Twilight draped the ravine, and our little camp worked itself into calm urgency.
Prism heated a pot of moss tea over the smokeless fire, stirring slowly so the phosphorescent strands curled down instead of up.
The brew glowed a gentle sea-green.
Talus insisted it soothed pre-march nausea, I drank mostly to keep my hands busy. It tasted faintly of thyme and graphite.
Lint moved through the tents with a quartermaster's precision, checking lantern charges, re-tightening buckles, and dabbing socket grease on her teleport daggers.
She whistled while she worked, but it was a thin sound—not quite confident, not quite scared.
The twins Wardley and Sykes shared out rune-stitched scarves that would muffle their identities if Scribe patrols turned up.
Each scarf bore half a sigil, only when the brothers stood shoulder-to-shoulder did the symbol form a circle.
They called it insurance.
My kit was embarrassingly light: coil of chalk rope, three sustenance wafers, the Mirror-Lake blank card, and the erasure brands that pulsed under my sleeves.
I had no metal weapon, only a quill-frond staff I'd hardened in cookfire resin.
Prism glanced at it, nodded approval, and handed me a leather pouch of powdered salt.
'For Scribe ink pools', she explained. 'They break cohesion when salted.'
'What breaks Archivores?' I asked.
'Teamwork', Talus replied from behind the stew cauldron.
'Sexy, I guess' with a humourless answer,
The answer earned him a couple of forced chuckles, and nobody argued.
'... Wait, for real? That is your answer?'
One by one, aspirants filed past the Guardian ledger to log departure.
The giant statue wrote our aliases with a quill wider than my arm, then paused until each name glowed silver.
When it reached mine, the nib hesitated, as if considering whether Inkless qualified as a joke. Eventually, the ledger accepted me with a faint hiss.
⊹˚₊‧──────────────────── ＿〆(..)ˎˊ˗
We set out at sundown, a dozen shadows strung across Palimpsest Pass.
The path wound upward between cliffs whose walls showed countless layers of scraped-off writing.
Every age of the Canvas Realm seemed to have left a paragraph here, then tried to erase it for the next.
From a distance, the rock looked streaked like a sundown, up close, you saw the ghost of every earlier sentence.
Prism walked at point, guided by a floating light-bead no larger than a marble.
Whenever we passed an overhang, she touched the bead to the stone and the glow dimmed, reading whatever chatter the strata wanted to share.
Sometimes it offered tips—
'Two bends ahead: mild time lag.'
Other times it burped nonsense poetry.
She took both with equal seriousness.
Half an hour in, Talus signalled a halt.
A breeze without a source rolled downhill, carrying our own murmured words back to us at double volume.
Lint cursed, her oath repeated, folded over itself, and came back louder.
'A whisperfold'
Prism muttered.
'Sound loop. If the fold harvests enough echoes, it tears open.'
Lint clapped a hand over her mouth.
Sykes knotted his half-scarf into a gag.
I considered the Null Scratch, but hunger still lurked.
Instead, I scribbled a single chalk line on the path, deliberately broken at the centre. The returning voices hit the line, warped, and thinned to wisps.
The fold unravelled like cloth drawn through a ring.
'That trick belongs in the field manual' Talus whispered.
'Want an autograph?'
I said, taking back the chalk rope. He grinned, anxiety easing by a fraction.
The pass narrowed further, the ceiling dropping until the tallest of us had to stoop.
Moss webs coated the rock, emitting a calm, even light.
It felt almost domestic—until one patch shivered open, revealing a beetle with a glassy back.
The creature observed us, then scribbled lines across its shell that rearranged into a single word: hush.
We obliged. It clicked shut and became moss again.
⊹˚₊‧──────────────────── ＿〆(..)ˎˊ˗
Full dark greeted us at the far mouth of Palimpsest Pass—and beyond lay the Library Foyer.
I had pictured a grand hall; the reality dwarfed memory palaces.
Shelves rose in a slow spiral from valley floor to cloud-height, each shelf thirty strides deep and crowded with tomes, scroll tubes, and vault boxes.
Lantern orbs drifted through the air like lazy fireflies, illuminating titles in no language I knew.
