The following day dragged on like ash caught in a mournful breeze--slow, clinging, an oppressive weight that blanketed the air.
Nothing bombastic transpired. No thunderous slams of doors. No creeping shadows to haunt the stillness. No echo of footsteps that once belonged to Luthen.
Yet, the Calyra emanated an unsettling aura. Too silent. Too vigilant.
Sareth and I manned our posts as if the world outside had not shifted--an act necessary to persuade the structure of our ordinary existence.
We transcribed records from dusty tomes. Sorted through ancient scrolls. Realigned tomes on their lofty perches in the upper mezzanine. These were the mundane tasks, designed to project the image of compliance, of innocence.
But the reality?
We were not laboring.
We were scrutinizing.
And a profound sense of wrongness hung in the very air we breathed.
It began with the tolling of the Archivist Bells.
They resonated at strange hours.
The third bell echoed too soon. The sixth fell silent. And the ninth... rang out twice in eerie dissonance.
Sareth cast a troubled gaze up at the haunting rafters. "The bells are governed by the Foundation Clock," she murmured, a tremor in her voice. "That contraption hasn't faltered in eight centuries."
"Perhaps it's merely a malfunction?" I ventured.
"Perhaps," she replied, her narrowed eyes betraying a deeper unease.
Later, we discovered the ink reserves in the desolate west wing had been curiously replaced. Not merely refilled. Replaced.
This ink was darker, richer than its predecessor, far more sinister. When my quill plunged into it, it clung like a viscous sap, shimmering ominously in the dim light.
Not natural. Not permissible. And certainly not safe.
Sareth observed the treacherous substance cling to the quill's tip and murmured, "That is not ink."
I pressed it against a piece of parchment. It seeped through immediately, expanding like a bruise that threatens to engulf the day.
"What is it?" I inquired, dread knotting in my stomach.
She exhaled deeply, an omen resting in her breath.
"It appears... mirrored."
As the witching hour approached, the archivists became a spectral presence amidst the shadows of midday routines. They glided through the dimly lit aisles, their movements sluggish and deliberate, each action draped in an eerie stillness. Voices lowered to whispers, as if the spoken word itself might awaken some slumbering dread. Their eyes, once lively, now flickered as if haunted -- a blink was a rare and precious commodity.
One clerk, a familiar face from my days of training, turned to me with a smile that lingered just a moment too long, a mask of delight that felt more like a grimace. Her gaze grew vacant mid-sentence, a fleeting reminder of the human essence lost in the encroaching void.
Sareth leaned in, her breath barely a whisper against the chill air. "Do you perceive it too?" she asked, dread pooling in her eyes.
"Yes," I replied, unease coiling tightly in my gut.
"It's spreading," she murmured, the weight of her words echoing like a funeral knell in the suffocating quiet.
We spoke not a word of Kallith's missive. Not here. Not beneath the pall of daylight.
Yet, the chilling refrain of "You are being indexed, Vaerin." reverberated like a dark echo with every breath I drew.
In a fleeting moment, my gaze fell upon the brass clasp of a manuscript cabinet, which gleamed in the dim light.
I halted, caught in a web of unease.
But my reflection? It persisted, unmoved, a grotesque imitation of my own essence.
I recoiled with an involuntary gasp.
Sareth was at my side in an instant, her presence a flicker of warmth against the chill. "What transpired?" she inquired, voice soft yet urgent.
"My reflection," I breathed, a dread knotting in my throat. "It lingered."
Her fingers tightened around my wrist, a vise of ice and urgency.
"We are losing precious moments."
But the most peculiar moment of the day--one that seemed trivial yet settled into my bones like an ominous whisper--came near the end of our weary shift.
We were engaged in the task of shelving texts within the shadows of the Lower West Wing when a gaunt figure emerged from the gloom. A clerk--though his visage was unfamiliar to me, and yet there was a haunting familiarity in his sunken eyes, as if they inhabited a realm untouched by warmth.
His voice rasped like the labor of ancient stones grinding against one another.
"Archivist Vaerin."
In that instant, I felt as if time had frozen.
He inclined his head just a fraction, just enough to stir memories of Luthen lurking in the recesses of my mind.
"You dropped this."
He extended a crumpled slip of paper, the air thickening with foreboding.
My stomach twisted in dread.
"I dropped nothing."
The clerk blinked once--slowly, as if each movement were a challenge against the weight of time itself.
"It bears your name."
He placed the paper into my palm with an eerie grace, then drifted away, a specter displeased with the boundaries of gratitude.
Sareth, sensing the darkness that loomed, hovered behind me. "What does it say?"
With trembling hands, I unfolded the note.
Three words danced across the page in frantic, jagged scrawls:
You're almost gone.
Sareth inhaled sharply, a sound laced with apprehension.
But there was more--something inscribed lightly on the reverse side.
I turned it to reveal a sigil.
A mark etched into the parchment with an intensity that seemed to shred its very fabric.
Sareth's face turned ashen.
"That's the Mirror Council's mark."
My throat constricted, a vise of dread taking hold.
"What does that signify?"
"It means," she whispered, her voice laced with the chill of impending doom, "your erasure shall not be a mere accident. It shall be decreed."
The remainder of the shift slipped by in a haze of muted apprehension.
Archivists feigned industriousness. Books shifted on their own accord upon the shelves. Inkwells murmured softly, akin to slumbering beasts. Every flimmering surface -- each polished doorknob, every lantern casting flickering light, every pane of lacquered wood -- seemed to angle towards me.
Watching.
Measuring.
Calculating how much of my essence needed to be exorcised.
That night, as Sareth and I traversed the dim corridors toward our dormitory, she halted suddenly, seizing my arm with an intensity that sent shivers down my spine.
"We must alter our course," she hissed, fervid with urgency.
"What? Why?"
Her gaze pierced through me, laden with a harrowing sharpness, a terror that gripped my soul.
"Because the Calyra isn't merely expunging you from the records, Vaerin. It is beginning to erase you from the very fabric of reality."
The corridor's lantern flickered ominously.
For a fleeting heartbeat, I cast no shadow.
Not a hint of one.
Sareth inhaled sharply, her breath wavering.
"We act now. We uncover Kallith's concealed trail. We delve beneath the Calyra's grasp. We must not delay until nightfall."
I nodded, for words felt like a beckoning call to the encroaching darkness.
As we rounded the corner, the bells tolled once more.
Incorrect. Out of sync. A fractured, hesitant refrain.
Three notes. Then two. Then one. Followed by an ominous silence.
And within that silence, I swear I heard a whisper:
Almost
