Silence. Then—
"I may not be much different from the entity you are now keeping in your eye," Amilla says.
Kayden's fingers adjust his collar, still that Parisian student coat, still slightly wrong against the infinite shelves around them.
"You're definitely not a hungry, curious thing," he says, flat. "So what are you?"
Amilla stands motionless beside him. Dark green against endless paper. White hair catching light that has no source.
"I was human once."
A pause.
"The machine found me. Altered me. Gave me purpose." Another pause. "Protection. Of a higher dimension I couldn't see, from threats I couldn't name."
Kayden's hands drop to his pockets as he asks, "And now?"
"Now I'm looking." Her voice is calm. Always calm. "For what I was protecting. For what I was protecting it from. For why I was chosen."
She turns toward him—or rather, the blank space where her face should be turns toward him as he says, "That is what I am. A seeker wearing a guardian's shape."
Kayden watches her. Grey eyes empty. Processing.
"...Huh."
He turns back to the shelves. Starts walking.
"Good enough," His voice is casual, like he's asking about the weather. "But you say there is a higher dimension? What does that mean?"
"I don't know much." She pauses. "Only that it grants control. Over everything. Everything we are living in."
The orange light pulses closer and Kayden's eyes don't leave it.
Then, Amilla continues as she follows behind him, "The machine generated creature full of greed for transcendence quite easily, and they are all fixated on this one thing."
She adds, "I figured it must be a realm that sees everything below as fiction. Something to be imagined, written and rewritten."
Kayden walks to the very front of the Caravelle while softly saying, "I see, you are saying we are just characters in a book."
The bow meets the gray mist like a knife through silk. Below, black water swallows nothing. Above, the orange pulse waits, closer now, swelling, breathing.
The orange fills everything. The gray dissolves. The mist burns away. Just light now, deep and swallowing, the color of dying suns and unanswered questions.
Then, just before it consumes them, Amilla's voice cuts through, "This is to protect the freedom of everyone."
Kayden doesn't turn. Doesn't ask. Just lets the words settle somewhere behind his eyes.
The orange swallows them whole. Then, the light releases him.
He's now standing in a room that is large, too large. The kind of large that makes you wonder how many books you could fit, how many lifetimes it would take to read them all. Shelves line every wall, row after row, stretching from floor to high ceiling. Wood. Dark. Polished. The kind that's been here for centuries and will be here for centuries more.
Books fill every shelf. Leather spines. Gold lettering. Some new, some old, some so worn their titles have faded to memory. The air smells like paper and dust and something older, like knowledge left to breathe.
Warm light falls from somewhere above. Lamps? Windows? Doesn't matter. It's soft and gentle. The kind of light that makes you want to sit down and stay.
Kayden stands in the middle of it, hands in his pockets, grey eyes sweeping once, twice.
Then, pressure behind his eyes. Familiar.
Amilla's voice, flat and clear, "I will be clearing the entire place. Every creature the machine made. Every avatar hungry for transcendence."
Kayden blinks. He is alone. He starts walking.
The shelves stretch in every direction. They are tall, dark and patient. His footsteps echo against wood and paper.
He reaches out with his mind, feeling the familiar pulse of reality warping, the instinct to bend space, to summon, to change, but he finds nothing.
He tries again. This time harder and more focused. Still nothing.
He stops walking. His hands are still in his pockets. His face is still empty. But just for a moment, something behind his grey eyes flickers.
The library isn't blocking him. It's ignoring him. Like his power is a language this place doesn't speak. Like the rules here were written before anyone thought to include him.
He looks at a book on the nearest shelf. Plain cover. No title. He reaches out, pulls it free, flips through pages.
Words. Normal words. Nothing special.
He closes it. Puts it back. Then he speaks quietly, to no one, "R.K.T."
A pause. Warmth behind his eye.
"Still here, little nothing."
"My powers?"
"Gone."
"Yours?"
