I stayed on the library floor longer than I should have.
My knees ached against the boards, my palms still stinging from the fall, but I couldn't make myself stand. I kept staring at the book lying in front of me. Its black cover swallowing the low light, its edges worn soft with age, its surface giving nothing away.
My mother had told me a little about it once. She said some believed it was written by angels. That it chronicled the beginning of the world, the long unraveling of it all before the war, the clash between gods, the last true record of what had come before.
But stories were all I had ever known.
I had never expected to hold it.
I scanned the library in both directions, making sure Rya wasn't nearby, before pushing myself off the floor. The aisles were empty. The library stretched around me in eerie silence, and the towering shelves cast long shadows that made the room feel colder than before.
The book remained where it had fallen.
