Guardian Tower, Time Hut.
Inside the Time Hut, the runes on the third stone gate shone like a living galaxy, flowing with a silver-gray brilliance beyond mortal comprehension. The stone gate slid open silently, revealing not a passage, but a... vortex of time.
Lynch stepped in.
The scenery before his eyes instantly disordered and reassembled. He found himself inside an extraordinarily grand library.
The domed ceiling was high and seemingly extended to the end of time; the bookshelves, made of some material neither metal nor jade, scintillating with time particles, stretched infinitely in all dimensions, piled high with thick classics engraved with moving hourglass or ouroboros emblems. The air was filled with the scent of dust and ancient parchment, yet it felt unusually "fresh," as if it was simultaneously frozen in eternity and born at this instant.
The most eerie thing was time itself.