A chuckle. Layered. Dark.
"Mine are mine and no one takes them away."
Kayden nods. Just slightly.
"But I'm just a guy in a library."
"For now."
Another pause.
"...Huh."
He starts walking again.
On the other side of the library, Amilla floats, her dark green robes trailing behind her like smoke, her white hair drifting in a wind that touches nothing else. She moves above the shelves, silent and certain, scanning the rows below.
Hundreds of them pass beneath her. Thousands of books. Millions of pages.
She reaches a wall. It is solid and wooden. The boundary of this room, the threshold to the next, she believes.
She places her palms against it and closes her fingers into the grain. One second. Two.
Then she passes through by just continuing, like the wall was never there. Her reality warping bends the library's rules just enough to let her through.
She's faster now. Gliding through room after room after room. Each identical, each massive, each filled with shelves and books and silence. The rooms blur past. Walls become suggestions. Distance becomes irrelevant.
Then she stops when she notices something. Between two lengthy shelves, something moves. A creature. Not human-shaped. Not even close. A circular blob of pale flesh, tentacles extending from its underside like roots from a bulb. Each tentacle wraps around a book, lifts it, brings it close.
A small hole opens on its body, a mouth? an eye? and flashes light across the pages. The light flicks through the book in seconds. It is Absorbing, reading and learning.
The tentacles return the book to its shelf. Reach for another.
Amilla watches from above. Then, she flicks one finger.
The creature jerks, tentacles flailing, books scattering, yanked upward as if hooked by invisible thread. It hangs before her, suspended, trembling, a circular mass of pale confusion.
Her veil lifts. Just slightly. Just enough for a flash of green light from beneath to shoot out. Brief and absolute.
The creature goes still and her veil settles back into place.
"Seeks transcendence," she murmurs. "But at this pace? Never."
She flicks her wrist. A green fireball forms in her palm. It is small, dense, the color of old forests and deeper things. She tosses it casually. Almost bored.
The fireball hits the creature and spreads to every tentacle, every piece of its being, every flicker of awareness—gone. The fire erases it completely.
Amilla floats onward. Room after room. Creature after creature. Small things, hungry things, things that never had a chance, all which she flicks away like dust.
Then she enters a room and stops.
At the center stands a figure.
Tall. Impossibly tall. A body of pale marble stretched into proportions that shouldn't exist, limbs too long, torso too narrow, a neck that rises like a column toward a head that has no features at all. No eyes. No mouth. No nose. Just smooth, seamless flesh the color of bone bleached by sun that never touched it.
Yet it has presence. An aura radiates from its skin, a faint shimmer that makes the air around it thick and heavy. Like heat haze over desert. Like the moment before lightning strikes. It makes the pale surface seem alive, moving, breathing even though nothing moves at all.
Its arms are spread wide, commanding the floating books around it. Shelves tremble. Pages flutter. The library itself seems to lean toward it, waiting.
Then its head turns. Slowly. Deliberately.
It notices Amilla.
The wings begin to grow from its back—not flesh, not feather. Light. Pure light, condensing into shape, spreading wide, catching the room in long white beams. Each feather a blade of brightness. Each edge a promise.
Light gathers at its core. Builds. Focuses.
Point blank.
The beam fires—a column of white so intense it almost swallows the room, almost swallows Amilla, almost swallows everything.
Amilla doesn't block.
She moves.
Not teleporting. Just... faster. A blur of dark green that leaves afterimages fading as she reappears behind the creature, already in motion, already gone again.
The beam hits the far wall. Splashes against ancient stone. Does nothing.
The creature spins faster than something its size should move. Its wings slice through empty air where she was. She already moved
She's above it now. Floating. Watching.
Then, her gloved hand rises. A single droplet forms at her fingertip. Green. Dense. The color of old forests and older things.
She lets it fall.
Slow. Deliberate. Inevitable.
The droplet meets the creature's head.
