The sun had long since withdrawn its weary light, and now the sky sang in reverent hues of silver, indigo, and muted violet — the hymn of a world exhaling into night. It was, in every sense, a beautiful surrender. The moon hung above like a slow, deliberate breath — the kind taken before a confession or a crime.
"I had been caught attempting to smuggle research on a chimera engine to a cultivation sect," I murmured inwardly, my tone half in disbelief, half in contempt. "By Sanctum, no less. How dreadfully idiotic."
The automobile rolled on, the city's last embers of light flickering past the windows in soft golds and ghostly reds. My wrists itched where the restraints had once been; I had been granted an unusual degree of freedom since my arrest. A curious thing, that. Either I was already judged, or I was being saved for a purpose worse than judgment.
The two men beside me — one to the left, one to the right — said nothing. Both were dressed in crisp suits, their hats shadowing faces of mechanical indifference. Not guards, precisely, but not men either. Functionaries. I turned to the left one; his eyes followed the road with religious devotion. I looked to the right; the same. I considered speaking — some polite inquiry as to our destination — but thought better of it. Politeness was wasted on those who would not answer.
"Given how cleanly I was apprehended," I reasoned silently, "it would be logical to assume my buyer was captured as well." The corners of my lips tilted upward in amusement — not joy, nor despair, but the thin, brittle laughter of one watching a stage collapse upon its actors. "How thoroughly unprofessional."
No prison awaited us. The streets grew sparse, then vanished entirely, replaced by the long silence of countryside roads. The lights thinned, the air grew heavier. I felt the faint pressure of a mana disruptor — dulling my affinity, dulling even my curiosity.
Hours passed, marked only by the pulse of the engine. When we finally stopped, the world had changed shape. The vehicle's door opened to the scent of salt and distant storm. Above us rose the delicate silhouette of an airship dock, white metal gleaming under the patient moon.
"Well," I whispered, stepping out, "at least I depart in style. It would be a pity to be arrested on land."
No blindfold, no chains. That was the strangest courtesy of all. Either they trusted my futility, or they wished me to see where I was being taken. Both possibilities were unnerving.
The airship itself was vast — a leviathan of brass and steel stitched by light. Inside were four others. Five of us in total, strangers united by circumstance or sin.
One, a man with the thick hands and soot-stained skin of a factory worker. His eyes darted like a cornered animal's — Evans, as I would later learn.
Two more — cloaked figures whose mannerisms bore the unmistakable stiffness of cultivators. Even their silence hummed with suppressed power.
The fourth, a young woman unlike the others. Rabbit ears drooped lazily through pale hair white as frost. Her gown was simple, her gaze alert. "Her Ki is barely noticeable if at all present." I thought When our eyes met, hers were clear — a calm, unblinking azure. I chuckled softly. "Even the captured have dignity," I thought.
No one spoke as the airship rose. The hum of engines was a lullaby for the damned.
When at last we landed, dawn had broken. The sun was absurdly cheerful — warm, intrusive, ignorant of human misery. "You do not read the room well, old friend," I muttered as my boots touched the grass.
The scent of sea and salt filled the air. To the west, the ocean spread like liquid glass; to the east, an island unfolded — and upon it, a palace that dwarfed the horizon.
Its towers blotted out the sun. Its gardens glittered with dew like frozen tears. It was no home, but a cathedral of obsession.
We were instructed — by figures with crimson eyes and little patience — to follow without question. Their speech was clipped, mechanical. Whatever they were, they had forgotten the softness of humanity long ago.
We turned from the sea, toward the estate. I noticed the others' unease — even the cultivators' composure cracked at the edges.
Evans was the first to step through the golden gate. I was the last. Always better to observe who enters before one commits to the stage.
The grounds were impossibly alive. The fountains sang as though pleased by their own perfection. Flowers of every hue — some that defied nature's palette — bowed gently to the wind. The air itself shimmered with latent mana, too pure, too potent, almost sentient.
"Perhaps the lady is merely a vampire," I mused. "Wouldn't that be refreshing? A monster I can at least understand."
I turned, weighing the possibility of escape, only to find the cold barrel of a mana Gatling gun aimed my way.
"Not by dawn, then," I sighed.
The deeper we walked, the heavier the air became. Constructs — intricate, silent — lined the paths like watching sentinels. They were not built for battle, but for comfort and with prayer. The palace itself thrummed faintly, as if aware of our intrusion.
Inside was grandeur beyond insult. Ceilings higher than ambition, marble that glowed with its own light, gold filigree wrapping columns like veins. I opened door after gilded door and found not luxury, but danger — weapons sealed in glass, artifacts humming with forbidden resonance.
"These things are legends," I thought. "And here they sit, like trinkets on a shelf."
The air was thick with restrained power. I felt eyes in every shadow, every curve of the stair.
I ascended, slow and deliberate, to the upper floors — to her.
The hallway stretched beyond logic, the kind of architecture that mocked human proportion. My footsteps echoed, an unwelcome heartbeat in the endless hush. At the corridor's end, a pair of doors opened soundlessly before I could touch them.
What greeted me was not a room, but a world.
Bookshelves rose like cathedrals, their spines forming the vertebrae of some divine creature. Light fell from no visible source — gold and orange, eternal dawn trapped within. The air smelt of parchment and ozone, of old thunder made paper.
This was no mere collection. This was The Library — the very idea of knowledge made manifest, the dream of every scholar and the nightmare of every god.
And at its heart sat Her.
Lady Alvie Nerys.
She lounged upon a throne of tomes, each volume half-open, whispering softly as though unwilling to be closed. Her hair was black ink suspended in water. Her eyes — half-lidded, unhurried — glimmered with something older than intellect, something that made reason tremble.
When she spoke, her voice was a chord: one note mortal, one divine, one neither.
"Another child come to soothe me?" she asked, her tone both bored and infinite. "You smell of ink, gold, and fear. Tell me, what do you seek to not know today?"
I bowed deeply, avoiding her gaze. There was no detectable mana, no Ki, no life force of any measurable kind. She was absence that thought itself into being. The fear she inspired was not of pain, but of deletion.
The palace did not contain Lady Alvie Nerys — it contained itself. The walls were prayers carved from fear, designed not to hold her, but to prevent her curiosity from wandering outward.
And then came the first Test.
Evans, poor soul, was the first to draw her attention. The air folded around him like wet parchment. One moment he stood; the next, there were hundreds of him — not copies, but reflections of his own panic refracted infinitely. Lady Alvie merely blinked, and each version of him began to recite a different memory, a different lie.
He screamed, but even that was stolen, spoken by another mouth in another place.
The others watched, frozen.
I understood then: this was not power as the world knew it. This was thought weaponized — an intellect so vast that reality bent to accommodate it.
The Library did not hold a being.
It held a question too dangerous to be answered.
And we — five chosen fools — were merely the punctuation at the end of her boredom.
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