The air in the Pavilion of Forgotten Scrolls was thick with the scent of ozone and something sweeter, something like old, bruised fruit. It was a smell that didn't belong among the dry, dusty fragrance of ancient bamboo scrolls and aging paper. From the shadowy alcove behind a towering stack of historical annals, a pair of eyes watched, wide with a terror that had long since strangled any sound.
The watcher, a creature of shadow and fear, did not dare look at the boy's face. To look at his face was to acknowledge the impossible thing that was happening. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the boy's hands.
They were young hands, still possessing the soft, unblemished skin of a fifteen-year-old, yet they moved with the chilling precision of a master surgeon. There was no tremor, no hesitation. Each movement was a study in economy, a declaration of intent. One hand held a small, wickedly sharp carving knife, its tip stained a glistening, fresh crimson. The other hand, the left, was held open over a shallow ceramic bowl, a single, deliberate slit across the palm from which blood dripped in a slow, rhythmic beat.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The sound was a maddening counterpoint to the unnatural silence that had fallen over the pavilion.
The boy—the Artist—dipped the tip of a brush into the bowl. The wolf-hair bristles, usually reserved for the most delicate calligraphy, soaked up his own lifeblood. He then turned to the floor, his back a rigid line of focus.
He began to paint.
The watcher had seen masters of the Art before. He had seen calligraphers whose strokes contained the majesty of mountains and the fury of rivers. This was not that. This was an act of violation. The brush moved with an unearthly grace, not painting words, but tearing them into existence. Each stroke was a sigil, a character that defied logic, its lines twisting and folding in on themselves in ways that made the eyes water and the mind recoil. They were characters that screamed, that wept, that clawed at the very fabric of the world.
As the sigil grew, a faint, sickly luminescence began to bleed from the floorboards, casting the Artist's shadow long and distorted against the scroll-laden walls. The air grew heavy, pressing down on the watcher's chest until each breath was a desperate, ragged gasp. The sweet, cloying smell intensified.
The Artist's movements never faltered. He was a machine of ink and blood, his focus absolute. He set down the brush, its work complete. His hands, now both slick with red, reached for a simple, unadorned iron box that sat at the heart of the sigil. It was a black, featureless thing, yet it seemed to drink the very light from the room.
He clutched the Lineage Seal, his knuckles white against the dark iron. His lips parted, but the sound that escaped was not a word. It was a vibration, a low, resonant hum that seemed to come not from his throat, but from the spaces between the atoms of the world. The luminescent sigil on the floor flared, its impossible geometry burning with a malevolent, silent fire. The scrolls on the shelves began to tremble, their ancient paper shivering as if in a phantom wind.
The hum intensified, rising in pitch. The watcher squeezed his eyes shut, a pathetic attempt to block out the wrongness of it all. The pressure in the room became immense, a physical weight that threatened to crush bone and pulverize flesh.
Then came the crescendo.
A light, not of this world, erupted from the iron box. It was a silent explosion of pure, void-black nothingness that consumed the glowing sigil in an instant. The hum shattered.
It was replaced by a scream.
It was a sound of a soul being flayed, of a mind being torn apart thread by thread. It was the sound of a potter's masterpiece being dropped from a great height, the sound of a thousand years of history turning to dust in a single, agonizing moment.
The Artist, his focus finally broken, was thrown back. He collapsed onto the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, a single, shuddering convulsion wracking his small frame.
Then, silence.
The sickly sweet smell lingered. The dust motes, once dancing in the moonlight, settled back onto the shelves. The iron box sat in the center of the room, inert and cold. The blood on the floor had already begun to dry, its impossible shape a dark, permanent stain upon the ancient wood.
In the alcove, the watcher remained, a prisoner of his own terror, listening to the deafening silence of a tragedy he could not comprehend.