For an instant, nothing.
Then—splash. Not explosion. Not fire. Just impact. The way a drop hits still water and scatters into a hundred smaller drops. The creature's body explodes outward in a wide circle, chunks of pale flesh raining against shelves, against books, against the floor.
Amilla watches. Waiting.
The chunks hit the ground. Roll. Stop.
Silence.
Then they move.
Crawling. Sliding. Pulling. Reforming. Reconnecting. Knitting back together like water finding its level. The creature rises from its own scattered pieces, whole again, wings flaring, light blazing from the crack that serves as its face.
It looks up at her.
Lifts off the floor.
Flies straight up. Fast. Hungry.
Amilla doesn't retreat. Doesn't flinch.
She simply extends her hand downward.
A cloud forms beneath her. Small at first—a wisp, a breath, a thought. Then it swells, darkens, spreads. Green at its edges. Black at its core. The color of storms that have never touched earth.
The creature flies into it. For a moment, nothing
Then the cloud rains.
Droplets fall, each green, dense, hungry in their own way. Sheets of them. Curtains of them. Judgment given form.
Each one that touches the creature's body: splash. Chunks scatter. Wings dissolve. Light dims. It tries to reform, tries to knit itself back together, but the rain falls too fast, too thick, too patient. Piece by piece. Drop by drop. Until nothing remains but a fine mist and the echo of hunger.
The cloud stills, hovering.
Amilla watches. Waiting. Then she flicks her wrist.
The cloud turns. Dark green to clear. Vapor to water. A flood pours from its center, gallons, tons, an ocean condensed into a single torrent. It crashes against the library floor, sweeps through shelves, covers every surface, fills the room to the brim.
The creature is gone. Whatever remained, whatever tried to reform, drowned in a room that shouldn't hold water. Water that doesn't just splash but makes things splash. Everything it touches comes apart.
Amilla floats above the still surface. Silent. Watching.
Then she raises her hand.
The water rises with it. All of it. Every gallon, every drop, every trace of the flood lifts from the floor, defying the library, defying sense, defying everything.
It gathers in her palm. Condenses. Compresses. Shrinks.
One sphere. Small. Dense. Green at its core. Floating just above her glove.
She closes her fingers around it. When she opens them again, it's gone.
She floats to the next wall. Passes through, then passes through another wall and then another. Room after room. All the same. Shelves. Books. Silence. No readers. No seekers. Just knowledge waiting to be found.
Then, someone. A figure in a dark cloak, hunched over a book at the end of a row. Reading. Still. Focused.
Amilla descends in silence. Gloved hand raised. The green sphere materializes before her palm, pulsing once, ready to lash out.
She lands behind the figure, only a breath away.
The figure turns, revealing graying beard. Messy. A face weathered by something that might be time, might be smoke, might be both. Eyes crinkle at the corners, not from age but from habit. From smiling at things that shouldn't be funny.
A cowboy bob haircut. The kind that belongs on a man who's never owned a horse but talks like he has.
He takes a slow drag from a cigarette. Lets the smoke curl between them.
Then he laughs. His voice low, warm, amused.
"Well now," Another drag. Another grin. "Didn't expect a welcome party."
He tips an imaginary hat when it's just his cloak.
"Name's Wyatt. And you, ma'am, are pointin' something at me that looks mighty unfriendly."
He doesn't look afraid. Just... delighted.
Amilla doesn't move. Just watches.
Wyatt tilts his head. Observes her through the smoke. Something in his eyes shifts to recognition, maybe. Memory.
Another chuckle. Softer this time.
"Amilla."
The sphere pauses. Doesn't disappear. Just... waits. Let's him take another drag.
"You don't remember me, do you?" A grin. "S'fine. Been a long time. Real long." He taps ash onto the library floor, doesn't care, won't care. "I'm the fella who made that big ol' imaginary horse. Rode you and a whole mess of others to the edge of the universe."
