Kaelen didn't have to wait long. But in the silence of the dying world, ten minutes felt like ten years.
He crouched on the second-floor balcony, his body pressed deep into the shadows of a massive oak bookshelf. The wood smelled of polish and age—a sharp contrast to the metallic tang of his own fear sweat. He wiped his palms on his trousers, gripping the handle of his chipped knife until his knuckles turned white.
Focus, he told himself. Don't count the seconds. Count the breaths.
Below him, the atrium was a masterpiece of peace. Dust motes danced in the golden light. The green vines climbing the marble pillars seemed to be holding their breath. It was a scene from a fairy tale, about to be shattered by a horror movie.
The rhythm of the siege changed. The heavy thud-thud-thud of the battering rams against the outer barrier stopped. The chanting—that low, droning buzz that sounded like a hive of angry hornets—died down.
Then came the mechanical grinding of heavy wheels on stone.
Kaelen peered through the gap in the bookshelf. Through the high windows of the dome, he could see the golden barrier flickering. It was pulsing violently, like a dying heart, struggling to pump light into the void.
Then, he heard the sound.
It started as a high-pitched whine, barely audible. Then it grew. It wasn't a mechanical sound; it was the sound of the universe screaming. It vibrated in Kaelen's teeth. It made the glass of the display cases rattle.
ZZZZZTTT.
The Void Lance.
BOOM.
The explosion wasn't fire. There was no heat, no flame. It was pure Force. It was the physical manifestation of Rejection.
The golden barrier didn't just break; it was deleted. One second it was there, a holy shield against the dark. The next, it dissolved into a fine mist of harmless, glittering light that drifted away in the wind like dandelion seeds.
[ SYSTEM ALERT ] [ SANCTUARY BARRIER: CRITICAL FAILURE ] [ REGIONAL AUTHORITY: UNSTABLE ] [ THE SILENCE IS ENTERING ]
The warning text flashed red in Kaelen's vision, jagged and urgent.
The massive wooden doors of the Library—oaken slabs that had stood for centuries, reinforced with iron bands and ancient warding scripts—groaned. They bowed inward.
CRASH.
The doors flew open, blasted off their hinges by the sheer pressure of the Void rushing in. One of the heavy slabs skidded across the marble floor of the atrium, smashing into the reception desk and turning it to splinters.
The spell was broken.
The warm, golden air of the library was instantly polluted. Gray fog rolled in like a tidal wave, carrying the stench of ozone, rot, and cold ash. The temperature in the room plummeted twenty degrees in a second.
And with the fog came the Silenced.
They didn't charge in screaming. They didn't run.
They poured in like a black oil spill.
Men in heavy, scavenged coats reinforced with scrap metal. They wore boots wrapped in rags to muffle their footsteps. And every single one of them wore a white porcelain mask.
Kaelen counted them, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
They fanned out with practiced, military efficiency. They checked corners. They checked the ceiling. They moved in perfect silence, communicating with hand signals that looked more like tics than language.
More than he could fight. More than he could trick.
Then, the soldiers parted. They lowered their heads in reverence.
A man walked in last.
He wasn't wearing a mask. He didn't need one. His face was the mask of the apocalypse.
He wore a priest's robe, but the fabric was wrong. It was patchy, uneven. It took Kaelen a moment to realize it was made of stitched-together squares of cured human skin. Some patches were pale, some dark, some tattooed.
The man's face was gaunt, the skin gray and tight against his skull. His eyes were wide, unblinking, the whites completely bloodshot with the madness of fanaticism.
But it was his mouth that froze the blood in Kaelen's veins.
His lips were sewn shut.
Thick, gold thread had been driven through his upper and lower lips in a crude cross-stitch pattern. In the center, the stitches had been cut to allow a small, ragged hole for breathing, but the scars remained—white, jagged lines where the flesh had been torn and healed over and over again.
[ TARGET IDENTIFIED ] [ NAME: Valerius ] [ FACTION: The Silenced (Leader) ] [ THREAT LEVEL: FATAL ]
Valerius stepped onto the marble floor. He looked around the atrium.
He looked at the golden sunlight filtering from the ceiling—a mockery of the gray sky he worshiped. He looked at the green trees growing in the planters—abominations of life in a dead world. He looked at the rows of books—records of a noisy, chaotic humanity that deserved to be forgotten.
He looked disgusted.
He raised a hand. His fingers were long, skeletal, the nails black with dried blood.
He made a sharp chopping motion.
Destroy it.
The soldiers moved.
Three of them headed for the nearest bookshelf. They pulled out incendiary torches—green chemical fire that hissed as it ignited, burning even without oxygen.
"No," Kaelen whispered, his voice trembling.
