Chapter 46

After forty days of rain, the parched Dust drinks its fill as streams join into a brimming lake. Livira and Evar stand together in the downpour, celebrating renewal and intimacy. Evar wonders if his presence means he is dying, but Livira insists this is her life-giving story. A sudden chill and gathering shadows make Livira proclaim, “This is my book,” as if resisting an external watcher intruding on the scene.

Cut to the library: Lord Algar, suffering a headache and blur in his single eye, reads the same words—“This is my book”—in Livira’s second volume. His war party, bloodied by canith and driven from the central circle by black demons, regroups among the aisles. A hairline crack, leaking black mist, has stalked them from chamber to chamber, further sapping morale.

Algar discovers the crack responds to the book itself; moving the volume makes new fractures chase it, an unprecedented violation of the library’s indestructible fabric. Recognizing the book’s unique power despite its plain, romantic content, Algar decides it must hide deeper magics than the first.

Seeking answers, Algar finds prisoners being “tenderised.” He halts the beating of a skinny captive in tattered librarian robes and learns the man is Arpix. As the soldiers step back, Algar gently demands Arpix tell him everything about the book, setting up an interrogation that could expose its nature and the threat it poses to the library.