He chuckles again. Seems distant and fond.
"Was a sight. You sat up front. Never said a word. Just watched the stars go by like they owed you somethin'."
The sphere in Amilla's palm flickers. Then it disappears. She lowers her hand.
"Wyatt," she softly murmurs.
"There she is." He grins wide. "Took ya long enough."
Behind Amilla, shelves rustle and figures emerge. Large, purple and hunched like monkeys but wrong, too many joints and too many teeth.
They shuffle forward, cracked voices repeating the same phrase over and over, "Must reach up... must reach up... must reach…"
Amilla half-turns, hand rising.
But, Wyatt beats her to it.
His cloak falls open. A revolver gleams beneath, not metal, not quite. Dark iron laced with yellow essence that pulses like a heartbeat. The grip fits his palm like it grew there. The barrel catches light that doesn't exist.
He raises it. No hurry. No aim. Just... presenting.
One shot.
The crack isn't loud. It's final. A sound that doesn't echo because there's nothing for it to bounce off.
The first monkey-avatar ceases. Not dies but straight up ceases. Yellow light swallows it whole, then swallows the light it swallowed, then swallows the memory of both.
Second shot. Third. Fourth.
Each one, gone. No bodies. No ash. No evidence they ever existed.
Wyatt lowers the revolver. Spins it once before sliding it back under his cloak. Takes a drag from his cigarette.
Then exhales, "Damn things been clutterin' up the place for—"
"What are you doing here, Wyatt?"
Amilla's voice cuts through, quietly and directly. The tone of someone who doesn't have time for small talk about monkeys.
Wyatt blinks. Then laughs, low and easy, like he expected this.
"Fair question." He taps ash. "After the machine got its hands on me, didn't really give me much purpose. Just said... go explore. Read books. Whole cosmos to wander, whole library to sit in."
He shrugs. The cloak shifts.
"Ain't fond of the readin' part. Never was." A grin. "But what else can a fella do but force himself to enjoy it?"
He takes another drag. Lets the silence stretch.
Then, softer, "What about you, Amilla? What brings a lady like you to a place like this?"
She regards him for a moment. Then answers in the flat, direct way she does everything.
"Clearing the library. Every avatar the machine made. Every creature hungry for transcendence."
Wyatt's eyebrows lift. Smoke curls from his lips, "That so?"
He leans against a shelf. Crosses one boot over the other.
"Gotta tell ya, darlin'—there ain't no point."
Amilla says nothing.
"I looked." He gestures vaguely at the shelves around them. "I spent... I dunno how long. Long time."
He gestures vaguely at the shelves around them. "Went through more layers than I got words for. Kept goin' cause I figured there had to be an end. A top. A place where it all stops."
He taps ash.
"Even saw this big fella once. Monster the size of a moon, eatin' through room after room after room. Shelves, books, whole sections." He taps ash again. "Watched it for what felt like forever. Kept eatin'. Kept goin'."
A pause.
"Library's still here."
He meets her gaze, or tries to. Eyes sliding off that veil the way everyone's do.
"You can kill every avatar from here to tomorrow. Another one'll show up from somewhere you ain't been. Somewhere you can't get to." Another drag. "Infinity's got room for all of 'em."
Amilla is silent. Then, quieter, "I was altered to protect a higher dimension. From being accessed." A pause. "My Caravelle led me here."
Wyatt's grin softens. Almost sympathetic.
"Well now." Smoke curls. "That's a hell of a thing."
The shelves blur past. Room after room after room, all the same, all different, all library.
Kayden stops. His hand reaches out almost absently, pulls a book from the nearest shelf. Plain cover. Brown leather. No title. He flips it open.
The pages are filled with diagrams of landscapes. Hundreds of them. Different terrains, different angles. Mountains, trees and even absurd creatures. Page after page after page. Nothing else. Just a book on a domain based on fantasy world.
