Atlas ignored him.
His guide—his damn favorite guide—stood there again. Not physically, not quite. But his presence slithered through the cracks of reality like smoke from a flame long thought extinguished.
Oh, how good it felt seeing him again, Atlas thought bitterly. The sarcasm in that thought dripped like venom, acidic and real. If even he had returned...then Atlas was doing something right. Or something terribly wrong.
He kept his eyes pinned to the book, refusing to meet the guide's invisible gaze. It was a monstrous tome of blackened parchment, its spine stitched with something disturbingly like tendon. His fingers ran across the cover, already worn down from obsessive use. The text inside shimmered faintly, pulsing between languages, none of them welcoming. A low, wet sound hissed from the pages as if the ink were alive and whispering.
He read anyway.
