He didn't remember standing up.
He didn't remember breathing.
But Elias was moving.
Each step felt like it belonged to someone else. The weight of his body, the ache in his bones, even the cold sting against his burned skin—they were distant, like echoes of a memory still forming.
The room behind him was silent.
But it was no longer the same.
The stone floor bore scorch marks that hadn't been there before—deep, spidering black veins that spread from the pedestal outward. The walls were charred. The air smelled of soot and ash and something older—like wet stone cracked open under thunder.
He didn't look back.
As he stepped into the corridor, the gas lamps flickered once—and died.
Darkness folded around him.
But he could see.
Not clearly. Not with his eyes. Something inside him had changed. He could feel shapes, the texture of walls, the hum of silence itself. Like the world was pressing against his skin, letting him feel it instead of see it.
He found the door.
Or what was left of it.
The iron frame had collapsed inward, as if something had exploded outward. The surrounding wall had cracked in a starburst pattern—silent, clean, as if reality had simply given up and peeled away.
He stepped over the threshold.
He was back in the west hallway of the library.
But it wasn't the same.
Dust floated like ash. The old wooden shelves were warped, blackened. The lights overhead sparked. One popped. The air smelled like burnt insulation and wet stone.
No fire alarms.
No sirens.
No one screaming.
No one was here.
Just him. And the silence.
And the system.
"Host active."
"Neural pattern stable."
"Core alignment: Initiated."
Elias stopped walking.
The voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
It wasn't coming from outside.
It was in him.
"Now that you've touched the Codex… you're closer to the Scar than you know."
"They'll come for you."
He felt it then—just faintly. Like something in the fabric of the air pulling. Like a breath being held by something vast and patient.
He turned his head—suddenly, sharply.
No one there.
But something was.
Watching.
Waiting.
The rune on his arm still glowed—dim now, but pulsing with slow heat. He yanked down his sleeve, pulled his coat tighter, and moved.
He didn't want to be seen.
Not like this.
He took the back stairs, passed the janitor's door, slipped into the side alley between the old lecture halls.
Nn one saw him.
But far, far away—in a part of the city where no streetlights ever worked—
a mirror cracked.
And a man with no shadow opened his eyes.