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墨書 Inktalez
The voice of Spero echoed through the library, not only due to the space's acoustics but also because his tone seemed to carry a certain weight, like an ancient hand gently resting upon my heart. Leiflo took a few steps forward, his movements imbued with a near-religious reverence, while I hesitated to follow, as if pulled by an invisible thread.
"This place..." I began, but the words caught in my throat. It was not the ordinary scent of books; it was a profound aroma, a blend of leather, smoke, damp paper, and a hint of rust—suggesting that these books had not merely been preserved but buried and then unearthed from some deeper realm.
"Do you smell it?" Spero turned to gaze at me, his eyes bright yet unfathomable, as if he had witnessed countless souls fall and rise from an abyss. "This is not the scent of a library; it is the breath of truth released when knowledge decays."
His tone was low, yet it silenced the entire space. He emanated an indescribable aura, resembling not a man but rather an embodiment of some ancient will.
I felt my legs weaken slightly and stepped forward to stand beside Leiflo. The candlelight on the table flickered as we approached, as if in homage or mourning.
"Here, what is collected is not ordinary books." As Spero spoke, he reached beneath the table and pressed a mechanism. The wall emitted a faint hum as a row of wooden panels that had blended seamlessly with it slowly opened, as if they were consciously parting to reveal a hidden shelf.
On that shelf lay five books.
They varied in form and style; some were heavy as stone, others light as feathers, and one even lacked a spine, wrapped only in deep red leather around its yellowed pages. Strangely, their covers bore indecipherable symbols, suggesting they were not merely language but frequencies of some forbidden nature.
"These five," Spero said slowly, "are sustenance I have brought back from different worlds over the years."
I stared at him in disbelief. "You mean... food?"
He chuckled softly, his smile devoid of mockery or jest; instead, it resembled the calm of a priest unveiling the beginning of a mysterious ritual. "At Spero Restaurant, some eat meat while others drink soup. As for me—I digest knowledge. I savor phrases, chew memories, and swallow the fossils of thoughts. For me, truth and flesh are indistinguishable."
Leiflo nodded gently beside me, his eyes gleaming with almost a pilgrim's light. Yet I felt a churn in my stomach—not disgust nor fear but rather a complex reaction of extreme desire mingled with discomfort towards the unknown.
"You will be the first observers tonight to witness a true act of consumption." After saying this, he took one book from the shelf. Its cover seemed made from the skin of some unnamed creature, cold light seeping subtly from its scales.
He gently opened the pages and began to recite in a language I could not understand. The sound was like poetry or divine whispers; each word seemed capable of piercing my skin and reaching deep into my bones.
He then reached out, tearing off a corner of the page and without hesitation, placed it in his mouth.
I gasped. "You... you’re insane..."
"He’s not insane," Leiflo whispered. "This is how he lives, and it’s the true meaning of this restaurant's existence."
The page transformed into liquid in Spero's mouth as he closed his eyes, a look of almost trance-like divinity crossing his face. His breathing slowed, his shoulders subtly rising and falling, as if he were not swallowing paper but receiving some kind of revelation.
Then he opened his eyes, their brightness piercing as he said to me, "This page describes the structure of the universe as seen by a person three seconds before death. It is salty, with a hint of iron and the sensation of sleeping stardust."
His tone was not one of describing taste but rather translating an experience that transcended language. I was momentarily speechless, feeling as if I had stepped onto an irreversible undercurrent, drifting toward an ending I had never envisioned.
"Tonight, you don’t need to read or eat," Spero stood up, pressing his palm against the page as if holding down a beating heart. "You only need to watch—witness a spiritual combustion, see how one offers their thoughts as sacrifice, burning away their own remnants to exchange for fragments of truth."
I remained silent, my throat dry and my thoughts chaotic. The flickering lights no longer served merely as sources of illumination; they transformed into a language—a powerful, silent language born between the pages and flames.
The unspoken truth was being consumed.
Spero sat down again and opened the second page of the book. This time he did not tear it out but gently touched the surface with his fingertips, as if caressing an extremely sensitive, living organ. His movements were so tender that they carried an intimacy akin to lovers; this scene felt unsettlingly natural, as if this book had existed solely for his touch at this moment.
He softly closed his eyes and murmured, his tone hovering between prayer and chant, a sound rising from deep within his throat like a low hum emerging from a crack in the earth. I watched his fingers intently; those joints worn by years of reading glided over the page inch by inch, like a blind person reading Braille or a deity awakening slumbering oracles.
Suddenly I realized he was not merely "reading" or "eating" the book—he was the other side of the book itself; he had merged with these texts into some kind of symbiotic entity that transcended words. He was not acquiring knowledge but reassembling it. Ink might flow through his veins; sentences might grow within his bones.
Leiflo’s voice quietly emerged, almost level with the flames: "He once said that some books are written for people to read while others are written for existence itself. These are the latter."
I held my breath. It was not a metaphor; it was real. I felt the time in the entire space begin to thicken and slow down, like viscous honey slowly solidifying. Each of my breaths became heavy, and every heartbeat felt like listening to echoes from ancient times.
In the air floated an indescribable scent, deeper than fragrance and more dignified than decay. It was the dust of memories, the ashes of thoughts, the residue of history itself.
Suddenly, the pages of the book began to turn by themselves. There was no wind, yet it felt as if invisible fingertips were gracefully caressing the paper, each turn resonating like a tremor along the timeline. The candlelight flickered in response, and the bookshelves on the wall seemed to emit a barely audible groan, as if the entire space was tilting and spinning with those words, page by page.
Spero opened his eyes; they were like deep wells, unfathomable yet clear enough to be unavoidable. He looked at me and slowly smiled, "You are beginning to sense it."
I wanted to speak but found that my voice no longer belonged to me. My throat was dry, as if some invisible vine had grown within. I felt a thin crack in my chest expanding, splitting open from deep within my heart, seeping out a memory that had never belonged to me—or some force beyond my will was implanting itself within me.
I saw a corridor, at the end of which lay a book without a cover. The walls were lined with books like tombstones standing erect, and shadows flickered in the corners, whispering, gazing, writhing. Their voices flowed like water trickling through stone crevices, vibrating with countless unspoken truths in my ears.
I stumbled back a step, and everything came to an abrupt halt, as if a dream had been severed.
"That's enough for tonight," Spero said softly. His voice no longer carried mere authority but bore a quality akin to a priest granting absolution to his followers. There was a hint of compassion in his tone, along with an unfathomable weariness—as if this brief ritual had drained him of all his strength for the night.
He carefully returned the book to its place with solemnity. The shelves closed silently, and those pages, those symbols—those meanings that had just awakened only to fall asleep again—were gently covered like a coffin lid over a resting soul, returning to silence.
"We shall meet again on Fifth Night."
His voice grew low once more, like a promise emanating from deep within Earth's Core, or perhaps some ritualistic incantation. The air stood still while I remained unable to speak, left only with that phrase echoing in my mind—repeatedly chewing it over—like paper pages, like truth, like the beginning of some fate.
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