Chapter 6 - Chapter 5: The Scholar and the Book

The rain over Prague was relentless that night — silver threads weaving through fog and the distant wail of church bells. Dr. Marek Halden didn't believe in curses, only in forgotten languages. He'd made a career of dissecting myths until they bled logic until tonight. The message had come through an anonymous forum. A collector, claiming to have found a tome under the Charles University ruins. "Untranslatable," they said. "Old magic, maybe."Normally Marek ignored such things — until the photograph arrived. A black book. The cover is marked by four intersecting rings. And a faint shimmer, like blood beneath old leather. Now he stood alone in his study — bookshelves crowding the walls, electric lamps humming softly. The Book lay before him. He'd spent an hour just looking at it."Seventeenth century, maybe… no, older," he murmured, gloved fingers hovering above it. "The binding—this isn't cowhide. It's—"He stopped. The surface was warm. For a moment, Marek thought he heard breathing. Then the whisper came — soft, almost human: "Read…"The scholar froze. His breath fogged in the air."Echo from the pipes," he said under his breath, forcing a laugh. But curiosity was a poison he'd always indulged. He opened the cover. The air shifted. Every light in the room dimmed to a dull amber glow. The letters on the page twisted, realigned, forming words in his own language — a language that hadn't been written in centuries."Knowledge is the oldest hunger. Feed it."The text bled into new lines, sketching symbols and runes that moved when he blinked. His pulse quickened. "Living ink…? Some kind of reactive compound?" he whispered. The Book answered him — by turning its own pages. Images flashed in his mind: A man standing in a circle of light. A ring, a totem, a gem — all bathed in blood.And then an explosion, red mist, screaming souls torn apart. Marek stumbled backward. His desk rattled. "What the hell—"He clutched his head as the whisper became a chorus: "We remember. We remember. We remember…"The Book closed itself with a thunderclap that extinguished every light in the house. When they flickered back on, the desk was empty — no Book, no trace of it at all. Only a single word burned into the wood where it had lain: "Reunion."Across the world, Lira woke in the middle of the night, gasping — the ring around her finger hot as fire. For a split second, she saw flashes not her own: A scholar's hands. A book bursting into flame.A whisper she could almost understand. She stumbled from bed, clutching the ring. "What's happening to me?" she whispered. Outside, the streetlights flickered. The world's silence thickened. And far beneath the sea, the crystal gem stirred — its light reaching for something, someone, across the miles.