If you want to read more about my works or just to support me then here is my patreon:
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
__
If you liked this one. Cheek also my other stories:
[ Shadow Monarch in One Piece].
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
________________________________________________________________________________
Third POV:
The library swallowed him whole.
Silence wrapped around Adam like a second skin as he stepped deeper between the towering shelves. The faint light from enchanted lamps cast long shadows across the floor, stretching and bending as if the books themselves were alive. The air grew cooler the farther he went, away from the entrance, away from the doors, away from the world outside. Each step he took felt heavier than the last, not because his legs were tired, but because the library seemed to press in around him, aware of his presence, watching him with invisible eyes.
He didn't rush.
This wasn't a task of speed.
This was precision.
His hands stayed loose at his sides. His breathing stayed slow and even. His eyes moved from shelf to shelf, from title to title, never stopping for too long on any single book. He wasn't looking for just anything. He was looking for something specific. Something that most students wouldn't even know existed. Something that the professors probably hoped no student would ever find.
The restricted section was still ahead of him, separated by the thick rope and the heavy wooden sign that read: RESTRICTED. Access prohibited to all students without written permission from a professor.
Adam looked at the rope for a moment. Then he looked past it, into the darkness beyond. The lamps in the restricted section were different from the ones in the main library. They burned with a blue flame instead of orange. The light they gave off was colder, sharper, like moonlight on ice.
He stepped over the rope without hesitation.
His foot landed on the other side with a soft thud. No alarm sounded. No spell triggered. No professor appeared out of thin air. Adam smiled to himself and kept walking.
---
Adam moved slowly from one shelf to another, fingers brushing lightly across the spines of ancient books as his eyes scanned every title with focus.
Some of the books felt warm to the touch. Others felt cold. A few seemed to hum quietly, a low vibration that traveled up his fingertips and into his wrist. He ignored them all. He wasn't here for magic that screamed for attention. He was here for the quiet ones. The forgotten ones. The books that had been sitting on the same shelf for decades, untouched, unread, covered in dust so thick that it looked like gray velvet.
"…History of Magical Realms…"
He read the title out loud, barely above a whisper. The book was thick, bound in brown leather that had cracked and peeled in places. He ran his finger down the spine and moved on.
"…Advanced Theories of Dimensional Magic…"
This one was smaller. Newer. The gold letters on the cover were still bright. Adam tilted his head, considered it for a second, then shook his head. Too modern. Too common. He kept moving.
"…Chronicles of the Eastern Sorcerers…"
The cover of this book was red, but the red had faded to a dull pink over the years. The pages stuck out at odd angles, uneven and worn. Someone had read this book many times, long ago. But not recently. The dust on top was thick and undisturbed.
"…Boundaries Between Worlds and Realities…"
Adam stopped.
His eyes stayed on this book longer than the others. The title was written in silver letters, most of which had turned black with age. The book was thin, no more than a hundred pages, but something about it felt… heavy. Important. He reached out and touched the spine. The leather was cold. Smooth. Like it had been polished recently, even though the dust on the shelf said otherwise.
"…Forbidden Gateways and Their Consequences…"
He moved on.
He paused.
Tilted his head slightly.
"…That one sounds interesting…"
His fingers hovered over the spine. The letters were carved into the leather, deep and sharp. Whoever had made this book had put care into every detail. The cover was dark green, almost black, with a symbol in the center that Adam didn't recognize. A circle with lines through it. Or maybe a door. Or maybe something else entirely.
But he didn't take it.
Not yet.
He kept moving.
One shelf.
Then another.
Then another.
The blue flames flickered above him. The cold light made everything look strange and unfamiliar. The shadows between the books seemed deeper here, darker, as if the restricted section was trying to hide its secrets from him.
Time passed without him noticing.
Minutes turned into a quarter of an hour. A quarter of an hour turned into half an hour. Half an hour turned into a full hour. Adam didn't check his watch. He didn't look at the windows. He didn't think about lunch or classes or the other students. His whole world had shrunk to the books in front of him, the titles on their spines, the secrets hidden inside their pages.
