuddered one last time, then fell still. The unnatural cold began to recede, leaving behind the familiar damp chill of the tower.
Kael slumped against the wall, trembling violently, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. He realized he was clutching the Codex so tightly his knuckles were white and bloodless. It lay passively in his hands now, its pages closed, its pulse subsiding to a faint, almost imperceptible thrum.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, accompanied by the harsh rasp of drawn steel. Torchlight flared through the jagged cracks in the door, casting dancing, monstrous shadows on the opposite wall. The bolt, miraculously still holding despite the damage, rattled violently.
"Arvantis!" Veyra's voice, the true Veyra – sharp, commanding, devoid of that underlying wetness – cut through the wood. "If you are alive in there, speak now!"
Kael tried to answer. His throat was raw, constricted.
All that emerged was a dry croak. He pushed himself away from the wall, legs trembling like saplings in a gale. He stumbled towards the door, fumbling with the heavy bolt. His stained wrist flashed in the torchlight filtering through – *LIAR*.
The bolt scraped free. The door, its integrity compromised, sagged inward on its damaged hinges.
Veyra stood framed in the opening, her onyx robes immaculate, her face a mask of cold fury carved from pale marble. Her eyes, like chips of obsidian, swept the room – the overturned stool, the frost still glittering on the stones near the door, the deep cracks radiating from the point of impact, and finally, Kael himself, pale, shaking, the strange black-bound book clutched desperately to his chest. Behind her stood four Eclipse guards, their faces hidden behind featureless black helms, their short, brutal swords held ready. Torchlight gleamed on oiled steel.
"What," Veyra hissed, her voice dangerously low, "happened here?"
Kael opened his mouth, the words of the false Veyra, the probing void, the Codex's warnings, jumbling on his tongue. He looked down at the book.
Its surface was blank, innocuous. Who would believe him? He was a disgraced scholar, marked by the Order, his credibility as shattered as his door. They would blame him. They would take the Codex. They would take his tongue.
"The door," he rasped, his voice barely audible.
"Something… something tried to break in. Something strong."
He gestured weakly at the splintered wood, the deep cracks. "I… I barricaded myself. It left when it heard you coming."