Archive: Library Catalog Entry

Realm: Aitherion

Institution: The Enchanted Library

Written by: Lyr-Ves, Curator of the Seventh Vault

Record: Self-Inscribing Codices, Daily Batch 44

No courier. No portal flare. No warning chime from the threshold wards. At the third bell, ten codices appeared on the intake table as if they had always been there, and the room had just then agreed to notice them. The table’s lacquer frosted in a perfect rectangle around each codex, and the frost did not melt. Each one was dry. Each one smelled faintly of the place it claimed. See listed below:

Pelagor’s Prophecy Fragment - with Margins (human)

Confectioner Court Inventory (sugarborn)

Greenwitch Journal Leaflet (human-spirit)

Dukes’ Letters - Ferren to Wellington (human)

Missing Persons Report - Unfinished (human-spirit)

Blood-Ink Dispatch (orc)

The Mad Orc King’s Proclamation (orc)

Gullwake Patrol Log (merfolk)

Council Decree of The Nine Currents (merfolk)

A Melancholy Monarch’s Lament (sugarborn)

Curator’s Notes:

The codices rearranged themselves into chronological order without being touched.

The blood-ink dispatch darkened its lettering when held near candlelight.

The merfolk log wept saltwater when opened, then dried instantly.

The sugarborn pages put a sweetness in the air that soured within seconds.

These records behave like evidence in a trial that the realms are losing, filed by witnesses who do not know they are witnesses.

Relocated set to Crownward Shelf V.

Signed,

Lyr-Ves

Curator’s Post-Script:

Mount Llewellyn’s crown-line shimmered that night, just before the records arrived. The human monastery below it reported a “star-silence,” meaning the sky was clear and gave no sense of distance or direction. The Draconic Eyries remain unvoiced to us. The silence is not reassuring.

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Pelagor’s Prophecy Fragment - with Margins

Realm: Human

Written by: Grand-Wizard Pelagor

Condition of Codex: fragmented; edges burned; letters slightly raised like scar tissue.

[fragment begins mid-line]

When the sky shows its seams, do not stare there.

The seam learns your gaze and tugs you back.

[ink smear, then the same hand, harsher pressure]

Mirrors keep your face after you leave.

Sweetness turns bitter mid-chew.

Strangers won’t give their names.

Strangers know yours without being told.

Do not give your name to Strangers.

[tear through the page, words missing, then:]

Seek your true nature proudly.

Seek the steed left behind.

Seek the humble blade-wielder.

Seek the gems that hold life in places forgotten.

[burned edge, letters warped, then:]

The Veil is not a curtain. It is its own realm that leads with silence, then conquers.

It will arrive as its own army. It will end as a better version of your last thought.

If your realm freezes out of season, it is under siege.

It is being rewritten from the borders inward, sentence by sentence, season by season.

Marginalia

Written by: Wizard-Acolyte Arcticus

It is vital that the realms see the seams, document, and communicate. Panic is useless, and silence is worse.

Freezing snowfall should be taken seriously. Cold may be an instrument, I will research in mountain places.

Avoid mirrors in auspicious places. Unsure what is meant by “sweetness.”

Steed and blade-wielder: account for all warhorses and wandering knights. Do not assume coincidence of meeting.

“Gems” may be literal. Rumors persist of gems that contain life force. The only one known to Pelagor was on top of Mount Llewellyn.

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Confectioner Court Inventory

Realm: Sugarborn

Written by: Porrin, Sugar Clerk to the First Court

Winter, Week 3

STOCK COUNT:

Crystallized violets: 14 jars (edges turning grey)

Honeyed apricots: 2 barrels (taste like metal)

Peppermint glass: 33 shards (sounds like sharpening at night)

Marshmallow fluff: 9 sacks (spoiling, producing black threads)

Caramel ropes: 18 coils (stiffened into wire)

Candied citrus peel: 1 left (others found as ash)

Sugar: 112 pounds (texture: sand, smell: soil)

Note appended:

If my Court is to fall first, it will fall brutally.

