A white haired man probably beyond seventy years old, slightly hunchbacked and weak, sits on a hardwood stool. He has been doing this for ages, it has become a routine. The lit environment along with the flawless paintings and architecture of the room do not catch his attention. He has been reading the page of a book for nearly the quarter of an hour. Despite his weak body and age, he is very vigorous and his eyes are not the very least dimmed. He searches the book and gets his eye caught by a line, he goes over it several times over and does not realize the time that has passed. His finger rests beneath a line of faded ink, following words he has read so many times before that he could recite them without even looking. Around him, the lit candle stretches far to a part of the room, catching the edges of old books and dying before it reaches the highest shelves.
This is his world.
Books crowd the room from floor to ceiling. Some carefully bound and preserved, others, held together by little more than age and habit. Scrolls sleep, inside wooden cases. Loose papers fill gaps where books have been removed. Dust had gathered in places he could no longer reach.
He knows every shelf.
Or he thinks he does.
His finger stops at a point.
He reads the sentence again. Something feels off. The feeling is so faint he mistakes it for fatigue at first. Leaning back, he closes his eyes and feels his shoulders complain. For a moment, he waits for the feeling to disappear, however, it does not. It becomes dense, like a bad energy. He sits for a moment, listening to nothing in particular. His gaze wanders toward the shelves, then, the line he just read just keeps pushing him towards the shelf.
He has spent most of his life learning that the things which announce themselves loudly are rarely the things worth fearing. He felt an ominous energy surging around him.
Then, leaving the book, he stands. The chair gives a small scrape against the hard ground. He crosses the room, aiming for the shelf. Not hurriedly at first, but as he gets closer, it becomes clearer, his worry.
He fastens his pace, then, stops before a shelf near the back wall, one of the few he hardly touches. His fingers move along the spines as he searches the upper row.
Nothing.
He bends his old knees to search the lower shelf.
Still, nothing.
His breathing changes. He reaches farther back.
A book slips beneath his hand. He pushes it aside. Another, and then another.
Then, his fingers find something wrapped in old cloth. He pulls it free.
A scroll.
He looks at it for a moment, almost uncertain whether he has found what he has been looking for. Returning to the table, he unwraps it carefully, places the scroll beneath the brightest candle and loosens the cord. The parchment opens with a dry whisper.
His eyes fall on something and he becomes still for a moment. It is a drawing. Weirdly, it doesn't feel like an ordinary drawing. Beside it, a poem. It talks about something, neither clear nor blurry. He feels threatened as he does not understand anything. Rolling the parchment, he turns to the shelf. He hurriedly walks to it and starts searching. This time, he has a blurry view of what he's searching for.
He pulls out books and scrolls with the urgency of a man who has suddenly remembered where a forgotten treasure is buried.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
A thin volume falls open in his hands.
He catches it before it reaches the floor.
Looking at it, his face changes. He takes that one too.
Soon, the table is no longer visible beneath the collection he has carried to it.
He spreads out the records. One scroll beside another, an account beneath a drawing, a fragment of poetry beside a passage from old records. Not carelessly. Never carelessly.
His hands tremble, but his movements hold precision.
He searches through the parchments, each having a connection to another on the table. Then, he pulls them together as though pieces of something scattered across centuries.
A weapon appears in one account. A creature in another. A place described in a third.
A line of verse that seems meaningless until it is placed beside the others.
He moves them.
He rearranges them.
Reads. Re-reads. As his lips part, he whispers a few words to himself. Then he falls silent. The busy room is now still.
Leaning back, he sits on his stool. For a long time, he sits on his stool, staring at the table.
All these years. All those records. They were too silent to be true.
Warnings preserved by predecessors who had probably died believing their work would never matter. As his hands move towards a particular page, he touches its corner. He had spent years believing it belonged to another time, another age, but now, it isn't.
He looks beyond the candles in front of him, towards the door.
Then, he looks down at his hands.
His fingers begin to move. It was an old method, older than the room around him, older, perhaps than the kingdom outside its walls. It has been passed on from predecessor to successor, through generations. An old method of divination. His hands form one arrangement, then another.
He counts, reconsiders. Begins again.
He asks in himself a question. One that has been asked by men before him and answered in ways that history has struggled to remember. "Can divination ever go wrong?"
His hands stop. He looks at the result. For several breaths, he does not blink.
Then he performs the divination again. The same result.
Again. The same answer.
Looking at the recurrence of the results, he gives up.
He looks back at the scattered records before him.
The drawings.
The verses.
Ancient warnings.
Fragments of history.
Suddenly, they are no longer fragments.
They are one thing.
His countenance changes.
He looks toward the door, then back at his table.
Then his throat moves, and the words come out firm; "So that's how it is"
Beyond the door, the darkness has already moved. And something the world will never forget is awakening.
PROPHETIC POEM:
The light is passing
Its time has elapsed
It has taken with it our peace
And left without warning
We have been shrouded by darkness
So thick we cannot see
All we can do is to wait
To wait for our calling and its terror
Time will tell, how long we shall suffer
Until the heavens shake and the gods quake
Or until we are completely consumed and no more
And the darkness rules
The light will come at night
He will send and will set us free
As the moon and stars live, we will not be forgotten.