He couldn't let them burn it. This wasn't just a building. It wasn't just paper and ink. It was the Memory of the World. If this place burned, the human race didn't just die; it was never here.
He looked at his trap.
The spiral staircase to his left.
A squad of five soldiers was moving toward it, heading for the upper levels to secure the high ground. They moved with heavy, stomping steps, confident in their numbers.
The lead soldier was a brute, carrying a massive sledgehammer made from a concrete block welded to a steel pipe. He grabbed the wooden railing to haul himself up the first step.
Kaelen took a deep breath. He focused his mind. He didn't need to cast a spell. The spell was already cast. He just needed to trigger it.
Break, he commanded silently.
[ AUTHORITY ACTIVATED ] [ DENIAL: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY (SNAP) ]
The soldier put his full weight on the railing.
CRACK.
The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room.
The wood didn't just break; it exploded. Under the influence of Kaelen's Authority, the molecular bonds of the wood simply gave up. The railing turned to dry dust.
The soldier pitched sideways, his balance gone. He flailed, his arms windmillling, trying to grab his comrades.
"Hrk!" he grunted—the only sound he made.
He slammed into the man behind him. The stairs were narrow, designed for librarians, not armored soldiers.
The entire squad dominoed.
They tumbled off the side of the exposed staircase, falling fifteen feet to the marble floor below.
CRUNCH.
The sound of breaking bones and bending metal echoed through the library. It was a wet, ugly sound.
The Cultists froze. Every single head in the atrium snapped upward. Sixty eyes locked onto the shadows of the second floor.
"UP THERE!" one of them shouted—his voice muffled and distorted by the mask.
Thirty weapons raised.
Thirty black barrels pointed at the second-floor balcony.
Kaelen threw himself flat.
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.
The air filled with lead.
Bullets chewed up the bookshelf he was hiding behind. Paper exploded into confetti. Leather bindings were shredded. Splinters of wood rained down on Kaelen's trench coat. A shard of oak grazed his cheek, drawing a thin, hot line of blood.
The noise was deafening. The silence of the library was murdered by the roar of automatic fire.
Kaelen crawled on his stomach, moving fast. He couldn't stay in one spot. If he stopped, they would pin him down. If they pinned him down, Valerius would peel him apart slowly.
He reached the edge of the balcony, near the heavy brass chandelier he had loosened earlier.
Below him, a group of Cultists was clustering, reloading their weapons, preparing to rush the stairs.
Kaelen reached out and grabbed the rusted chain holding the chandelier. The metal was cold, vibrating from the gunfire.
He closed his eyes. He pictured the chain in his mind. He pictured the link holding it.
Weak, he thought. You are too weak to hold this.
[ DENIAL: CONNECTION ]
PING.
The chain snapped.
The chandelier—five hundred pounds of brass, crystal, and iron—dropped like a meteor.
It didn't scream as it fell. It just whistled.
The Cultists looked up too late.
CRASH.
It hit the center of the group.
The impact shook the floor of the entire atrium. Three Cultists were crushed instantly, their bodies flattened under the twisted metal. Two more were knocked down by the shockwave, peppered with sharp shrapnel from the shattering crystals.
Dust billowed up, blinding them. The screams of the wounded were cut short as they remembered their vows of silence, turning into choked whimpers.
The firing stopped.
Valerius stood amidst the chaos. He didn't flinch. He didn't look at his dead soldiers. He looked up at the balcony, his eyes locking onto the spot where the chandelier had fallen from.
He took a deep, rattling breath through the hole in his sewn lips.
"Anomaly," Valerius hissed.
His voice was a dry, rasping sound, like sandpaper rubbing on bone. It carried an unnatural weight, amplifying in the room without shouting.
"A rat in the holy silence," Valerius said, tilting his head. "Find him. Do not shoot him. Flay him. Remove his tongue first."
Kaelen didn't wait to hear the rest.
He was already moving. He sprinted toward the rear of the library, toward the dark corridor leading to the Infirmary and the Archives.
He had bought time. He had drawn blood. He had proven that this place had teeth.
But now they knew he was here. And they were angry.
He slid into the shadows of the corridor, pressing his back against the cool stone wall. He checked his breathing. It was ragged, shallow. His hands were shaking, the adrenaline crash hitting him hard.
[ SYSTEM UPDATE ] [ AUTHORITY: 25% (DRAINING) ] [ ENEMIES NEUTRALIZED: 8 ] [ ENEMIES REMAINING: 44 ] [ STATUS: HUNTED ]
He checked his knife. The blade was chipped, but sharp.
He wasn't the prey anymore. He was the hazard. He was the glitch in their perfect, silent system.
"Come and get me," he whispered into the dark.