Two banners hung over the threshold arch, stitched from parchment thicker than armour.
The left banner read in tidy red script: Questions spoken loudly attract the Index.
The right banner: Do not open padlocked volumes under any motive.
Below each were the translated versions, just in case.
Lint whistled—quietly.
'Good thing I ask everything under my breath.'
Wardley tapped a padlock the size of his fist, hanging from a chained folio near the arch.
It rattled once, then glared up with a painted eye that watched his every movement.
He backed away.
At ground level, a marble terrace served as foyer floor.
Someone long ago carved reading alcoves into the stone, complete with benches and lecterns.
Tonight those benches hosted our expedition.
Lantern poles had been planted, and supply crates formed a makeshift dais.
Talus stepped onto the dais, rolled his shoulders, and began the briefing.
A cloth map fluttered open, projecting a ghostly overlay of corridors beyond the foyer—spirals within spirals, colour-coded by risk Rust, Crimson, and Black.
'The Archivore lairs in Section Eight,' he said.
'That's mid-spiral, Rust tier most of the way, tipping to Crimson as you near the core. It consumes written matter, living or inert.
If it pulls a paragraph into its throat it rewrites the meaning and spits out something corrupted.
Anyone struck by that text becomes part of the Archivore's private index.'
He pointed to three names on the roster, each followed by roles.
Lint led the containment wing: daggers, snares, salt bombs.
Wardley and Sykes managed illusions to distract the beast's secondary eyes—eyes rumoured to read rather than see.
Prism carried phase markers to anchor retreat paths.
I, last-minute recruit, belonged to the nullification unit.
Great. A one-man 'special unit'.
If I may say, I feel honoured.
My job: erase the Archivore's defensive scroll hide if the containment bonds failed.
Talus didn't hide the risk.
'Scout groups that tried before never reached Crimson tier. Closest got within seventy strides.
Containment chain snapped, they came back with their names rearranged across their bones.'
'Definitely my kink', he stares at me for a few seconds, blankly.
Prism dropped a laugh.
Prism listened without flinching, though she tapped thumb against knee.
Lint bit her lower lip, playful mask gone.
Talus concluded.
'Keep voices low.
Avoid direct eye contact with padlocked books—they record faces.
And for the love of the Guardian, never ask a question above a whisper.'
The group dispersed to final-check packs.
I walked to the arch and let fingers brush one of its support stones.
The granite felt exactly like city bricks back home—rough and real.
Yet carved into its face were micro-runes, still forming letters even as I watched.
They rearranged to spell: debt grows.
'Charming,' I muttered.
Prism appeared, tightening her gauntlet straps. 'The foyer likes to remind visitors that every answer costs.'
'Does cost scale with ignorance?'
'Sadly, no. Ignorance just makes you pay twice.'
She offered a waterskin filled with faintly glowing moss tea.
'Sip sparingly. Calorie-free, but it clears Static.'
I slipped it into my belt loop, then checked the resin-staff for cracks. It would break under real force, but it served as a focus.
A small part of me hoped I'd never need the Scratch tonight, but the brands pulsed, unconvinced.
⊹˚₊‧──────────────────── ＿〆(..)ˎˊ˗
Lantern orbs dimmed in sympathy with some unseen sundial.
That was our cue.
The party assembled in two rows.
Lint led left flank, Talus right, Prism and I centre.
Wardley and Sykes murmured together, a ghostly hallway shimmered behind them—an illusion path they could swap with reality if corridors collapsed.
The arch loomed.
From inside came the faint rustle of turning pages, though no breeze moved.
A metallic scent of old chain oil drifted out, accompanied by something sweeter, like pressed violets gone to mould.
We crossed the marble terrace.
One step left between us and the labyrinth of shelves.
My heart pounded fast yet steady; the mechanical hitch insisted on perfect rhythm.
Prism shot me a sideways glance. 'Ready, Null Rat?' she whispered.
'Not even close.'
'Honest answer,' she said, almost smiling.
My next stride carried me through the archway.
Marble gave way to polished wood that drank the lantern light.
Something on the far shelf exhaled, and in the hush that followed every padlock trembled against its chain.
Clink … clink-clink.