The smell in the Scriptorium was a familiar cocktail of dust, despair, and drying ink. For Elara, it was the scent of home. She moved through the towering, canyon-like aisles of forgotten knowledge, her fingers trailing over the spines of books that hadn't been opened in centuries. They were her only friends.
To the other acolytes of the Aethelgard Library, she was just another mute scribe, a girl with a crippled hand who could neither cast a spell nor speak a charm. They saw the leather brace that kept her right wrist straight and pitied her. They didn't see the way her left hand could replicate any script, any language, with flawless precision. They didn't know that within the silence of her mind, worlds bloomed and died with every turned page.
Her task today was mundane: restoring a water-damaged bestiary, "The Celestial Menagerie". It was tedious work, scraping away the foxing and mildew, carefully re-inking the faded illustrations of griffins and moon-calves. But as she turned to a page depicting a creature of swirling shadow and starlight,a 'Void Hound',something strange happened.
The ink of the illustration didn't just look faded; it looked "wrong". The lines were blurred not by water, but by a subtle, shimmering distortion. And it was cold. A deep, unnatural chill seeped from the parchment into her fingertips.
Frowning, Elara brought her lamp closer. The Void Hound's drawn eye seemed to follow her. A trick of the light, she told herself. She reached for her pot of lampblack ink and her finest brush, intending to reinforce the lines.
Her first stroke was a disaster.
Her braced wrist, usually so steady, twitched. A single, clumsy drop of black ink splattered from her brush, not onto the page she was restoring, but into the margin of the book "beneath" it,a thick, plain-bound volume she'd been using as a support.
She gasped, a soundless, frustrated thing. Now she'd marred another text. She moved to blot it, but the ink wasn't spreading. It was… sinking. The dark drop was drawn into the page like water into thirsty soil, and where it vanished, new words began to bloom, written in a sharp, angular hand she did not recognize.
"He knows you are here."
Elara froze, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. She stared. The words were clear as day, gleaming wetly on the previously blank page. She looked around. The Scriptorium was empty, save for the slumbering form of Master Corbin at his desk by the great doors.
Cautiously, her left hand trembling, she dipped her brush again and let another tiny drop fall onto the page.
This time, the words formed faster, as if the book were eager to speak.
"The Keeper of Names is a lie. The true Lexicon is hidden. Find me."
A thrill of terror and something else—something terrifyingly like excitement—coursed through her. This was no ordinary book. It was a book that "answered".
She knew what this had to be. A myth, a whispered heresy among the older scribes. The Bibliolect,a book that was alive, a sentient repository of all truth, said to converse only with a worthy reader. It was the reason the Aethelgard Library existed, the foundation upon which all magical knowledge was built. And it was supposed to be locked away in the heart of the library, under the guard of the Keeper himself.
Not hidden beneath a mundane bestiary.
With painstaking care, she closed the "Celestial Menagerie" and looked at the book she had accidentally written upon. It had no title, no author. Its cover was a dull, mottled brown, its pages thick and rough-cut. It looked utterly insignificant.
She opened it. The pages were not blank, as she'd first thought. They were filled with the same angular script, but it was faded, as if written in invisible ink that only revealed itself when met with fresh, liquid pigment. Her ink. Her breath.
This was it. The real thing. And it was talking to "her".
A sudden noise echoed from the far end of the Scriptorium,the heavy, synchronized tread of iron-shod boots. The Keeper's Guard. They never came here at this hour.
The book in her hands seemed to grow warmer. New words seared themselves onto the open page, burning dark and urgent.
"They feel me. They come. You must not let him have me. Take me and RUN."
Elara's blood went cold. To steal a book from the Scriptorium was punishable by expulsion. To steal "this" book… that was a death sentence. To even be caught touching it…
The footsteps grew louder, closer. She could see the gleam of their enchanted armour between the bookshelves.
There was no time to think. Every instinct screamed at her to put the book down, to pretend she'd never seen it. But the book had spoken to "her". The silent, broken scribe. It had asked for "her" help.
With a resolve that felt both entirely her own and not her own at all, she acted. She slid the Bibliolect into the large pocket of her scribe's apron, arranging her restoration tools over it. She grabbed the "Celestial Menagerie", her hands now steady, and pretended to be engrossed in her work as two guards rounded the corner.
They were massive, their faces hidden behind helms sculpted to look like furious hawks. Their eyes glowed with a soft blue light.
"Acolyte," one of them intoned, his voice echoing metallically within his helm. "The Keeper senses an… irregularity. A disturbance in the library's aura. Have you seen or touched any unusual texts?"
Elara looked up, allowing her face to show what she hoped was confused fear. She shook her head, gesturing to the bestiary in her hands, then to her own throat, playing the part they all expected: the helpless mute.
The second guard swept his gaze over her desk, his glowing eyes lingering for a heart-stopping moment on her pot of ink. He leaned closer, and Elara was sure he could hear the frantic beating of her heart.
"Nothing here," he grunted to his companion. "The trace is stronger elsewhere. Move on."
They turned and marched away, their footsteps fading into the vast silence. Elara didn't move until she was certain they were gone. Then, her legs almost gave way beneath her.
She had done it. She had the world's most dangerous book hidden in her pocket.
A new sensation prickled at the edge of her awareness. A faint warmth was spreading through the apron's fabric onto her hip. She glanced down.
A single word, written as if by an unseen finger, was slowly burning through the thick linen of her pocket, clearly visible from the outside.
"RUN."
And this time, Elara didn't hesitate. She doused her lamp, plunging herself into the deep, familiar shadows of the stacks. She knew routes the guards didn't, forgotten corridors and servant's passages. The Bibliolect was a heavy, humming weight against her side, a secret that was already beginning to rewrite her destiny.
She had spent her life preserving stories. Now, it seemed, she had stumbled into one of her own. And it was just beginning.