The Library of Thoth was not a building, but a canyon. The Canyon of Whispers, they called it, where the wind did not blow but spoke, and the sandstone walls were etched with every story ever told, every fact ever known, in languages both living and dead. To walk its length was to read the biography of the world.
It was also a tomb.
As Kazuyo's party approached the entrance—a massive, natural archway shaped like an ibis's beak—the air grew heavy with the silence of forgotten things. The usual vibrant sounds of the desert were absent. No scuttling lizards, no sighing wind. Only a profound, intellectual stillness, thick as velvet.
"The Sphinx's influence," Zahra murmured, her fingers nervously tracing the ankh pendant at her throat. "It does not just consume knowledge. It imposes ignorance. It makes the very concept of questions feel… futile."
Neema sniffed the air, her lioness instincts on high alert. "I smell no beast. Only dust and… sadness."
Amani closed her eyes, her head tilted. "The spirits here are thin. Faded. As if their stories have been stolen. They whisper only one word: 'Beware.'"
They passed under the archway into the canyon proper. Towering cliffs rose on either side, and as promised, they were covered in intricate hieroglyphics, mathematical equations, and star charts that glowed with a faint, residual magic. But many sections were scarred, the carvings not worn away by time, but deliberately scraped clean, leaving blank, unsettling patches like missing teeth.
In the center of the canyon, seated before a grand, sealed door of bronze that was the library's true entrance, was the Sphinx of Riddles.
It was not the majestic, recumbent creature of legend. This Sphinx was emaciated, its lion-body gaunt, its wings tattered and molting. Its face, however—a haunting blend of human and feline—was possessed of a terrifying, hungry intelligence. Its eyes, the color of aged papyrus, burned with a cold, acquisitive light.
It did not move as they approached. It simply watched.
You are the silence. Its voice was not a sound, but a thought planted directly in their minds, dry and rustling like old scrolls. You come to a place of answers, bearing a power that ends all questions. An interesting paradox.
Kazuyo stepped forward, his posture relaxed but his will a focused blade. "I've come for the knowledge you've hoarded. To return it to the world."
The world is not worthy of it. The Sphinx's thought was laced with a profound, weary contempt. Knowledge without wisdom is a weapon. I have seen empires rise on equations and fall on a single misunderstood phrase. I am not a thief. I am a curator. I am saving the world from itself.
"You are starving it," Zahra countered, her voice sharp. "You leave them helpless before the other Kings!"
A quick death is preferable to a slow suicide by enlightenment. The Sphinx's gaze shifted to her. Ah. A child of the sand-wizards. You know the formula to summon a sirocco, but do you know the name of the first grain of sand it lifted? You have the map, but you are lost in the desert of details.
Zahra flinched as if struck, the Sphinx's words targeting the secret insecurity of every scholar: the fear of never knowing enough.
Its gaze fell on Neema. The mighty warrior. You know seventeen ways to break a man's neck. But do you know the single word that could have made him your brother? You understand force, but you are ignorant of its source.
Neema growled, a low, dangerous sound in the silent canyon, her confidence shaken by the pinpoint accuracy of the attack.
Then, Amani. The spirit-talker. You hear the voices of the dead. But can you hear the silence between their words? The story they are too ashamed to tell? You listen, but you do not comprehend the music of silence.
Amani wrapped her arms around herself, the Sphinx's critique undermining her very connection to the world.
Finally, its burning papyrus eyes returned to Kazuyo. And you. The Null-Son. You can unmake a star, but can you create a single spark? You know what everything is not, but do you have the courage to define what it is? Your power is the ultimate answer, which makes it the enemy of the ultimate question.
This was its weapon. It did not attack with claw or magic. It attacked with the Unanswerable Query. It found the core insecurity, the intellectual void in every being, and expanded it, making it seem like the only truth. It made its victims doubt their own right to exist.
Kazuyo felt the assault. The Sphinx's words wormed into his mind, echoing his deepest fear. He had always been the outsider, the mixed-blood boy who never fully belonged in Japan or in the cultural expectations of his African American family. His power was one of rejection, of saying "no." Was that all he was? A negation? A walking "no"?
