Lord of Perverted Ladies

The blue window refused to disappear.

It remained suspended before my eyes, flickering violently like an old monitor struggling to stay alive.

The woman—no, the Editor—watched it with the same curiosity I felt.

For the first time since I had awakened the System months ago, someone else could see it.

Not guess.

Not infer.

See.

She tilted her head slightly.

"So it chose you."

I swallowed.

"You can see it."

"I’ve always been able to."

Her answer came so casually that it unsettled me more than any threat could have.

Detective Hale shifted his aim between the woman and the hidden staircase.

"I don’t know what either of you are talking about."

"You don’t need to," she replied without looking at him. "Not yet."

The lights above us flickered again.

Somewhere below, another chime echoed through the stone passage.

Four.

The Editor’s expression changed.

Not fear.

Urgency.

"We’re running out of time."

"You said history would be rewritten," I said.

"It already is."

She looked at me.

"You simply haven’t reached the Chapter where you notice."

The notebook inside my backpack suddenly slammed shut.

The sound echoed through the archive.

Everyone looked at it.

Then another sound followed.

A page turning.

Not from my notebook.

From somewhere beneath us.

A single page.

Then another.

Then another.

Thousands of pages turning together.

The sound resembled a storm moving through an endless forest.

Whitmore stumbled backwards until he hit a bookshelf.

His face had become almost colourless.

"It’s awake."

Nobody asked what "it" was.

Deep down...

I think none of us wanted the answer.

The brass key began pulling forward again.

Stronger than before.

Almost dragging my arm toward the staircase.

The Editor noticed.

"Don’t fight it."

"You know where it wants me."

"I do."

"Then tell me."

Her eyes met mine.

"It wants to take you to the Author."

Silence.

Noah frowned.

"I thought you were the Editor."

"I am."

"And Lucien?"

She looked away for the first time.

"I’ve never been able to decide what he is."

That answer disturbed me more than if she’d called him a monster.

If even she didn’t know...

Then who exactly had we been chasing?

The fifth chime echoed beneath the library.

The staircase trembled.

Dust drifted from the ceiling.

The shelves surrounding us shifted almost imperceptibly.

Not collapsing.

Moving.

As if making room for something.

Detective Hale lowered his pistol.

"Enough."

"We’re going downstairs."

Whitmore grabbed his arm.

"You can’t."

"Why not?"

"The lower archive..."

Whitmore struggled to breathe.

"...doesn’t obey distance."

Noah looked at him.

"What does that even mean?"

Whitmore laughed weakly.

"The first time I went down..."

"...I walked for six minutes."

"When I came back..."

"...three days had passed."

Nobody spoke.

Whitmore continued staring at the darkness.

"I thought I’d imagined it."

"I convinced myself I’d imagined everything."

His eyes slowly drifted toward the notebook inside my backpack.

"Now I remember."

The notebook opened again.

A sentence appeared.

Memory Anchor Established.

Then another.

One truth preserved.

Probability of successful return increased: 4%.

Only four percent.

I almost laughed.

The odds felt strangely reassuring.

At least the System had stopped pretending we were safe.

The Editor looked at the notebook.

"It never used to calculate survival."

"What changed?"

I asked.

"You."

Before I could respond, a scream echoed from somewhere above the archive.

Not close.

Several floors higher.

Another scream followed.

Then another.

Detective Hale immediately reached for his radio.

Only static answered.

No voices.

No dispatch.

Nothing except faint ticking beneath the interference.

"The building’s changing," Noah whispered.

He was right.

The air itself felt different.

The library no longer smelled like old paper.

It smelled like rain.

Fresh ink.

Burning candles.

I turned toward the archive entrance.

The reading room outside had vanished.

Beyond the doorway stretched another corridor lined with shelves that hadn’t existed moments ago.

There were no windows.

No café.

No reception desk.

Only books.

Thousands upon thousands of books.

Whitmore looked through the doorway and collapsed into the nearest chair.

"No..."

His voice cracked.

"It found us."

