The night in Gravenmoor carried a heavy stillness, as if the city itself were holding its breath. Gas lamps flickered against the fog, casting elongated shadows that crawled along the cobblestones. Elias Thorne hurried along the narrow streets, clutching a satchel stuffed with scraps of parchment and charred books. He had grown used to wandering these alleys, tracing old scripts and forgotten texts, but tonight was different.
Something in the air felt… attentive.
He paused in front of a small, abandoned bookshop, its windows streaked with grime and age. The sign, half-broken, read "Veylan's Rare Tomes". Elias could almost hear the sigh of paper, the whisper of ink dried long ago. He stepped inside. Dust motes danced in the lamplight that leaked through the cracked glass. Shelves leaned with age, filled with books whose spines had long surrendered their titles.
And then he saw it.
A book lying alone on a pedestal in the center of the room, bound in dark leather that seemed to absorb the faint light. It was blank. Not a single letter marked its pages. Yet Elias felt it pull at him, like a heartbeat mirrored in his chest. Something in him recognized it, though he could not say why.
Curiosity is the first path to knowledge… he thought. And so, hesitating only a moment, he reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the cover, a subtle vibration coursed through his palm. Ink flowed onto the pages, forming words he had not written:
"I will remember you, if you remember me."
A shiver ran down his spine. The book was speaking or perhaps, it had always known. Elias opened it carefully. Whatever he wrote, no matter how small, left a mark that could never be erased. His handwriting appeared bold, black, and permanent, even against the blank page. He tested it, scribbling a simple sentence:
"Tonight is cold."
The words burned lightly under his fingers, an imperceptible heat that lingered like the memory of a flame. He blinked. The words remained. He tried to erase them, smudge them, even blow them away. Nothing worked. The ink remembered.
A faint whisper reached his ears almost imperceptible, like wind rustling between shelves. "You cannot hide from what is written."
Elias' mind raced. The shard if it could be called that was alive in some sense. It obeyed him, but also observed him. Each stroke of ink carried consequence, a hidden weight he could not yet measure.
He set the book down and took a step back, heart hammering. Outside, the fog pressed against the windows, curling like fingers around the building. He could feel it, faintly, the city's pulse shadows shifting, secrets moving. Gravenmoor had always been a place of whispers, of things best left unseen. Now, Elias realized, the whispers were not for him to ignore.
As he left the shop, a plan began forming in his mind. The book was dangerous. Terrifyingly so. But knowledge had never come without risk, and Elias Thorne had never been one to flee from the path that curiosity set before him.
Every word I write, every truth I record, will change me, he thought. And perhaps, one day, the world itself.
He tucked the book safely into his satchel and vanished into the fog. Outside, the city exhaled again, hiding him, hiding the secrets he had just touched. And somewhere, in the unseen corners of Gravenmoor, something waited, watching the one who had dared to take a fragment of absolute truth.