He felt his Nullify power stir, a reflexive response to erase this psychic attack. But he stopped. Erasing the question wouldn't defeat the Sphinx. It would be an admission of defeat.
The Sphinx saw his hesitation and pressed its advantage. Its voice became a deafening roar in their minds. SEE? YOU HAVE NOTHING! YOUR JOURNEY IS MEANINGLESS! YOUR ALLIANCE IS A FANTASY! THE SUN-BEARER WILL SEE THE HOLLOW NULL YOU ARE AND TURN AWAY! LAY DOWN YOUR BURDEN. EMBRACE THE COMFORT OF IGNORANCE.
Neema was on her knees, clutching her head. Zahra was muttering, trying to recall a simple spell and failing. Amani was weeping, the voices of the spirits now silent to her.
Kazuyo was at the precipice. The Sphinx was right. He was defined by what he was not.
But then he looked at his companions. At Neema's unwavering loyalty, which needed no philosophical justification. At Zahra's brilliant mind, a library in her own right. At Amani's deep, empathetic soul. They followed him not because he had all the answers, but because he dared to ask the questions.
He saw the blank spaces on the canyon walls, the stolen stories. He thought of the people in the villages, dying not from violence, but from a lack of knowledge—of medicine, of clean water, of their own history.
The Sphinx was wrong. Knowledge wasn't the weapon. Privileged knowledge was. Hope was a form of knowledge. Compassion was a form of knowledge. And they were meant to be shared.
He took a step forward, and then another, his inner turmoil calming into that familiar, still center.
"You ask what I can create," Kazuyo said, his voice quiet but clear, cutting through the psychic onslaught. "I create a space."
He looked at the Sphinx, not with anger, but with a pity that was more devastating than any weapon.
"I create a space where Neema's strength is not brute force, but protection. I create a space where Zahra's intellect is not arrogance, but guidance. I create a space where Amani's connection is not madness, but wisdom."
He was now only ten feet from the creature. The Sphinx's eyes widened, its mental attacks redoubling, but they broke against the newfound certainty in Kazuyo's soul.
"My Nullify isn't just for destruction," Kazuyo said, a faint, genuine smile touching his lips. "It's for clearing the board. It creates the silence in which a new, better song can be written. You hoard the old songs and call it wisdom. I make room for the new ones. That is my answer."
He raised his hand, not in a gesture of negation, but of offering.
"And my question for you, O Curator, is this: What is the value of a library that no one is allowed to read?"
It was the one question the Sphinx could not answer. Its entire existence, its entire justification, was built upon the premise that it was a protector. But a protector of what? Of knowledge no one could access? That wasn't curation. It was narcissism. It was the ultimate, selfish act of taking without giving.
The Sphinx recoiled as if physically struck. A crack appeared in its papyrus-colored hide, then another. Its form began to destabilize, its hoarded knowledge turning inwards, consuming it. It had built its identity on an unanswerable query, and Kazuyo had finally provided one.
NO… THE PARADOX… it wailed, its form dissolving into swirling motes of light and stolen text.
I… WAS… SAVING… THEM…
With a final, silent sigh, the Sphinx of Riddles unraveled completely. The motes of light flew to the blank spaces on the canyon walls, the knowledge and stories flowing back into the stone, the carvings restoring themselves in a blaze of golden light.
The bronze doors of the library groaned and swung inward, revealing the vast, luminous archives within.
The silence of the canyon was broken by the return of the wind, which now carried the whispers of ten thousand restored stories.
Kazuyo turned to his companions, who were slowly getting to their feet, their confidence returning, their eyes full of a new, fierce pride.
He had not just defeated a Demon King. He had defined himself. He was not the Null-Son. He was the Clearing. The Sacred Space. The one who made way for the dawn.
And as the first true light of the liberated library shone upon him, he knew, with utter certainty, that he was ready for the sun.