Chapter 3 ー THE LIBRARY WITHOUT DAWN

Описание: Welcome back, traveler.

We found the place the compass kept pointing to, even when it refused to point north: a library with no dawn.

Its halls are carved from old stone and older silence. Candles burn without shrinking, as if time is not allowed to move here. The air tastes of dust, ink, and something faintly metallic—like a lock that has been closed for centuries.

At the center of the nave, an enormous book rests on a pedestal. It’s already open, waiting, as though it expected us. Blue light spills from its pages and turns the drifting particles into constellations. Loose sheets circle above it, moving in slow, deliberate spirals—pages that have forgotten which shelf they belong to.

The knight’s gaze stays sharp behind her glasses.
“Libraries don’t fear thieves,” she murmurs. “They fear readers.”

When the music settles, the book reacts.

Letters rise from the page like breath on cold glass—then vanish before we can hold them. Not erased. Unmade. The glow stutters, and for a heartbeat you see a heading that shouldn’t exist:

THE NINTH HORIZON — ENTRY REDACTED

A soft sound follows—almost a footstep, almost a page turning. In the far aisles, between shelves, silhouettes stand too still to be statues. Watching. Recording. Correcting.

The knight steps closer to you, cape brushing the stone.
“Do not speak the river’s words aloud,” she warns. “Some names call their editors.”

On the pedestal’s edge, half-hidden beneath dust, you find a pressed seal with no emblem—only a sentence carved into the metal:

EIGHT IS ENOUGH.

The book’s light dims, as if it heard us understand.

We came for truth.
Tonight, we learned the truth is guarded.

And the next page… is not willing to open for free.

Next Chapter: The Key of Silent Ink