The air Lyra breathed had turned sharp, cold, and strangely intoxicating. The scent of ozone and ancient stone had intensified, now overlaid with a powerful, almost metallic tang—like expensive wine left open too long in a dark cellar. It was the scent of Elias.
Lyra's flashlight beam danced across the empty concrete floor, finding nothing. Yet, the pressure was overwhelming, a silent, invisible force field closing in. Every instinct told her to run back to the comforting chaos of her desk, but the primal curiosity, the strange pull emanating from her wrist mark, held her rooted.
"Show yourself," she demanded, her voice wavering despite her attempt at authority. Her hand tightened around the heavy flashlight, ready to use it as a weapon.
A breath of cold air, colder than the refrigeration units, swept past her cheek. It carried the chilling echo of a low, silken voice that seemed to vibrate directly in the space behind her ears, not through the air.
"You should not wander so deep, little restorer. The artifacts down here are not meant to be touched by human hands."
Lyra whirled around.
Standing just three feet away, emerging silently from the intersection of two deep shadows, was a man. He was impossibly tall, clothed in an impeccably tailored black suit that seemed to absorb the minimal light around him. His skin was pale, not sickly, but like fine marble polished under moonlight. But it was his eyes that truly held her—they were the color of glacial ice, intense and unnervingly devoid of human warmth, yet focused on her with an expression of profound, archaic sorrow.
This was no maintenance worker. This was the source of the magnetic cold, the dangerous silence.
"Who... Who are you? And how did you get in here?" Lyra stammered, raising the flashlight defensively. The beam hit his face, but instead of forcing him to squint, the light seemed to dim against his unnaturally still features.
The man, Elias, didn't move. He observed her with an unsettling calmness, his gaze dropping to the birthmark throbbing faintly beneath her skin. "I am the Keeper. And I did not 'get in,' Miss Pramesti. I was already here."
The use of her full name, uttered with a flawless, ancient accent, chilled her more than his appearance. "You know my name? This is restricted property. I'm calling security."
A corner of Elias's mouth lifted in a fractional, utterly humorless smile. "The security you refer to—Mr. Bima, is it?—is currently enjoying a deep, dreamless rest, induced by nothing more than mild suggestion. He will awake shortly after dawn, with no memory of our presence."
Lyra felt panic spike. He had essentially incapacitated the only other person in the building with a word. This wasn't a normal man; this was something from a book, from a myth.
"What do you want?" she asked, clutching her wrist.
Elias took one slow, deliberate step forward. Lyra instinctively stepped back. The movement was barely perceptible, but it was enough to trigger a fleeting look of regret in his icy eyes.
"I want you to leave this place immediately. You are disrupting the balance." He paused, his gaze hardening slightly. "But my want is superseded by the truth. Your blood, Lyra, it calls to me. Not in hunger, but in resonance. It possesses an... anchor I haven't sensed since the time of the First Covenant."
Lyra shook her head, terrified but refusing to retreat further. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just an intern. I restore old paper."
"Old paper?" Elias chuckled, a dry, brittle sound that hinted at centuries of solitude. He glided past her—not walking, but moving with a liquid grace—and stopped before the blank stone wall. "And what about the old stone, Lyra? Does it not demand your attention as well?"
He extended a long, elegant finger encased in a dark leather glove. He did not touch the stone. Instead, he made a gesture, a complex, swift movement in the air near the surface.
The stone wall did not creak or slide. It dissolved.
Where the solid grey rock had been a moment ago, there was now a swirling, coppery-black mist that parted like heavy curtains, revealing a sight that stole Lyra's breath and nearly her consciousness: a vast, circular chamber, lit not by electricity, but by hundreds of softly glowing crystalline orbs floating near a vaulted ceiling carved with incomprehensible geometric patterns. And in the center, resting on a pedestal of obsidian, was a single, impossibly ancient book, bound in deep crimson leather.
"You are not here to restore paper," Elias said, his voice now imbued with a powerful, authoritative resonance. He turned, his glacial eyes fixed on the birthmark on her wrist, which was now pulsing with a faint, internal golden light, mirroring the glow of the distant crystals.
"You are here because of the Codex Aeterna," he continued. "And because of the mark you bear—the Eternal Mark."
He extended his gloved hand toward her, the gesture one of both command and invitation. "Come, Lyra Pramesti. Let me show you the truth about your destiny, and the reason why, after three hundred years of discipline, my kind has finally found the key to my existence in your most fragile, human blood."