He stares at it, then he calls, "R.K.T."
A pause. Warmth blooms behind his right eye, familiar now, almost comfortable.
"Still here, little nothing."
Kayden closes the book and puts it back before his hand lingers on the spine of another book as he asks, "Why do you still have your powers and I don't?"
A layered chuckle. Dark. Amused.
"Because I'm half-fuel. You're just human."
Kayden waits. Fingers trace the edge of a shelf. Dust collects on his skin.
R.K.T. sighs, the sound of something ancient and hungry forced to play teacher.
"Half-fuel. Altered by the machine. Can't be killed. Can't be suppressed." A pause. Footsteps echo somewhere distant. "Powers are... us now, solidified because the machine decided we must exist in a way."
R.K.T. then lets out another layered chuckle, even darker and amused, "We are the absolute and self-sustaining fuel."
Kayden blinks and tilts his head. That familiar gesture, curiosity wearing the mask of emptiness.
"Fuel. I keep hearing it. What is it?"
R.K.T. goes quiet. Then a sound, not a sigh, not a laugh. Something in between. The noise something makes when it's asked to explain the obvious for the millionth time.
"You don't know."
"No."
Another pause. Longer.
And then R.K.T. laughs. Not his usual layered chuckle, something drier instead. More irritated.
"Of course you don't. Of course I have to explain this."
Kayden waits. Patient. Empty.
R.K.T.'s voice coils behind his eye, tight with exasperation.
"Fuel is what happens when something tries to kill a human and almost succeeds. Consciousness keeps going. Can't die. Won't die. So it just... floats. Energy. Want without form."
A pause before it continues, "Your mind can't comprehend shutting down, so reality warping steps in. Keeps you somewhere. Even if that somewhere is a battery."
Kayden processes. Dust settles on his shoulders.
"So humans can't die."
"Can't die." R.K.T.'s voice sharpens. "Can be turned into fuel. Can be altered into half-fuel. Can be erased conceptually. But the end? death? No. You are all too stubborn for that."
Kayden's hand stills on the shelf, he nods and then speqks, "The scavenger. The one that broke into my house. It died," then he asks, "What was it?"
R.K.T. hums. His voice is a low, layered sound. Almost approving.
"From what I saw in that pretty little head of yours?" Another pause. "Avatar. Generated by the machine. Nothing more."
Kayden waits.
"Avatars are killable." R.K.T.'s voice curls with something like disdain. "Insufficient consciousness. No self-sustaining state. The machine makes them, sure, but it doesn't make them real the way it makes half-fuel. The way humans are."
A beat.
"They're tools. Meant to be used. Meant to be broken." Another layered chuckle. "You broke one just fine."
Kayden says nothing. Just stands there between shelves, processing. Dust settles. Books breathe. Somewhere distant, footsteps echo.
"The Caravelle brought us here," he thinks. "It always leads to somewhere. Paris. Paris was a way to that Ancient Greece lookalike."
His eyes drift as he wonders, "Why? Why would the Caravelle lead us to those places and now here?"
After a moment of silence, Kayden asks in a flat tone, "R.K.T, you were at Zephyros's domain, observing him? Or waiting to kill him?"
R.K.T.'s voice comes out smooth but wrong, "I was observing him so I could break him," It pauses. "then eat him."
Kayden hears its voice coming from inside his head, always from inside like the space behind his thoughts.
"Until you came and did it for me,"
It pauses again.
"I couldn't resist."
Kayden nods and he thinks, "Caravelle led us to R.K.T. as if it knows this… half-fuel… would join me and come here… and help me?"
Kayden sighs and then flatly states, "There must be a connection between this library and the machine if the source code of the Caravelle is that it leads us right to where we need to be. This is where we need to be."
R.K.T.'s voice curls behind his eye, impatient and sharp.
"So what?"
A pause. Then darker, layered with something like contempt.