Our sweetness rots not by age, but by theft. We boiled it to soften it, and the cauldrons froze. We prayed to the First Confectioner, and the prayers turned bitter on the tongues of my servants, as if the words were being taken and chewed by the unseen.

Something is learning our recipes from inside our mouths. Worse, it forgets us with our own ingredients, our own recipes.

Notify the other Confectioner Courts. Notify the Marshmallow King, especially. If there is any softness left in this realm, it must become a shield to the rot.

//Signed//

The Licorice Queen of the First Court

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Greenwitch Journal Leaflet

Realm: Human - Spirit

Written by: The Green Witch, Thalia

They think the Ghostwood is only a forest. It is a hinged door.

We are human-blooded, descendants, yes. Our rites are older than the Low Kingdom’s lost crown and older than the war that pretends it is the first war. We do not “cast spells” like the nobles whisper. We keep agreements. Roots, rivers, boundaries. A promise is a stronger ward than a sword, if you keep it.

Tonight, the barrier thinned again at the Grand Oak, the one that drinks from both sides.

Rites performed:

Iron nail into the root-knot, where the Grand Oak was scarred long ago.

(The scar is a mouth that never closes).

Salt scattered counterclockwise inside the standing stones.

Covered the stones with a green bough of vines, flowers, and leaves.

(Given willingly from forest life.)

Ash breathed like prayer into the circle of stones and oak.

The air smelled like wet leaves and open earth when I finished. The birds stopped mid-call, as if their sound had been cut off. A boy-shaped thing watched me from the other side. It was still, not yet decided to cross. Eyes blue and sharp as river ice. Focused and awake.

I did not speak to it. It smiled anyway, like it recognized me, and left.

If anyone warns you, “don’t go into the woods,” hear what they mean.

They mean: don’t give the woods your name.

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Dukes’ Letters - Ferren to Wellington

Realm: Human

Written by: Duchess Ferren, Ironvale Dominion

Written to: Duke Wellington, Meadowvale Marches

Duke Wellington,

You will call this superstition. I am calling it poor measurement. Either way, it is real.

The southern ore-lines are singing at night; this is not a metaphor. A low vibration was detected in the smelters, as if the ore wants to climb out. When my engineers pressed an ear to the forge-mouth, they swore they heard a second rhythm beneath, a regular and patient hammering.

Three smithing apprentices claim they saw cross-stitchwork in the sky above the ridge. They reported thin, bright green lines, as if someone had pulled a needle through the dark and left the thread showing. I questioned them separately. Their accounts match too well to dismiss.

Before you accuse me of inviting sorcery, understand this: like you, I do not keep mages. I do not trust them. You dislike magic, and I dislike magic, but we both like winning wars and surviving winters. If the world is changing, it will be studied, mapped, and engineered into submission.

You have the Crossroads Valley. Your men carry my steel into battle at the Shattered Marches. Your roads touch the Ghostwood and Mount Llywellyn, both. If the stitches in the sky loosen anywhere first, it will be above your fields, above your border stones, above the places where the war has worn the land thin.

If you can, send me your best ranger. Or your best knight. Just send someone who can track footsteps in the dark and still tell the truth when everything else fails.

Also, tighten your courier protocols. We intercepted a “merchant” near my northern border, smiling like he wore his face as a mask. He warned us not to go into the woods. He said it three times, like an incantation, then refused to give his name.

When my guards reached for him, the air around him pinched, like two pages pressed together, and he was simply gone. The space where he had been smelled of damp, sour bark and cold, rusting iron.

Close your northern path near Ghostwood. We’ve long closed ours.

By my hand,

Isolde Ferren

Duchess of Ironvale Dominion

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Missing Persons Report - Unfinished

Realm: Human - Spirit

Written by: Ranger-Captain Torr Hale of Meadowvale

Status: UNSENT. Found folded inside a lone boot.

Case: Two missing villagers, last reported near the birch markers, Eastern Ghostwood.

Rangers: 1 Captain Hale, 1 Novice Vess

Weather: bone-cold (not winter)

The birch markers had moved from where I last remembered. Does not make sense, but I feel it’s true in my teeth.

Vess’ lantern flame turned green for one full minute, then a hue of purple. Thalia, the Green Witch, warned us of this. I ignored her.

