The morning arrived with an ordinary calm, though Lyra Veylin felt its stillness press against her more heavily than usual. Sunlight seeped through the blinds, slanting across her journal, the Codex of the Veil lying beside it like a pulse she could not ignore. She had read and reread the shifting ink through the night, each line more cryptic than the last. Its pages seemed to hum with an awareness she could feel in her chest.
She rose, fingers brushing the leather cover instinctively, as though seeking reassurance. Breakfast was forgotten; the city itself felt distant, muted. She knew she had to leave eventually—the Archives, the streets, the rhythm of normality—but even stepping outside felt like walking into an echo.
And perhaps that was exactly what it was.
By mid-morning, she wandered into the market square, journal tucked under one arm, satchel at her side. Vendors shouted, children laughed, the usual hum of life went on—but something had changed. She could not have said what exactly, until she heard it: a snippet of conversation she knew before it was spoken.
"…and so, I told him—"
Her head jerked toward the speaker, a fruit vendor lecturing a customer on a missing shipment of figs. The words came again, as though she were listening to a recording: "…and so, I told him—" repeated exactly, right down to the slight hitch in the vendor's tone.
Lyra froze, heart quickening. She blinked and looked around. The vendor continued, and when he reached the next sentence, she felt it coming before he spoke: "…that if he didn't pay by sundown, I would take the shipment back myself."
The phrase landed in her mind like a bell. She staggered, gripping her journal. This had happened before—fragments, isolated echoes—but never so completely. Entire conversations, down to intonation, were looping in her awareness. It was more than memory; it was a repetition that invaded reality.
Her pulse drummed in her ears as she moved through the square, and the déjà vu did not cease. Each step, each greeting from a neighbor, each glance between strangers—the repetitions grew in intensity. Her mind strained to hold them apart, but they overlapped like reflections in multiple mirrors.
A sudden squeal of laughter drew her gaze downward. A child, perhaps six or seven, was crouched on the cobblestones, chalk in hand. She was tracing spirals, small at first, then expanding into larger, looping patterns that crawled across the stone.
Lyra's breath caught. The spirals—these simple, playful drawings—were identical to symbols she had seen in the Codex of the Veil the night before. Her fingers trembled as she approached, bending slightly to inspect the chalk marks. They matched the arcs and loops exactly, twisting in ways that defied ordinary geometry. The child paused, looking up at her with wide, innocent eyes.
"Pretty, aren't they?" the girl asked, pointing to the spirals.
Lyra swallowed, voice tight. "Yes…very pretty. Did you draw these yourself?"
The child nodded vigorously. "I draw spirals all the time. My mama says I like circles too much, but I can't help it!"
Lyra knelt a little closer, trying to steady herself. "Do you…do you remember drawing them before?" she asked carefully.
The girl tilted her head. "I draw them all the time. Every day."
Lyra's heart pounded in a rhythm she could feel in her throat. Every day…as if reality itself were looping, echoing patterns she had seen before. She realized, with a sinking weight, that the Codex did not merely respond to thought or curiosity—it was reacting to reality itself. Every shift, every repetition, every anomaly she had witnessed was connected.
She stood abruptly, the spirals blurring in her vision. People moved around her, speaking, gesturing, as if caught in a subtly warped time. She felt dizzy, as though she were walking inside a record that had been rewound and played again and again.
Her first instinct was to flee, to leave the square, leave the child, leave the spirals. But as she turned, the sensation of repetition gripped her. She found herself retracing the same steps she had taken only moments before. The sounds, the gestures, even the distant clatter of a horse-drawn cart—they overlapped with perfect precision.
Lyra pressed a hand to her temples. The Codex's weight in her satchel was almost unbearable. She had not yet dared open it in public, fearing the book might respond too quickly, too violently. But now she knew it was connected, intrinsically, to the patterns unfolding around her.
The spirals on the cobblestones called to her in a strange way. She knelt again, this time more deliberately, tracing the chalk with her finger. The line shimmered faintly, though the sun was bright. Her pulse quickened further. The ink of the Codex had behaved similarly—lines that shifted when observed, symbols that rearranged themselves. And here in the open, on ordinary stone, the same geometry appeared, as if reality itself were taking dictation from the book.