"You're trying to understand the machine, little nothing. You can't. It's outside time. Outside concept. Outside everything you have words for." Another pause. "You might as well ask a book to understand the hands that wrote it."
Kayden falls into a deeper pit of thoughts. His eyes fix on something. A spine, a shelf, a space between. Doesn't matter. He's not seeing the library anymore. He's seeing connections. Pieces clicking together behind that empty grey gaze.
R.K.T. watches from inside. Feels the silence stretch. Then, "You know what's funny, little nothing?"
Kayden doesn't respond. Doesn't move.
"You accepted that you are human deep down. Said thank you to me like it meant something." A layered chuckle. Dark. Amused. "Still alone, though. Still feeling empty."
Nothing.
"Takes more than a word to fill a void." The voice softens, not gentle, just closer. "Takes time. Takes people. Takes letting them in."
Still nothing.
"You don't know how to do that, do you?" A pause. "You've been alone so long you forgot doors open both ways."
Kayden's eyes don't move. Don't blink. Just stare at that fixed point between shelves.
Something shifts in the corner of the room. Small. Blue. An avatar that stunted, malformed, barely formed, lurches toward him, claws raised, hungry for something it can't name.
Kayden doesn't look.
The avatar turns to smoke. Mid-step. Mid-lunge. Just... fades. Like it was never there.
R.K.T. goes quiet. Then, a soft chuckle. Different this time. Not mocking. Almost surprised.
"Oh." A pause. "Merely suppressed."
Another pause. Longer.
"Of course nothing can ignore the reality bending will of existing."
Silence.
Kayden stands there, eyes still fixed on nothing, processing everything.
R.K.T. says nothing else.
The library stretches on. Room after room after room.
Amilla is beside Wyatt now, the cowboy leaning against a shelf with the ease of a man who's been leaning against things his whole life. Smoke curls from his cigarette, disappearing into the space between shelves.
He takes a long drag. Exhales slow.
"You know," he says, voice low and easy, "you're protectin' somethin' you don't know nothin' about."
Amilla says nothing.
"That higher dimension. The one you were made to guard." He taps ash. "You ever seen it? Talked to it? Got so much as a postcard?"
Silence.
"Didn't think so."
He pushes off the shelf. Turns to face her, or tries to. Eyes sliding off that veil the way everyone's do.
"You got no reason to do any of this. Never did." Another drag. "Just got told. Just got made. Just got pointed at a door and told to keep it shut."
He pauses. Studies his cigarette like it holds answers.
"
So tellin' you somethin'? That's the least I can do."
Amilla watches him. Still. Silent.
Wyatt meets her gaze, or tries to. Grins anyway.
Amilla tilts her head just slightly. A gesture that might be curiosity, might be confusion, might be something in between.
Wyatt catches it. Grins around his cigarette as he says, "Yeah, I see that look. You wanna know what I know." He taps ash. "Alright. Fair's fair."
Then he gestures vaguely at the endless rooms around them.
"Those avatar things you been beatin' up? They ain't got a chance. Not really. They could read forever, climb forever, chase transcendence till the stars burn out and they'd still be right where they started." He chuckles.
He takes a drag and exhales slowly while saying, "Half-fuels, though? Us?" He taps his chest. "We got what it takes. Could reach the top. Could find that higher dimension. Library bein' infinite or not, wouldn't matter."
Amilla keeps watching him silently.
Wyatt's grin fades. Just slightly.
"Problem is, some of 'em know that. The hungry half-fuels. The ones who didn't lose themselves quite enough." He shakes his head. "Been showin' up here. Wantin' to climb. Wantin' to transcend. Makin' a damn mess of the place, shatterin' rooms, tearin' through shelves, leavin' chaos everywhere they go."
Another drag.
"Me? I just wanna sit. Read. Smoke. Exist." He pauses. "So I been... helpin' 'em along."
A pause.