The silence deepened.
Only the soft sound of pages turning… and his footsteps breaking the stillness.
Every few steps, he would stop and pull a book partway off the shelf. He would look at the cover. Open it to the first page. Read a few lines. Then push it back. Some books were written in languages he didn't understand. Some were filled with diagrams that made no sense. Some were so fragile that he barely dared to touch them at all.
But he kept searching.
---
An hour.
Exactly one hour.
That's when—
He stopped.
His eyes locked onto a single book.
Old.
Hidden between others like it didn't want to be found.
It sat on the bottom shelf, pushed all the way to the back, almost invisible behind a larger book that leaned against it. If Adam hadn't been crouching down to look at a lower shelf, he might have missed it entirely. The larger book had a bright red cover that drew the eye. The old book behind it was plain. Brown. Boring. Easy to overlook.
Dust covered its spine.
Thick dust. Gray and soft. Dust that had been there for years. Maybe decades. Adam blew on it gently, and a small cloud rose into the air, making him turn his head and blink.
The letters were faded, barely readable.
The gold leaf had flaked off long ago. What remained were faint impressions in the leather, shallow grooves where letters used to be. Adam had to squint to make them out. He had to tilt the book toward the blue flame to catch the light just right.
But still—
He read it.
"…The Forgotten History of the World."
Adam's expression shifted.
His eyebrows went up slightly. His mouth opened just a fraction. His eyes widened, just a little, but enough to show that he was surprised. Truly surprised. This wasn't a book about spells or potions or magical creatures. This wasn't a book about Hogwarts or the Ministry or the history of wizarding Britain.
This was a book about everything.
"…Now this…"
Slowly—carefully—
He pulled it out.
His fingers gripped the edges of the spine, gentle as a mother holding a newborn. The book resisted at first, stuck in place by years of pressure from the books around it. Adam tugged softly. Nothing happened. He tugged again, a little harder. The book shifted. He pulled it free.
The moment it left the shelf, a small cloud of dust rose into the air.
It floated up toward the blue flame, sparkling for a moment before disappearing. Adam coughed once, quietly, and waved his hand in front of his face.
The book felt… fragile.
Ancient.
The cover was cracked, the leather worn down by time. Some edges were broken. The corners were rounded and soft, like they had been rubbed smooth by countless hands over countless years. The spine was creased in a dozen places. The binding was loose. When Adam held the book in his hands, he could feel the pages shifting inside, moving against each other like dry leaves in the wind.
The pages inside—yellowed, thin, almost ready to tear with the slightest mistake.
He could see them through the gaps in the binding. Some were darker than others. Some had brown spots, age spots, that spread across the paper like tiny continents. The edges of the pages were rough and crumbly. A few small pieces had already broken off and fallen to the bottom of the book, trapped between the cover and the first page.
"…Damn… this thing might fall apart if I breathe too hard."
He spoke quietly, almost to himself. His voice was soft, careful, like he was standing next to a sleeping person he didn't want to wake.
Still—
He opened it.
Carefully.
Respectfully.
His thumbs pressed down on the edges of the cover, easing it open bit by bit. The leather creaked. The binding groaned. The pages rustled softly, complaining after so many years of being closed.
The first page was blank.
The second page had a title.
The same title as the cover, written in beautiful handwriting with a quill and ink that had faded to a pale brown.
Below the title was a date.
Adam couldn't read it. The numbers were smudged, lost to time. But he could tell it was old. Very old.
---
Pages flipped slowly under his fingers.
Each turn was gentle. Deliberate. He lifted each page from the corner, the way you were supposed to handle old books, and laid it down flat before moving to the next. Some pages stuck together. He separated them with his fingernail, careful not to tear anything.
Some were torn.
Some barely readable.
Ink faded.
Words missing.
Large sections of text had been eaten away by something. Bugs, maybe. Or water. Or just time itself. Whole paragraphs were reduced to scattered words and half-formed letters. Sentences ended in the middle and never started again.
