Night crept across the broken library like a slow tide. Veiled just beyond the barrier.
Altha leaned back in the chair, muscles sore from hours of study.
He laced his fingers together, stretched them overhead—a silent prayer to a ceiling littered with strange constellations.
And that's when he saw it.
Their shape.
There was something off about their shape. Something very familiar looking.
He swept his dreads aside, squinting upward.
"Is that... could it be?"
He rose to his feet, scanning the chamber.
Without hesitation, he scrambled onto the mezzanine, scaling the ancient iron ladder until he neared the library's highest ledge. Trying to get a more detailed look at the strange patterns.
But it was as he suspected.
"They're runes," he whispered. "Better yet... Standard Runes. Finally something I can work with."
Each star wasn't merely a point of light—each was a rune, etched deep and filled with a crystalline resin that refracted dim, eerie hues.
He dangled his foot off the ladder and focused his psyche, forming a thin, translucent hexagonal plate.
He stepped onto it.
The plate glided frictionless and soundless toward the center of the domed ceiling.
Altha rose higher, closer, until the constellations pressed like script against the vault of heaven.
"Alright... what sort of Runic Structure are we working with here?" He ran his fingers carefully along the embedded crystal veins, tracing their intersections. "Dome formation... probably a Volumetric Structure or—"
The transparent plate stilled.
"Is that it? If it's not a Volumetric Structure then I can only imagine it being one other. But just to be sure..."
Minutes slipped past as he drifted like a dust mote across the dome, mapping invisible shapes in his mind.
His Psyche thinned—his pulse a steady drum in his ears—but he didn't stop...
Most men would have feared this height. Most men would have fallen. But Altha wasn't most men.
He barely considered himself a man at all.
Finally, his hands stilled.
"It's a Fractal Array Structure. In a clustered star format disguised as a nebulous arrangement of constellations." He whispered the words like a prayer.
"But why? Why hide runes in the sky?"
He swept his gaze across the ceiling one last time, noting the four distinct formats:
• A star composed of Fyr Runes.
• A moon traced in Lunar Runes.
• A tree outlined in Geo Runes.
• A spiral shaped from Aer Runes.
Pain throbbed behind his eyes—sharp, rhythmic, deep. His vision blurred at the edges, swimming in a sea of grey.
A sure fire sign his Psyche was nearing it's brink.
Still, he persisted.
"It has to be some kind of library index," he muttered through clenched teeth. "My intuition doesn't know what else it could possibly be."
The transparent plate carrying him through the air wavered slightly as his Psyche flickered low.
"The four formats must obviously represent the Orthodox Gods, but what does that mean? Are the books arranged in order of who they think is the oldest god to the youngest?"
He shook his head.
"No, no, no."
He took a final look at the runes as the plate descended. And finally, it hit him.
"They all have two common factors, though. They all use Sandard Runes, and they all contain the rune for absorption. So maybe..."
He landed and scribbled an incantation down in his Inscription Tome.
• Ignition.
• Directional focus.
• Minimal mass.
Done.
He tore the page free from the tome and watched it stiffen.
Then with calculated precision, he flung it into the air like a shuriken—straight toward the star-shaped format.
The paper caught fire mid-flight.
But instead of burning to ash, the flame bent sharply—drawn toward the runic formation.
The moment the fire touched the constellation, the star lit up. First a faint ember... then a searing brand of light.
It spread across the dome, tracing the star'sd outline like molten veins, and then—
—projected its light downward onto a particular row of shelves.
"Well, would you look at that." he breathed, voice low with awe. "Honestly... wasn't even sure that would work. Logic and deductive reasoning strike again, I guess-"
Before he knew it, a red string appeared—hypnotic and strangely beautiful. It drifted lazily in the air, swaying like a living thing, its length dancing and twining upward.
Its end vanished somewhere among the hundreds of books illuminated by the light of the runic constellation.
