Elias Thorne stared at the blank page before him, heart hammering like a drum echoing in a cathedral. The room smelled faintly of aged paper and candle smoke, a mixture that always reminded him of libraries long abandoned. Yet tonight, the scent felt different heavier, almost oppressive, as if the air itself were aware of what he had uncovered.
He laid the book carefully on his desk, the leather binding cold beneath his fingers. No words marked its pages, yet it seemed alive, throbbing with some secret rhythm he could not comprehend. He had found it entirely by accident hidden beneath stacks of illegible tomes in the Veylan bookshop, its presence almost inert until he dared to touch it.
And now, as his fingertips brushed the cover, the first words appeared, black and sharp, as though the ink itself had taken form in the world before him.
"I will remember you, if you remember me."
Elias froze. His mind whirled. He wanted to pull back, to scream, to throw the book into the fire, yet he could not. Something held him. Something whispered that this was not a book to be destroyed, but a book to be understood.
He picked up a pencil and wrote a single word on a scrap of paper: "Stone." The letters formed themselves perfectly, as if the paper had been waiting for them. He tried to smear the ink, rub it away with his fingers, even scrape it with a knife. Nothing.
The word remained.
His breath hitched. A shiver ran along his spine. What… what is this? His thoughts were frantic, scattered a storm of questions with no answers. His hands shook slightly as he tested another sentence: "This candle will burn until dawn." He watched, disbelief rooting him to the spot, as the small flame on his desk flickered and then steadied, unwavering.
Elias staggered back in the chair, mind racing. Every instinct screamed that he should not be able to do this, that it should be impossible, yet the evidence stared him in the face. His shard… no, whatever this was, responded. Reacted. Remembered.
Confusion. Shock. A rising, impossible curiosity. He laughed, low and breathless, though it was not amusement it was disbelief at the fact that he had stumbled into something far beyond his comprehension. His thoughts jumped from one possibility to another. Could this be a shard? He had heard legends whispered in old, crumbling tomes, hints of powers scattered across the world, fragments of a Book of Absolute Truths, but none had ever been verified. And yet here he was, holding what seemed to be a living fragment of reality.
He could not ignore it. He could not.
Hours passed, though it felt like minutes, as he experimented carefully, meticulously, making small notations of cause and effect, of what worked and what did not. Each time the ink reacted unexpectedly, a new layer of mystery unfolded, a new understanding teased at the edge of his mind, and every time, confusion returned sharper than before.
By the time the fog had thickened outside his window, Elias decided to test the shard beyond the room's walls. He tucked the book into his satchel, the leather surprisingly warm, and stepped out into the narrow streets behind his building. The city exhaled around him, fog curling along cobblestones and through alleyways like fingers searching for something to touch.
He tested the shard with care, writing small sentences in the dirt and on broken planks. "This stone will move slightly when I touch it." The cobblestones shifted subtly beneath his hand. "The air above this puddle will remain still for ten breaths." The tiny pool stilled, unnaturally, though the surrounding mist moved freely.
Elias stumbled once, deliberately, pretending to trip over a loose stone. Clumsiness, he reasoned, would prevent attention if someone passed by though in truth, he also needed to hide the tension rising in his chest.
And then he noticed it.
A movement in the fog, deliberate, measured. A figure, tall, moving with a precision that was almost imperceptible to the untrained eye. Elias froze, instinctively observing. There was something… different about him. Not the shape, not the coat or the hat that shadowed his face something subtler, almost imperceptible, yet undeniable.
A black thread, thin and wavering, hovered above the figure's head. Not shadow exactly, not smoke something that seemed alive, reacting to the slightest disturbance in the air. It pulsed faintly as the figure moved. Elias blinked, confusion and curiosity mingling in a knot of excitement and fear.
He wanted to call out, to ask what it was, yet hesitation held him silent. The figure's attention was elsewhere, focused on something in the alley a vent, a crack in the wall, a detail Elias could not comprehend and it was clear that he did not even notice the young man observing him.
Elias' mind raced. What… is this? Another shard? Or something entirely different? He felt the shard in his satchel hum faintly, as if recognizing the presence of the other power. The thread, the air, the unnatural calm of the fog — all of it formed a puzzle he could not yet solve.
Still, Elias forced himself to step closer, cautiously, letting his movements appear clumsy. A shadow among shadows, a boy testing forces far beyond comprehension.
The figure turned slightly, only enough to catch the movement of the fog, and spoke, voice low, calm, deliberate:
"You are experimenting."
Elias' heart jumped. He swallowed, confused, tongue dry. "I… I'm just… trying to understand," he stammered. His own voice sounded foreign to him, yet the shard hummed in response, as if aware of the truth in his statement.
The figure inclined his head slightly and returned his attention to whatever unseen task consumed him. Elias exhaled shakily, a mixture of relief and curiosity. He could not see the thread clearly, could not understand its purpose, but he would not forget it. He had glimpsed something extraordinary and the shard in his satchel seemed to agree.
As the figure vanished into the fog, Elias sank against the wall, satchel held tightly. His mind was a whirlwind confusion, curiosity, fear, excitement. Questions stacked upon questions. What is this power? How does it work? Are there others like it? Am I safe?
The only answer he had was the hum of the forbidden shard, quietly remembering him, and the certainty that nothing in the city would ever be the same again.
When he finally returned home, the candlelight flickering across the walls, Elias made a decision. He would learn. He would read every text, visit every library, uncover every whisper of knowledge about these shards. The Ink shard was forbidden, yes, but knowledge even dangerous, even deadly had always been his weapon.
And somewhere, in the fog-laden streets of Gravenmoor, the thread lingered, faint but persistent. Secrets moved, observing, waiting. Elias knew he had touched the edge of something far older, far deeper than he could yet comprehend.