The missing villagers’ footprints grew lighter as we tracked them; the ground was refusing their weight, the earth wanted them gone.

We crossed into something bad without meaning to. One step was normal. The next step, our boots slowed in the mud. The air thickened until our breath came out slowly. The trees then looked like bones pretending to be trees. Something hung from those in the distance that I dare not describe.

A figure approached us, wearing a massive antler crown. It was tall and slim. Its face shifted between familiar features, as if trying on memories. It then asked us politely if we were lost.

I ordered Vess not to answer it, not to give it her name, not to make eye contact, and to follow my boot steps exactly.

Then I heard my own name in my head, spoken in the voice of someone I missed. I looked at Vess, who had obviously heard it too. Despite my orders, she turned to the antler crown. Confused. Soft. Like a child hearing a parent call.

She answered. “Yes.”

The figure laughed softly, like it had won something small and precious.

The bony trees leaned in.

My boot slipped off in the mud as I attempted to dart towards Vess.

We both fell into a place where the sky was b———

End report.

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Blood-Ink Dispatch

Realm: Orc

Written by: Grath, Warchief of the Split Tusk Clan

Written to: The Marble-Drum Council of Four

Fellow Council Chiefs,

I do not write this lightly… Some of my scouts are gone, to be clear, they are not dead—they are gone, missing.

I sent six to watch the border stones in the Shattered Marches. Only two returned. The two who returned came back smiling wrongly. They had enough sense and voice left to tell me that their brothers were ‘‘taken by the mud’’. Then they looked past me in silence, as if I were smoke. They have not recovered and were taken to my Shamans.

As you know, our Shamans do not often throw fire in battle as old tavern tales claim. They do keep us fed. They do keep us moving with strength. They keep us alive while iron and hunger do the killing. They also smell the future before it bites us…

Now they tell me that something cold walks near the border stones of the Marches. They call it the Bitter One, and they say that its footsteps alone will pull the orcs down.

Last night, the fires burned low. My elites and I followed the missing scouts’ path, hoping for blood or bodies, rather than nothing. When we arrived at the stones, we found a boy. He looked orcish enough, but his skin was cold, and his hair was white. He asked me directly for water. I gave it. The water froze in his throat. Then he fell backward into the largest stone, as if it were just a curtain. Blood spilled first, then he vanished. The stone did not crack. It just swallowed him.

This is not battle-magic. This is not human-magic. This is doom-magic that empowers something to rearrange the function of realms and laugh at our boundaries.

Heed my warning: the clans must unite under one banner again, the banner of my father Garthuun, the banner of the Twin Tusks, against the Bitter One. I do not crave a crown; I will not be a king. War means nothing if the ground itself becomes a door to doom.

Warchief Grath

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The Mad Orc King’s Proclamation

Realm: Orc

Spoken by: Varkuun, Warchief of the North Ruins

Spoken to: The North Ruin Clan

I AM KING OF THE EMPIRE THAT SHOULD HAVE WON

THE VEIL WHISPERS THE TRUE HISTORY INTO MY BONES

IT SAYS WE WERE CHEATED

IT WILL OPEN DOORS THAT ARE SEALED

IT WILL INVITE THE STRANGERS WHO SERVE US

I WILL LEAD WITH MY CROWN HIGH

THE REALMS WILL SEE IT FROM THE RIGHT SIDE

GO TO THE GHOSTWOOD

THE WOODS WILL LEARN YOUR NAME

THAT IS HOW YOU BECOME IMPORTANT

NO MAN, CREATURE, OR ORC WILL CHALLENGE US THEN

I WILL PULL UNTIL THE SKY COMES APART LIKE OLD LEATHER

THEN BRING ME THE BLOOD OF OUR ENEMIES

THEN BRING ME TRIUMPH

FOR I AM KING OF THE HALLS THAT REMEMBER THE EMPIRE.

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Gullwake Patrol Log

Realm: Merfolk

Written by: Reef-Captain Soryn of the Gullwake

Location: Abyssal Shelf

Date: Cold-Tide, Day 19

Visibility is poor, even in clear water. Light behaves as if it is ashamed of being seen.