Without a moment wasted.
He climbed the mezzanine swiftly, following the crimson filament as if gathering yarn.
Reaching the row of books, he didn't need to search.
He could feel it.
A pulse—something alive and waiting—radiated from one leather-bound tome nestled among the others.
He reached out, fingertips brushing the spine of the book— a surge of emotions wrecked through him.
Love,
Hate,
Sorrow,
Joy
Each emotion crashed through him, vivid and raw—like rivers colliding inside a single broken dam.
But deeper still, buried at the heart of those waves, was something looser. Something vast and nameless that his mind instinctively recoiled from.
Instinctively he pulled away. Almost as if trying to avoid a burn from a hot stove plate.
He staggered against the railing, breaths ragged and shallow.
"Hmm... that can't be good."
He grimaced, lifting a trembling hand to his face.
His golden eye cracked, a fine fracture slicing through the iris, and flecks of molten gold flaked away like ash caught in a gentle gale.
The eye darkened once more, the light retreating into whatever hidden place it had come from.
Still wary, Altha extended his Psyche outward—not touching the book physically this time—and carefully lifted the tome from the shelf.
Trying to conserve some Psyche and thus lessen its strain. He quickly hovered it over to the table with his three other books and made his way back down with a small leap.
When he reached the table—already cluttered with the three volumes from his bracer—
He let himself collapse into one of the nearby chairs, body sagging with exhaustion.
"Might've nearly overdone it again," he murmured, one hand gripping the armrest for balance. "But at least things finally seem to be progressing somewhere."
His face remained stoic.
His heart, however, drummed with a quiet, stubborn pride.
He crossed his arms and lied on them for a few minutes, giving his Psyche Factor time to replenish all its expanded energy.
For a while, he simply existed there—motionless beneath the indifferent glow of the barrier.
During this, his body fell quiet. Almost too quiet.
What is it that they say about the dead?
---
Was he thinking? Dreaming? Or merely drifting somewhere far beyond himself?
Who knows... Who cares... Did it even matter?
---
When he stirred again, it was not because of hunger or discomfort.
He simply opened his eyes—sharper now, quicker, intentioned. His body lighter.
The barrier's light had brightened fractionally by now, casting long, shadows across the chamber.
With a telekinetic pull, Altha placed the leather bound tome infront of him.
The cover of the book was striking, cloaked in a deep, velvety black. Etched along its edges was an intricate border of golden filigree, a mesmerizing weave of swirling arabesques and floral motifs that framed the blank expanse of the cover.
Of which though the goldwork gleamed with an elegant, otherworldly charm, it all felt rather odd to look at.
It didn't feel right. Not cursed, necessarily, but wrong in a quiet, patient way—like a door left slightly ajar in a house meant to be empty.
For it seemed as if they were supposed to frame something at its centre, but the space was strikingly vacant.
Stretching out his hand, he twitched two fingers. The air around the book shivered. Slowly, gingerly, the cover peeled back, protesting with a faint leathery crackle.
Altha kept his fingertips well clear. Last time was warning enough for him.
And as the cover settled, words jumped out at him from the first page:
"Knowledge is what we think. Reason is the meaning we give to thought. Logic is our growing doubt that we know anything. Remember possible reader: Mortal as we are, we should not lose ouselves to things too deep."
The message was short with no identifying factors like initials, a signature, or even a name. Just the lone warning—and a contemptuous, hollow silence lingering after.
Altha stared at the page, the words imprinting themselves somewhere deeper than memory.
He remembered the "Oculis Profunda" Attribute Description:
"There is only one rule in nature: To not lose yourself to things too deep."
He looked over the text at least one more time to confirm what he had read.
"Well I'm already here so I might as well. I don't really have much a choice here." He looked up at the ceiling. "Wonder what the others are up to right now..."
Inhaling heavily, he turned his attention back to the tome, swiping his finger in the air, and the page flipped over.