But what remained—
Was enough.
Fragments of history.
Lost civilizations.
Names of places that didn't appear on any modern map. Descriptions of cities made of crystal and gold. Stories of wars fought with weapons that weren't wands or swords. Accounts of kings and queens whose names had been erased from every other book in the world.
Lost civilizations.
Adam read about an empire that had once covered half the world. An empire that had fallen so completely that not a single stone remained. No ruins. No artifacts. No records except for this book, these few pages, these scattered words.
Mentions of worlds beyond magic as he knew it.
This part made him stop. He read the same sentence three times, then four, then five. The words were simple. Direct. But their meaning was enormous.
There are worlds beyond this one. Beyond the reach of wands and spells. Beyond the knowledge of this realm. They exist. They wait. They watch.
"…So it's real…" he whispered.
His voice echoed softly in the empty space between the shelves.
"…There are other worlds."
He kept reading.
His eyes moved faster now, hungry for more. He scanned every page, every line, every word that was still legible. He learned about doorways that opened between worlds. About travelers who had crossed from one realm to another. About wars that had spilled across the boundaries, destroying everything in their path.
Then—
He stopped.
A title.
Clearer than the rest.
Almost… preserved.
The ink was darker on this page. The letters were sharper. Someone had written this section later than the others, or maybe they had used better ink, or maybe they had simply taken more care. Whatever the reason, the words stood out from the faded text around them like a shout in a quiet room.
"Westeros."
Adam's eyes narrowed.
He stared at the word. Turned it over in his mind. It didn't sound like any place he had ever heard of. It didn't sound like a wizarding town or a magical forest or a hidden valley. It sounded foreign. Strange. Ancient.
"…Westeros?"
He leaned in slightly—about to read the lines below the title, about to learn what this place was and why it was important enough to be written down in a book about forgotten history—
"Master…"
The voice came from behind him.
Calm.
Low.
Familiar.
It cut through the silence like a knife through cloth. Adam's hands stopped moving. His eyes stopped reading. His whole body went still.
Adam didn't turn immediately.
His eyes stayed on the page for one more second. Two more seconds. He finished the sentence he was on, committing it to memory, before he finally responded.
"…What is it, Venyx?"
The shadow fully formed behind him, kneeling slightly.
Adam could feel its presence without looking. The temperature behind him had dropped. The air had grown heavier. Venyx was close, close enough to touch, but he stayed at a respectful distance, one knee on the stone floor, his head bowed.
"There are… intruders approaching."
The voice was soft but urgent. Not panicked. Venyx never panicked. But there was a tension in his words that hadn't been there before. A tightness around the edges.
A small pause.
Then—
"Do you want me to kill them?"
The question was asked the same way someone might ask if you wanted sugar in your tea. Casual. Simple. Without emotion. To Venyx, killing was just a solution. A tool. A way to solve a problem.
Adam blinked once.
His face didn't change. His expression stayed calm. But inside, his mind was already moving, already calculating, already figuring out the fastest way to handle this without drawing attention.
"…Of course not."
His voice was firm. Final. There was no room for argument in those two words.
He closed the book halfway.
Not all the way. Just enough to hide the page about Westeros. His thumb stayed between the pages, marking his spot, holding his place.
Thinking.
Fast.
His eyes darted around the restricted section. The blue flames. The shelves. The rope. The main library beyond. How much time did he have? How close were the intruders? Could he make it to the exit before they saw him?
Then—
"…Hide, Venyx."
"As you command."
And just like that—
Gone.
The temperature behind Adam returned to normal. The air grew lighter. The pressure disappeared. Venyx had dissolved back into the shadows, slipping away to whatever dark corner he had come from, invisible and silent and waiting.
---
Adam moved quickly.
He stepped away from the shelf, the old book still in his hands. His eyes searched for the exact spot where he had found it. The bottom shelf. Behind the larger book. He crouched down and reached out to put it back—
But—
Slip.