At the Shelf, we observed pale tendrils rising from the cliff face in unison, against current and against reason. Not kelp. Not jelly. Not any known spawn-thread. They moved with purpose, and underwater, that is never a good sign.

We encountered the first sighting of Veil Haunts (long banished) in a millennium. These are not simple creatures. They are absences shaped like merfolk. Their edges are stitched bright green and sickly. They speak without mouths. The sound is not heard so much as remembered.

Despite the current that pulls water and creatures into the Abyss, the Veil Haunts climbed out of it and fully onto the Shelf where we were. They had moved as if the sea had forgotten its rules.

We harpooned one in fear. The harpoon passed through it, yet the line went taut. Crewman Leth opened his mouth to shout, but his voice never came. Only bubbles came from his throat. He lives, now mute, and when he tries to speak, his throat is briefly covered in frost.

During our retreat, frost formed on the hull of my skipper, the Gullwake, which caused it to shake like an angry living thing as we pushed off and made way to the nearest current that would take us away from the Shelf. The abyss-born Veil Haunts pursued us with great speed until the current assisted the Gullwake’s momentum and carried us into safer waters. The stitched green light of their outlines remained visible behind us for far too long, like a grin that refused to fade.

Recommendation to the Council: no patrols near the Shelf without a Tide-priest aboard. Or none at all. Also, forbid speaking there… The Abyss now carries the voices down.

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Council Decree of The Nine Currents

Realm: Merfolk

Authority of: The Council of The Nine Currents

By The Council of The Nine Currents, this decree is binding:

Routes between the Shelf and the Capital are sealed. No private passage.

At-risk villages are to be abandoned. Civilians transferred to the Capital first, then warriors.

The Tide Blade is to be recovered, reactivated, and held under the custody of Tide-priests.

Reports of anomalies; including misshapen figures, underwater frost, green stitched light, voices without mouths, mouths without voices; must be reported within one tide-cycle.

The word “Veil” is hereby forbidden speech in all common waters. Use it only in Council meeting notes, and Patrol Logs.

Meeting Note: The Deep seeks upward again, as the legend tells. The Capital will not answer its call willingly; therefore, the Merfolk Captains must prepare to respond with force.

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A Melancholy Monarch’s Lament

Realm: Sugarborn

Written by: The Marshmallow King

My heart has been stolen from inside my gooey center.

Someone took my gem, like a child takes a hard candy, and left me here, only breathing. That is the cruelty. I remain to watch myself.

My Court is the last to fall, and it still sings. The fountains still run with syrup. The music still plays happily for the children who visit us in their dreams; they are wide-eyed and unaware of what they are stepping on.

The sweetness is dying. Halfway down the mouth of my servants, it becomes a bitter ash. The Sugarborn realm is ashamed of itself, and my Knights do not fight the Bitter One’s corruption with the same zest they once carried.

I always thought that war was distant, something where other realms bleed each other dry in their Marches while we stayed soft, sweet, bright, and unreal. Now the very air makes a soft ripping sound like cotton candy; you can hear it when no one moves.

If the Bitter One comes for me, I do not think it will kill me. I think it will make me wave and smile while my kingdom collapses behind my eyes, and the children will call it a happy ending because they will not remember what happiness tasted like.

What do you do when even sugar cannot lie?

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Archive: Crownward Shelf V

Realm: Aitherion

Institution: The Enchanted Library

Written by: Bok-Curn, Steward of Crownward V

Record: Book titled HAPPILY EVER AFTER

The Veil does not want dominion. Dominion is brief.

It wants authorship.

It loosens the stitches until all realms forget their endings.

Then it supplies kinder ones. Simpler ones.

It does not destroy a realm alone.

It revises it into something everyone swears they have always known.

Aitherion is last because it stores all the beginnings and endings.

The Veil does not want the thrones. It wants the realms’ conclusions.

Steward’s Note:

Turning the page reveals the same page again. Closing the book reopens it once you turn away. If the book is shelved spine-out, it rotates itself spine-in. If it is locked, the lock remembers being opened.