And we’re back to the game…
The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays
The library was a labyrinth of whispers. Its shelves stretched farther than the eye could see, vanishing into the gloom of vaulted arches where dust motes danced like heresies awaiting condemnation. The books here were not merely bound in leather and vellum—they were clad in the skins of dead controversies, their spines etched with titles in languages no living tongue could pronounce.
I had come in search of the Codex Umbrarum, a volume rumored to contain every heresy ever conceived but never committed to paper. The Vatican denied its existence. The Illuminati had burned three copies. The librarians of Alexandria had died to protect it. And yet, here I stood, in the Bibliotheca Abscondita, where knowledge went to fester.
The Librarian emerged from the shadows, a gaunt figure in a cassock woven from cobwebs and inkstains. His spectacles were so thick they distorted his eyes into twin pools of black oil.
“You are late,” he said.
“I didn’t know I had an appointment.”
“All who seek the Codex are expected.” He adjusted his glasses, and the light bent unnaturally around them. “Do you know why it is called the Book of Shadows?”
“Because it contains what light cannot reveal?”
“Because,” he said, lifting a skeletal finger, “it is the only book that reads you.”
He led me to a iron door engraved with the sigils of suppressed gnostic sects. Behind it lay a chamber where the air tasted of burnt parchment and myrrh. The Codex floated above a pedestal, its pages turning of their own accord.
“The price?” I asked.
“Your certainty,” said the Librarian. “All who consult it leave wiser—but never whole.”
I reached out. The book opened to a page that bore my name.
If you know, you know.