His fingers, still dusty from handling the old pages, lost their grip for just a fraction of a second. The book tilted in his hands. The pages shifted. And something fell.
Something small.
Something light.
Something that had been tucked between the pages for who knew how long.
A single piece of paper slid out from between the pages and dropped to the floor.
It fluttered down like a falling leaf, spinning once, twice, three times before landing flat on the stone. The paper was old. Yellow. Folded into a small rectangle, no bigger than Adam's palm.
Adam's eyes sharpened instantly.
He froze for half a second, his mind processing what had just happened. Then he crouched lower, his knees almost touching the floor, and reached out.
He crouched—
Picked it up—
And froze.
His fingers touched the paper. His eyes looked at what was on it. And his whole body went rigid.
"…Holy… shit."
The words came out in a breath. Quiet. Shocked. Barely loud enough for his own ears to hear.
It wasn't just paper.
It was a map.
Old.
Detailed.
Massive in scale.
The paper was soft and brittle, like it would crumble if he squeezed too hard. But the ink on it was still dark, still clear, still sharp after all these years. Someone had drawn this map with incredible care, using lines so fine that they looked like spiderwebs.
Continents.
Unknown lands.
Strange markings.
Adam's eyes moved across the paper, trying to take in everything at once. There were landmasses he didn't recognize. Oceans that stretched on forever. Mountains and rivers and forests marked with tiny symbols that he didn't understand. And connecting it all, weaving through the land and across the seas, were lines that seemed to pulse with faint energy, even on the old paper.
Symbols he didn't fully understand—yet.
But one thing was clear—
This wasn't just the wizarding world.
This was something far bigger.
Far beyond Hogwarts.
Far beyond everything he thought...
His grip tightened slightly.
His fingers pressed into the edges of the paper, careful not to tear it, but firm enough to show that he wasn't going to let it go.
Without hesitation—
He folded it quickly.
His hands moved fast, creasing the paper along the same lines where it had been folded before. He had watched it fall. He had seen the pattern of the folds. He matched them exactly, tucking the corners in, pressing the edges flat.
Slipped it into his pocket.
The paper disappeared inside his robes, hidden against his chest, safe and secure.
Then placed the book back exactly where it was.
He reached out with his other hand, the one not holding the map, and slid the old book back onto the shelf. Behind the larger book. Against the back wall. Pushed all the way in until it touched the wood behind it.
Perfectly aligned.
Like it had never been touched.
He adjusted the larger book, pulling it forward slightly so it covered the old one. He brushed the dust on the shelf, spreading it evenly so no marks showed where the book had been removed. He stepped back and looked at the shelf. It looked exactly the same as when he had found it.
---
Footsteps echoed faintly in the distance.
They were coming from the main library. From the entrance. From the corridor outside. Multiple sets of feet. Three. Maybe four. Voices accompanied them, low and casual, students talking to each other as they walked.
Voices.
Getting closer.
Adam didn't wait.
He turned—
And ran.
His feet hit the stone floor in quick, silent steps. He moved like a cat, fast and quiet, weaving between the shelves of the restricted section. The blue flames flickered as he passed, casting strange shadows that danced across the walls.
Silent.
Fast.
His robes barely made a sound. His breath stayed controlled. His eyes stayed ahead, watching for obstacles, watching for the rope, watching for the exit.
Disappearing between the shelves before anyone could see him.
He reached the rope and stepped over it in one smooth motion. His foot landed on the main library floor without a sound. He kept moving, not slowing down, heading for the far end of the library, away from the entrance, away from the voices.
He slipped behind a tall shelf near the back wall and pressed himself against the books. His chest rose and fell. His heart beat fast against his ribs. But his face was calm. His hands were steady.
He waited.
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[ End of Chapter 43 ].
To Be Continued...
____
If you want to read more about my works or just to support me then here is my patreon:
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
_
If you liked this one. Cheek also my other stories:
[ Shadow Monarch in One Piece].
Patreon.com/Doflamingo4 .
__
Thank you all for reading...