The Archive did not welcome them; it merely tolerated their presence, like a mountain tolerates the insects crawling over its roots.
The forest of stone pillars stretched into an impossible distance, each one a monolithic filing cabinet housing the forgotten records of a civilization that had been erased from the sunlit world. The air was unnervingly still, heavy with the scent of dried gall ink and the sour, metallic tang of aging parchment. Here, the "Tinta" was not a liquid but a pervasive dust that coated everything in a fine, grey film.
Kaelen walked with a measured pace, his iron staff clicking softly against the floor. Beside him, Elara moved with a fluid, silent grace that felt discordant against the backdrop of her previous injuries.
"The silence is worse than the screaming," Elara whispered. Her voice echoed, bouncing off the endless rows of pillars until it sounded like a dozen voices murmuring in the dark.
Kaelen didn't respond immediately. He was watching the way her shadow stretched across the white stone. It was too sharp, too precise. In a place where light was an intruder, shadows usually bled at the edges, blurred by the ambient magical interference. Hers remained as crisp as a silhouette cut from black paper.
"It's the silence of a grave that has already been looted," Kaelen finally said. He adjusted his grip on his staff, the violet flame atop his finger casting long, flickering shadows that danced between the pillars. "Everything in this level was meant to be cataloged. But look at the seals."
He pointed to a stone drawer in the nearest pillar. The wax seal, depicting a many-pointed star, was intact, but it was translucent, as if the magic inside had been hollowed out.
"They are empty," Elara noted, her eyes darting to the rows of drawers. "All of them?"
"Most. The Ziggurat doesn't just store knowledge; it consumes it. If a secret isn't guarded by blood or powerful resonance, the Archive digests it. We are walking through the skeletal remains of a library."
They continued deeper. The path between the pillars was a labyrinth of right angles and deceptive symmetry. Kaelen kept his internal map sharp, noting the slight variations in the star-charts etched into the ceiling. He felt the weight of the Tear of the Exile in his pocket—a cold, vibrating pressure that seemed to hum whenever they passed a particularly large pillar.
"You're remarkably calm for someone who just spoke to a ghost," Elara said. She was walking a half-step behind him now, her hand resting near the hilt of her remaining dagger.
"Panic is a biological luxury I cannot afford," Kaelen replied, his voice devoid of emotion. "The entity wasn't a ghost. It was a residual imprint, a shadow left behind by a mind too powerful to be fully erased. It was a puzzle, Elara. Nothing more."
"A puzzle that almost killed you."
"A puzzle I solved."
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. The rogue's shoulder, which had been shredded and blood-soaked when they met, was no longer seeping. The dark stain on her leather armor was dry, and she showed no sign of the limp she had earlier.
«The human body doesn't clot that fast in a high-Tinta environment,» Kaelen noted. «Magical radiation slows cellular regeneration unless...»
He didn't finish the thought. Instead, he stopped in front of a pillar that was different from the others. It was made of polished obsidian, dark as a moonless night, and it bore no drawers. At its base, sitting on a raised dais of bone-white stone, was a chest.
It was a simple construction of blackened iron and silver filigree, devoid of the monstrous ornamentation common in the upper levels. It sat in the center of a circular clearing, the pillars around it arranged like silent sentinels.
"A treasure?" Elara's voice held a note of genuine curiosity. She stepped forward, her movement eager.
"In this place, 'treasure' is a synonym for 'bait'," Kaelen warned, though he didn't stop her. He stayed back, his eyes scanning the floor for pressure plates or hidden runes.
The clearing was clean. Too clean. There was no dust here, no grey film of Tinta. The obsidian pillar behind the chest reflected the violet glow of his magic like a dark mirror.
Elara knelt before the chest. She reached out a hand, then hesitated, looking back at Kaelen. "No traps that I can see. No humming, no heat. It feels... cold. Like the rest of this tomb."
"Check the lock," Kaelen commanded.
As Elara leaned in, her face inches from the silver filigree, Kaelen moved closer, his staff held ready. He looked at the obsidian pillar, using its polished surface to see the angles he couldn't see from his position.
In the dark reflection of the obsidian, he saw himself—a pale, thin man in tattered robes, lit by a sickly violet light. He saw the chest. And he saw Elara.
But in the reflection, Elara's face wasn't focused on the lock.
The reflection showed her head turned toward him. Her eyes weren't the sharp, hazel eyes of the rogue he had known; they were two pits of shifting, liquid ink. Her mouth was open, stretching wider than any human jaw should, revealing rows of translucent, needle-like teeth that were beginning to grow from her gums.
Kaelen's heart didn't skip a beat; it went cold, a surge of adrenaline sharpening his senses into a singular point of focus.
He didn't look at her directly. He kept his gaze on the reflection, watching as her hand—the one supposedly checking the lock—moved with unnatural slowness toward her belt. But she didn't reach for her dagger. Her fingers were lengthening, turning into obsidian talons that mimicked the shape of a blade.
"It's not locked," the thing that looked like Elara said. Her voice was a perfect mimicry, but in the silence of the clearing, Kaelen could hear the wet, gurgling undertone—the sound of air bubbling through thick fluid. "It's just... waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Kaelen asked softly. He shifted his weight, centering his gravity.
"For a new story to be written," she replied.
