The library was quiet in that uneasy way it sometimes got after dusk—too still, too heavy. Outside, thick clouds blotted out the last traces of sunlight, turning the tall glass windows into dull gray mirrors. A light drizzle pattered faintly against the glass, and the sound of the HVAC hummed like a tired machine breathing in the silence.
Tariq sat at a desk near the circulation counter, a small flash drive sticking out of his laptop. He wasn't studying anymore—not since he'd passed his Security+ exam two weeks ago. Now, he was the one people came to when computers acted strange or froze mid-update. The head librarian, Ms. Greaves, had asked him to help modernize the library's fragile network, and Tariq was more than happy to oblige.
"Give me a few minutes," he murmured as she wheeled by with a stack of books. "I'm isolating the admin profiles—should fix the login glitch and stop those permission loops."
Ms. Greaves smiled, the fluorescent light glinting off her glasses. "You're a lifesaver, Tariq. Those systems are older than our card catalog."
He chuckled, typing rapidly. "Then let's give them a twenty-first-century makeover."
Brandon appeared a few minutes later, sliding his backpack onto a nearby chair. "You in tech support mode again?" he asked, watching the lines of code scroll across the screen.
Tariq grinned. "Just patching up centuries-old security holes before someone uses them to download malware disguised as Shakespeare."
Brandon leaned on the desk, genuinely curious. "Show me what you're doing with the security protocols."
"Sure," Tariq said, pulling another chair over. For a while, the two worked quietly—Tariq running diagnostics and Brandon observing the process, occasionally asking sharp questions that proved he was paying attention.
But Brandon's mind wasn't entirely on the computer screen. He had come here for another reason. His recent episodes—if that's what he could call them—had started bleeding into his waking hours. Strange flashes. Shadows with form. Whispers in the silence. He told himself it was stress, or maybe something psychological. Still, something inside him wouldn't let go of the idea that what he was seeing was real.
When Tariq got absorbed in updating the firewall, Brandon slipped away toward the back shelves.
As Tariq remained assimilated with Firewalls, Event logs, and security updates he was snapped out of his trance by the chime of the door sensors.
Three people walked in together. Two men and one woman, dressed too sharply for a neighborhood library after dark. No umbrellas, despite the rain. Their clothes looked dry, immaculate—even their shoes didn't shine with a trace of water.
Tariq's fingers froze over the keyboard. Something about them instantly felt off.
The woman moved first, gliding past the desk without a sound. The two men followed, silent and watchful, eyes shifting in subtle unison as if they shared some unseen signal.
They weren't carrying books, or laptops, or even phones. They just moved through the aisles, slow and deliberate, their footsteps muffled by the carpet. The woman brushed her fingers along a shelf of old local history volumes, pausing once to tilt her head toward Tariq's direction before continuing.
He frowned. "Weird," he muttered under his breath.
"What was that, dear?" Ms. Greaves asked, not looking up from her cart.
"Uh—nothing," Tariq said quickly. He forced his focus back on the code, but his pulse had picked up. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see them moving again—splitting up now, one drifting toward the computer lab, the other two toward the back archives.
They didn't look like troublemakers, but they didn't look like they belonged, either. Their skin was pale under the flickering fluorescent lights, almost luminous in the gloom.
The local history section smelled of dust and ink, stacked with volumes no one had touched in years. Brandon trailed his fingers over cracked leather spines, searching keywords in his mind: New Ashara, phenomena, legends, witchcraft.
Eventually, he found an aging book with a plain crimson cover titled Myths and Cults of the Western Territories. Inside were fragile pages filled with hand-drawn sigils and marginal notes about ancient families rumored to have lived by "the moon's thirst."
He turned another page—and froze.
The same family crest he'd seen in a dream two nights ago appeared sketched in black ink, beneath a passage about nocturnal clans that fed on humanity's vitality.
The sound of footsteps reached his ears then—quiet, deliberate. Someone else had entered his aisle.
Brandon looked up to see a man standing at the end of the row. He was tall, dressed in dark, old-fashioned clothes. His hair was slicked back, his expression calm. For a moment, Brandon thought he was one of the three strange visitors who came in earlier with the others he'd glimpsed near Tariq's desk.
The man stopped, glancing at the book in Brandon's hands.
"That's a rare one," he said, his voice low but pleasant. "Not many people read local lore anymore."
Brandon smiled faintly. "Guess I've got a weird interest."
"Weird isn't so bad," the man replied. "Most of the world's truths used to be called that."
Brandon wasn't sure how to respond. There was something oddly formal about the man's tone—not old-fashioned exactly, but from another rhythm of speech. Still, the conversation flowed easily. They talked about myths, about how stories can survive in places long after the people who made them vanish.
After a minute or two, the man tilted his head toward the crimson book. "If that one interests you, there's another volume that complements it. On the far shelf—third row from the bottom. Talks about local rituals... and how they were mistaken for superstition."
Brandon nodded. "Thanks. I'll check it out."
The man smiled gently. "Enjoy your reading. Knowledge has a way of finding those who look for it."
Then he turned and walked away, boots making almost no sound. When Brandon glanced back up from the text, the man was already gone.
At the front of the library, Tariq was still at his laptop. He noticed movement near the exit and frowned. Only two of the visitors remained—the woman and another man. The third, the one who had been talking to Brandon, had just disappeared through the glass doors into the mist.
Brandon rejoined him, his expression uneasy. "One of them just talked to me."
Tariq looked up sharply. "And?"
Brandon hesitated. "Just… friendly small talk. But it felt strange. Like he was just waiting for me to say something specific."
They both looked toward the front doors. The lights above flickered once as the last two strangers drifted outside. The automatic doors closed behind them with a sigh.
For a moment, only the steady hum of Tariq's laptop filled the silence. Rain tapped lightly against the windows again. Brandon set the crimson book on the desk, its title faintly visible under the pale fluorescent glow.
"That wasn't normal," Tariq said eventually.
Brandon didn't answer right away. His eyes lingered on the dark doorway, as if expecting the man to reappear.
"No," he said quietly. "It wasn't."