The Jade Palace Library
Marble gleamed like a frozen tear. Columns rose in silence—the ribs of a forgotten beast that once dreamed of heaven. The ceiling stretched so high it blurred into shadow, where faint motes of dust drifted like lost stars. Every footstep echoed too loudly, as if the hall itself remembered sound but had long since forgotten laughter.
I stood at the heart of it all—small, steady, my spine taut with exhaustion—as the afternoon light fractured through jade windows and spilled down in slow rivers of gold. The sun bled across the floor, staining the pale stone with the color of fading divinity. The library smelled of age and rain trapped in stone: vellum dust, candle grease, and the faint metallic tang of ink that had survived centuries of forgetfulness.
The palace library had become my shrine in the few days I'd lived here. My world had ended quietly, and this one had begun just as softly. Miss Mary's calm had steadied me when I told her what happened—how I'd simply appeared here, wearing nothing but confusion and bruised reason. She hadn't panicked. She'd merely nodded and said, "Then this palace will do you good," as though such things happened often.
She was gone now—summoned to the capital, leaving the halls to their whispers. Vivianna lingered in the town below; she said she preferred "noise that breathes." I envied her courage. I barely knew this city, this country, this world. Its languages were half-music, half-geometry. Its people—catfolk, scaled, feathered, horned—walked through streets I dared not yet wander. So I hid here among the books, letting the palace claim me the way a tide claims a body too tired to swim.
Each morning, I told myself I'd explore. Each night, I remained.
The script on the page pulsed faintly—letters breathing, reshaping into tongues older than truth. It wasn't an illusion. The symbols moved, reordering themselves as if guided by thought, not hand. My heart thudded as though I were spying on a god writing in its sleep.
Caffeine kept me upright. I'd stopped counting how many cups ago it stopped helping. Caffeine wasn't fuel anymore; it was penance. I was starving for knowledge, clawing toward it like a lifeline out of the abyss. The smell of burnt coffee beans clung to my fingers, mixing with the scent of paper and wax.
"All things must be weighed before they die."
The line shimmered across the page, heavy and final. I traced it absently, the way one might trace an old scar that still remembers the blade.
My fingers brushed the bookmark lying between the pages—ivory, thin, and plain. A thing so small it should've been forgettable, yet it radiated a faint pulse, like a heartbeat through silk. I'd found it wedged in the spine of a book that had no title and too much silence.
This palace, they said, had once been the seat of scholars and judges. The High Officials still wandered its halls, their robes whispering of order and empire. But none had claimed the library's heart. Maybe that was why Miss Mary left me here—to see what would awaken when the dust was disturbed.
I often wondered why she trusted me with it. Perhaps because I looked too tired to do harm. Or perhaps she knew the library didn't need guarding; it guarded itself.
The days blurred together, a slow carousel of light and shadow. I read until my eyes stung and my pulse drummed behind them. I ate when I remembered, slept when the candles burned out. The silence grew companionable, the kind that wraps you instead of isolates you.
Sometimes, I caught myself whispering to the shelves—asking questions no one would answer. The books seemed to listen.
The line about weighing before death echoed in my mind, refusing to fade. What did it mean, to weigh something before it died? A soul? A memory? A truth?
Perhaps it referred to judgment. Or perhaps to love.
The bookmark trembled between my fingers, humming faintly now. I pressed it to my chest and the vibration steadied my heartbeat, as though syncing to it.
I didn't know it was Justice's Verdict, bound in silk and disguised as something so plain. Didn't know that by holding it, I had summoned balance itself into my reading.
But part of me suspected.
The air changed then—quietly, like a sigh remembered after centuries.
The temperature dropped first. My breath fogged faintly before me. Candles along the table flickered, their flames bending toward the doorway as though in supplication. The hairs at the nape of my neck prickled, a primitive warning that the room was no longer mine alone.
Somewhere above, the rafters creaked, and dust trickled down like ash. I smelled something faintly metallic—iron, rain, and something older still, something like the underside of the world.
My fingers tightened on the bookmark.
The silence grew alive—its own heartbeat throbbing behind the walls.
And then I heard it. Not footsteps. Not breathing.
Presence.
As if gravity itself had shifted, turning its gaze toward me.
The marble beneath my boots shivered once, almost imperceptibly. The golden light from the windows seemed to hesitate, unsure whether to flee or bow.
I closed the book carefully. The pages sighed, a whisper of parchment against parchment—like a prayer resigned to its fate.
For the first time since I'd arrived, the library felt awake. Not peaceful, not patient—awake like a sleeping giant that had decided to open one eye.
I turned toward the doorway, and the air itself leaned back. Candles flared, their flames snapping straight, forming a trembling corridor of fire and breath.
Something—or someone—was coming.
And I understood, dimly, as one understands lightning a moment before it strikes, that whatever entered next would not knock, would not belong, and would not leave.
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