In the reflection, the doppelganger lunged.
Kaelen didn't turn. He reacted to the image in the obsidian. He slammed the butt of his iron staff into the floor, not to attack, but to trigger a localized burst of kinetic energy—the same Pulsus spell he had used on the bridge, but focused entirely on the ground behind him.
The shockwave erupted.
The doppelganger, mid-leap, was caught in the blast. It let out a sound that was less of a scream and more like a bag of wet glass breaking. It was launched backward, tumbling across the white stone.
Kaelen spun around, his violet flame flaring into a blinding white-hot torch.
The creature that stood up was no longer Elara. The disguise was melting, the "skin" dripping off its frame like hot wax. Beneath the dissolving leather and flesh was a humanoid shape made of shifting, viscous ink. It had no eyes, only the memory of a face, and its limbs were too long, ending in the jagged talons he had seen in the mirror.
"Where is she?" Kaelen's voice was a low growl.
The creature tilted its head, its "skin" bubbling as it struggled to maintain a coherent form. It spoke, but the voice was a chaotic jumble of every person Kaelen had ever met—Valia, Jarek, his mentors at the Tower.
"The rogue... was... delicious," it gurgled, the ink on its chest pulsing. "So much... fear. So much... memory. I am... her now. And I... will be... you."
It lunged again, moving with a blurring speed that defied the laws of physics.
Kaelen didn't retreat. He reached into his robe and gripped the obsidian necklace. It was still cold, still recharging, but he didn't need it to turn him invisible. He needed its weight. He swung his staff in a wide arc, the iron whistling through the air.
—"Ignis... Fragor!"—
He didn't just cast a light; he detonated the violet flame at the tip of his staff. The explosion was small but intense, a flash of high-frequency magical heat that seared the air.
The ink-creature shrieked as the heat struck its fluid body. Tinta was a liquid; heat was its enemy. The creature's form began to boil, steam rising from its shoulders as it skidded to a halt, its obsidian claws scraping the stone.
"You are nothing but a scavenger," Kaelen said, his eyes cold and pitiless. "A Mimic born from the waste of this Archive. You didn't eat Elara. You found her remains and stole her shape. If you had truly consumed her, you would have known that she never calls me 'Mage'."
The creature hissed, its form destabilizing further. One of its arms turned into a whip of black fluid, lashing out at Kaelen's head. He ducked, the ink-whip shattering a chunk of a nearby stone pillar.
Kaelen realized he couldn't win a war of attrition. His mana was low, and the Mimic was made of the very substance that filled this room. He looked at the chest—the one the creature had been using as bait.
«If this is a scavenger, it wouldn't be guarding a chest unless the chest was the source of its power,» Kaelen hypothesized.
He didn't attack the creature. He lunged for the chest.
"NO!" the Mimic screamed, its voice suddenly becoming a deafening, distorted roar.
Kaelen reached the chest. He didn't look for a key. He raised his staff high and brought it down with every ounce of strength he had left, channeling his remaining mana into a single, crushing point of force.
The iron staff struck the lid.
The silver filigree shattered. The iron lid groaned and buckled, and for a split second, the interior of the chest was revealed.
It wasn't filled with gold. It wasn't filled with scrolls.
Inside the chest was a beating, blackened heart, encased in a cage of crystal. It was the "Core" of this section of the Archive—the source of the Tinta that sustained the mimics and the pillars.
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He thrust the tip of his staff into the crystal cage.
—"Nihil!"—
A pulse of void energy—the absence of magic—shot from the staff. It was a spell designed to cancel out mana, a scholar's tool for deactivating rogue enchantments.
The crystal cage didn't break; it imploded.
The blackened heart let out a final, wet thud and dissolved into a puddle of stagnant ink.
Across the clearing, the Mimic froze. Its body began to lose its cohesion, the viscous ink falling away from its "skeleton" in heavy clumps. It tried to reach for Kaelen, its hand turning into a spray of droplets before it could even get close.
Within seconds, the creature was gone. All that remained was a large, oily stain on the white stone and a pile of shredded, blood-stained leather—the real Elara's armor.
Kaelen stood over the broken chest, his chest heaving, his staff trembling in his hand. The violet flame was gone, leaving him in a darkness so thick it felt like he was drowning.
He reached into the puddle of ink inside the chest and felt something solid. He pulled it out.
It was a small, leather-bound book. Not the Grimoire—it was too thin for that—but a logbook. On the cover, written in the same silver ink as the star maps, were the words:
[The Ledger of Lost Souls: Lower Level - Section 4]
Kaelen slumped against the obsidian pillar, the cold stone pressing against his back. He was alone now. Truly alone. No mercenaries, no scouts, no meat shields. Just a scholar in a tomb, holding a book of the dead.
He opened the ledger. The first name on the page was Valia. Beside it, a single word was written in a elegant, flowing script:
EXPIRED.
Kaelen closed his eyes for a moment, the weight of the Ziggurat pressing down on him. Then, he opened them, the cold grey of his iris reflecting the dim, dying light of the stars above.
"Logic," he whispered to the dark. "Analyze. Observe. Survive."
He stood up, tucked the ledger into his robes, and began to walk deeper into the Archive, his footsteps the only sound in a world that had forgotten how to speak.