The Editor remained calm.

"It didn’t find us."

"We crossed the threshold."

She looked at me.

"The library closes every evening."

"It opens somewhere else."

A cold sensation spread through my chest.

"This isn’t Eastbridge anymore."

"No."

She answered quietly.

"It hasn’t been for several minutes."

The System suddenly flashed.

______

Location Updated

Eastbridge Central Library

...

Synchronising...

...

Current Location:

The Archive

Verification Pending.

______

My heart skipped a beat.

The Archive.

We hadn’t gone downstairs.

The Archive had come to us.

The lights finally died.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Only a faint golden glow remained.

It came from the brass key.

Its light spread across the stone floor.

Lines appeared where there had been none before.

Circles.

Symbols.

A vast pattern hidden beneath centuries of dust.

Whitmore stared at it.

"I remember drawing this."

"No..."

He corrected himself.

"I remember being told I drew it."

Detective Hale switched on his flashlight.

The beam barely travelled three metres before dissolving into darkness.

"It’s absorbing the light."

The Editor closed her notebook.

"Normal light doesn’t belong here."

Without warning, every book on every shelf opened simultaneously.

Thousands of pages fluttered.

Not chaotically.

Purposefully.

As if an invisible wind was searching for a particular sentence.

The sound became deafening.

Noah covered his ears.

Hale stepped closer to me.

"What now?"

Before I could answer...

Every page stopped turning.

Absolute silence followed.

One book slid from a shelf by itself.

Then another.

Then another.

Dozens landed gently on the stone floor.

None opened.

None moved again.

The titles slowly became visible.

Each spine bore a person’s name.

Detective Victor Hale.

Edwin Whitmore.

Professor Ellis.

Ryan Carter.

Ethan Brooks.

Noah Everett.

Adrian Cross.

My breathing stopped.

There was a book with my name.

Noah reached toward his.

"Don’t."

The Editor’s voice cut through the silence.

He froze.

"Why?"

"Because you’ll only get to read it once."

"What happens after that?"

She didn’t answer.

She didn’t need to.

The implication was enough.

I slowly knelt before the book bearing my name.

It looked ordinary.

Dark blue leather.

No decoration.

No title beyond the embossed letters.

Adrian Cross

The pages looked thicker than normal paper.

Almost handmade.

The notebook inside my backpack trembled violently.

It was afraid.

Not warning me.

Afraid.

My fingers hovered over the cover.

A familiar voice echoed through the endless shelves.

"You’ve come farther than Elias."

Lucien.

His footsteps echoed slowly.

Unhurried.

He emerged from between the towering shelves carrying the untitled book marked 117 beneath one arm.

He looked exactly the same as always.

Calm.

Almost amused.

The Editor sighed.

"I hoped you wouldn’t arrive yet."

"I was already here."

Lucien replied.

"You simply hadn’t noticed."

His gaze settled on the book bearing my name.

"You can open it."

He smiled faintly.

"But you’ll hate whoever wrote the ending."

The Archive trembled.

A deep groan echoed beneath our feet.

The shelves began moving.

Not randomly.

They rotated like gears inside a clock.

Entire aisles shifted into new positions.

Passages opened.

Others disappeared.

The Editor looked genuinely alarmed.

"No."

"It shouldn’t react this quickly."

Lucien’s smile widened ever so slightly.

"It recognised him."

"The Archive remembers every witness."

"It rarely remembers an author."

Those words froze everyone.

Even the Editor.

She slowly turned toward me.

"You never told me..."

Lucien interrupted her.

"He doesn’t know."

The blue window burst into existence one final time.

______

Hidden Authority Detected

Candidate Identified.

Role Compatibility Analysis...

Witness ✔

Historian ✔

Observer ✔

...

Author

Compatibility: 97%

Further evaluation postponed.

Reason:

The current Author is still alive.

______

The notification lingered in the darkness.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody moved.

Only Lucien continued smiling.

As though this...

This impossible revelation...

Was exactly the moment he had been waiting for all along.