"Mislead a few. Misdirected a few. Made their search a little... harder." He winks. "They're still out there, somewhere. Lookin'. Never gonna find what they're lookin' for."
He tilts his head down.
"But they're still out there. Still lookin' and they might show up anytime."
Immediately after hearing that, Amilla turns. Her movement is subtle, just a shift of weight, a tilt of her robed form toward the endless shelves. Toward Kayden. Toward wherever he is in this infinite place.
Wyatt's hand lifts. Not grabbing. Just... presenting. A pause in the air between them.
"Hold on," he says.
She stops. Doesn't turn back.
He takes a slow drag. Lets the smoke curl.
"Whatever you're doin' here, with this place, with whatever plan's cookin' in that head of yours, you best do it fast." A pause. "Half-fuels are comin'. More than the ones I already sent astray. And when they get here, ain't nobody stoppin' 'em."
Silence settles between them like dust.
Amilla stands motionless. Her white hair drifts in a wind that touches nothing else.
Wyatt studies the glowing tip of his cigarette. The light catches the lines on his face, the gray in his beard, the something old and tired hiding behind his eyes.
Then, softer:
"You find it yet?"
She doesn't answer. Doesn't need to.
"Meanin'. Purpose. Whatever you wanna call it." He taps ash onto the floor—doesn't care, won't ever care. "Somethin' that makes all this—" his free hand sweeps out, taking in the shelves, the books, the centuries of solitude "—worth doin'."
Another pause. Longer. Heavy.
"Nah. Probably ain't."
He chuckles. Not mocking. Just... tired.
"But you will."
She turns slightly. Just enough. Just so he knows she heard.
Wyatt nods his head. The gesture is slow, deliberate, worn smooth by decades of repetition.
"Got faith in you, Amilla. Always did."
She floats forward.
Into the shelves. Into the shadows between the light. Toward wherever Kayden is standing right now, probably lost in thought, probably staring at nothing, probably waiting for her without knowing it.
Wyatt watches her go.
The smoke curls. The library breathes. The shelves close behind her like water over a stone.
He takes another drag.
Alone again. The way he likes it. The way he tells himself he likes it.
The library doesn't care either way. It watches as the endless structure it is. Its very good at watching. Its shelves stretches on.
Kayden walks. His footsteps make no sound against the dark wood. He passes row after row after row, each identical to the last, each different in ways that don't matter.
Some books are red. Some are brown. Some have titles in languages he doesn't recognize, alphabets that curl like smoke, words that seem to move when he isn't looking.
He doesn't look.
His hand reaches out. Pulls a book. Leather spine cool against his palm. He flips it open.
Pages filled with diagrams of cities he's never seen. Streets arranged in patterns that hurt to follow.
Buildings that couldn't exist anywhere except someone's imagination, which means they exist somewhere.
A domain. A world. A place where these streets are real and these buildings cast shadows and someone, somewhere, is walking them right now.
He closes the book. Puts it back. Pulls another.
This one holds faces. Hundreds of them. Portraits of people who lived and died and never were, all pressed between paper, all staring out with eyes that seem to track him.
Then he closes the book. Puts it back. Pulls another.
More landscapes. More faces. More worlds he'll never visit, more lives he'll never touch, more proof that the machine never stops imagining and the library never stops keeping.
He walks.
His mind is somewhere else. Everywhere else. Nowhere at all.
You still feel empty, little nothing.
R.K.T.'s words echo behind his eyes. Not loud. Not insistent. Just there, like a bruise he keeps pressing.
Accepting you're human didn't make you feel human.
He pulls another book. Skulls this time. Hundreds of them, drawn in careful detail, each labeled with names that mean nothing. He stares at a page of hollow eye sockets and closed jaws and wonders if any of them ever felt full.
Takes more than a word to fill a void.
He closes the book.
Takes time. Takes people. Takes letting them in.
He puts it back.
You don't know how to do that, do you?
His hand hovers over the next shelf. Doesn't pull.