She rose suddenly as a voice echoed behind her:
"Lyra?"
She spun around. A man, tall and thin, his features familiar from the Archives, stepped cautiously through the square. It was Eris. Relief and irritation tangled in her chest. He looked at her with a frown. "Are you alright? You've been standing there like a statue for minutes."
Lyra swallowed, struggling to speak. "Do…do you remember the festival last night?"
Eris frowned. "Festival? The Founders' Jubilee? Of course. Everyone enjoyed it."
She shook her head sharply. "No, Eris…not just that. Something…strange is happening. I—I keep seeing things repeat, conversations loop, gestures replayed. And there—" She gestured to the chalk spirals.
Eris followed her gaze, squinting. "That's…just a child playing, isn't it?"
Lyra's jaw tightened. "It's not just that. The patterns—they match something I saw last night, in the Codex of the Veil. It's…responding to reality itself."
Eris's expression changed subtly, a flicker of unease crossing his face. "The…Codex?"
Lyra's eyes narrowed. "Yes. I found it yesterday, in the Forbidden Wing. Eris…this book—it's not just a record of history. It interacts with the present. It remembers…or maybe it shapes. I'm not sure which yet."
He took a cautious step back, raising his hands slightly. "Lyra, this…this sounds impossible. Are you sure it isn't exhaustion? Or…"
"No!" she said, her voice firm, though a tremor lingered. "I know what I'm seeing. I've never been wrong before. Not about details. Not about the city's records. And now…it's looping. The streets, the conversations, even this child's spirals—they're all repeating. The Codex responds to reality, not imagination."
Eris blinked, unsettled. He looked at the child, who was now drawing yet another spiral, and then back at Lyra. "Alright…let's say I believe you. What do we do?"
Lyra shook her head. "I don't know yet. I need to understand it first. But we have to be careful. If the book can affect the present…" Her voice faltered. "Then we can't predict what it might do next."
The child giggled, oblivious to the weight of their conversation, and drew another spiral on the cobblestones. Lyra stared at it, a shiver crawling down her spine. Each loop was precise, a fractal echo of the previous one, and she realized with dawning horror that she had seen the exact pattern before—in the Codex, in the library, in the pages she had read late into the night.
The déjà vu hit her fully then. Not just snippets of conversation, not just fleeting images. The entire morning, every moment since stepping into the square, felt like it had already occurred. Her thoughts spun, looping in rhythm with the world around her. She stumbled backward, clutching her head. The sensation was disorienting, terrifying.
She tried to focus on one point—the child's chalk spiral. She traced it in her mind, line by line, shape by shape, counting the loops, memorizing every curve. If she could understand the pattern, perhaps she could anchor herself, resist the loops.
And then it shifted.
The spiral blurred, elongated into a shape she did not recognize, and for the first time, the pattern diverged from what she had memorized. Her stomach dropped. The Codex was not just recording. It was responding. It was alive in a way she had not yet comprehended.
Eris reached out, voice urgent. "Lyra, you need to step away. Whatever this is—it's too much."
She shook her head, unwilling to abandon the unfolding truth. Her hand hovered over her satchel, over the Codex. The book seemed to hum in response, aligning with her heartbeat, pulsing through her fingers.
She realized then the magnitude of what she had discovered: she was no longer merely an observer of the city. She was part of its memory, its loops, its unseen mechanisms. The Codex was a bridge between perception and reality, and she had crossed into its domain.
A final spiral appeared on the stones, larger than the rest, impossibly precise. Lyra's breath caught. She recognized it immediately: it was a symbol from the Codex, a warning, a key, a question she did not yet know how to answer.
And in that moment, Lyra Veylin understood something chilling and unavoidable: the city was alive with repetition, with memory, with things that should not exist. And the Codex was the thread tying it all together.
She clenched her journal, pressed the book against her chest, and whispered, more to herself than anyone else:
"I will see it through. I will understand. Even if the world repeats itself endlessly, I will remember."
The child, oblivious, drew yet another spiral, and Lyra's eyes followed it with a mixture of awe and terror. For the first time, she knew that memory, reality, and the Codex were intertwined—and that nothing would ever feel normal again.