You've been alone so long you forgot doors open both ways.
The silence presses in. The books breathe. Somewhere distant, pages turn themselves.
R.K.T. says nothing.
Kayden stands between shelves, hand still raised, eyes fixed on nothing, and for a long moment he doesn't move at all.
Then he pulls another book. Opens it. Reads.
The library watches. It's very good at watching.
Then, he feels presence.
Not sound. Not thought. Something between them. A weight behind his eyes that isn't R.K.T., isn't familiar, isn't anything he has words for.
"Kayden."
Amilla's voice. But wrong. Pressed directly into his skull like a brand, like a wound, like something that doesn't ask permission before entering.
"The library has infinite rooms. Stay in this room. Look around. Find something about the—"
The message shatters.
Not fades. Not ends. Shatters like glass breaking behind his eyes, like a door slammed shut mid-sentence, like whatever was speaking got cut off by something hungry and fast.
The force of it throws him off his feet causing his back hits the floor.
Books rain from nearby shelves, heavy, ancient, indignant. They land around him in clouds of dust and scattered pages. One spine catches his ribs. Another his shoulder. He doesn't flinch.
Just stares at the ceiling. The library's ceiling. High and dark and full of shadows that might be shelves, might be nothing, might be watching.
He lies there for a moment. Breathing. Processing.
"Find something about the—"
"About the what?"
He sits up slowly. Dust clings to his coat, his hair, his eyelashes. He doesn't brush it off.
Around him, the room sprawls in every direction. Larger than he realized. Larger than any room should be. Shelves stretch into distance that shouldn't exist, rows upon rows upon rows, thousands of books, millions of pages, too much.
He stands. Dust falls from his shoulders.
His eyes sweep the room once. Twice. Cataloging. Filing.
"Find something, huh?" Kayden murmurs.
He starts walking. Faster now. So fast that shelves blur past. Books blur with them. Yet, his mind races faster than his feet.
"Find something, find something, find something, she said," Kayden's mind repeats.
Row after row, turning corner after corner. His eyes sweep every spine, every title, every possible clue hidden in this endless room.
"Amilla sounded so urgent. Scared? She was made to protect some higher dimension. Maybe she wants me to find something about it here, urgently. She wants me to find something about the higher dimension?"
He turns sharply down another aisle. Books loom on either side. Thousands of them. Millions of pages.
"Or maybe the library itself is what I need to learn about because… the Caravelle led us here. Her ship. Her creation. Her purpose is to protect the higher dimension so if this place isn't part of whatever she's guarding, then why else would we be here?"
Kaydens thoughts grow impatient by every second.
He reaches the end of a shelf. Plants his foot to pivot around it, already scanning the next row, already calculating.
"I am curious. I want to know what this place is about. I want to know what truly is the dimension above this but above all, I want to know what is that machine that is causing all of this. The library. The higher dimension. The machine."
For a split second, he sees someone right before him, a figure, an unfamiliar one. And yet his mind thinks, "There must be… a connectio—"
And then, he collides with something soft.
His feet leave the floor. His body tilts. The world rotates in a confused half-circle before he lands flat on his back, arms splayed, staring at the ceiling for the second time in ten minutes.
Beside him, a smaller thump. A squeak. The rustle of falling papers.
Kayden blinks.
He turns his head.
A girl sits on the floor a few feet away, glasses askew. Wire-rimmed. Vintage. Her face is soft and rounded, fair-skinned, brows drawn together in confusion. Her hair is shoulder-length, thick and wavy, clipped to one side but is messy now, falling loose.
A book still clutched to her chest like a shield. She is definitely startled and very focused on him.
She stares.
He stares back.
His face does nothing. His grey eyes don't widen, don't narrow, don't change.
But something behind them, some cog in the vast empty cathedral of his mind, pauses before letting out a flat and quiet and perfectly Kayden:
"...Huh."