The Halls of Everlasting Ice.

That was the only name that fit—stately and terrible, like a crown forged from frostbite. Everywhere my eyes settled, Danatallion's once-endless sanctuary of ink had crystallized into a mausoleum of knowledge.

Shelves bowed beneath rime, spines encased in glassy sheaths. The faintest werelight shimmered between stacks—frozen witch-fire trapped mid-flicker, skittering like prisms across vaulted arches. The effect was heartbreakingly lovely: rainbows broken into shards, pinwheeling across a cathedral of snow.

Is this another trial?

The thought came unbidden. Old reflex: every shift in the Halls used to be Danatallion's way of asking a riddle or demanding a price.

No, I reminded myself. I'm a legal contractor—now Custodian, however temporary. This blizzard isn't a test.

The ice, and the absence of my friends cut deeper than cold; every scrape of my boots over snow felt amplified by the vacuum left in his silence.

I was alone—truly alone—for the first time since awakening my Arte. No Fractal perched at my shoulder, no Cordelia's quiet counsel, no sly grin from Gin. The Halls swallowed even the sound of my pulse, replacing it with the brittle chime of frost fracturing overhead.

Still, wonder threaded through dread. I'd never seen snow except in painted travelogues: Marr was temperate, Bast drier still. Here it lay like powdered starlight between the aisle-ribs, compressing under my step with faint sighs. Each inhalation burned my lungs; vapor coiled outward and froze mid-furl, hanging in crystal veils before drifting away.

I tightened my cloak, feeling the Custodian's Mark pulse on my forearm—steady, guiding, faintly encouraging like a distant lighthouse. Preserve what lives. Rekindle what sleeps.

"Right," I whispered to empty stacks. "First priority: warmth. Second: mapping. Third: find out where the Librarian vanished to."

My voice vanished into frost.

I drew paper from my sleeve—plain ledger sheets—and coaxed a thread of star-mana through them. They origamied into drifting lantern-fish, belly-lamps glimmering with slow heat. Wherever they swam, ice groaned and receded by a finger's breadth, revealing titles beneath. I left one every twenty paces, breadcrumbs of living light.

The air warmed by degrees—enough to flex chilled joints—yet each lantern dimmed quickly, devoured by the cold. Need sustainable fuel. I scanned spines: a treatise on molten glass lay half-ruined. Its binding contained powdered dragon-coal—perfect. I cracked it open, poured the coal into a brazier-urn near a reading alcove, and sparked flame. Amber tongues licked upward, pushing back frost in a radiant bubble.

My map unfurled in mind's eye: Incunabula Hearth behind me, this new brazier here… a path of embers through the white night.

As I moved, I tallied losses aloud—perhaps just to hear a voice:

Floor 3, Aisle L-7:

Folios on pre-Dawn civilizations, sixty percent shattered.

Rotunda annex:

Catalogue runes inert, but salvageable; anchor crystals intact beneath ice.

Scroll Vault:

Door sealed by frost thicker than steel. Might need Flame-aspect assistance.

Each entry etched itself into the Mark, turning into silver script on inner vision—promises I'd have to honor.

Near the Cabinet of Apocrypha, I heard a faint thump… thump…—not the monolith's heartbeat, but a smaller, desperate rhythm. I traced it to a toppled dictionary case. Beneath lay a tallow golem, no larger than a cat, limbs crumpled but patterns still glowing faintly. Librarian constructs—wax guardians that once fluttered messages between wings of the Halls.

Its sigils guttered, on the brink of dispersal. I knelt, mended a torn glyph with a sliver of starlight. It stirred, wings refolding into shape.

"Easy," I murmured. "Can you still guide?"

The golem blinked ink-eyes, then fluttered upward, circling my head once before darting down a side corridor. A living compass—exactly what I needed.

The golem led me deeper, where frost thickened from rime to obsidian plates. My breath crystallized instantly now, and even star-lanterns dimmed before fully forming. Yet the Mark urged on—somewhere ahead pulsed a hot node, a furnace of preserved power.

Halfway, shelves opened into a vast atrium I'd never seen: a domed Scriptorium of Stars. At its center rose another brasswood hearth—dark, choked with ice—but ringed by hundreds of armillary frames, each bearing a small, dormant sun-stone. They must have once simulated constellations for scribes.

If I could reignite even a fraction of those stones, the atrium would become a permanent warm sector.

One step at a time.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I knelt, pressing palms to frozen floor, reached inward—and called. Mana, miasma, even the faint life-breath still trapped in the Archivist's heartbeat back at the Hearth—all harmonized in my core. Paper vines of starlight unfurled, threading through fissures, channeling heat from the ember path behind me.

Cracks spider-webbed. Ice fissured with a musical ping-ping-ping. One armillary stone flickered—then blazed, casting saffron brilliance across the dome. Another followed. Then ten. Then fifty.

Warmth poured like sunrise. Frost retreated under golden halos. The pillar-cold heartbeat, distant but ever-present, slowed—no longer a predator, merely a sleeping giant.

I exhaled, trembling, but alive.

A whisper rustled overhead—pages fluttering. I looked up, expecting another collapsing tome. Instead a slender silhouette perched on a high balcony: a woman of ink-black feathers and white winter cloak. Eyes like noctilucent pearls met mine.

"Custodian," she said, voice echoing as if across frozen seas. "The Library breathes again."

My grip tightened on Lunarias. "Who are you?"

"Archivist Prime," she replied, spreading raven wings of parchment. "Danatallion left one steward behind—the rest of us were… subsumed by frost. I could not move until warmth returned."

Relief, sharp and unexpected, surged through me. "I found one of your assistants. Safe, in Incunabula Hearth."

Her rigid stance softened. "Then hope truly lingers." She glanced at the rekindled stars overhead. "Come, Custodian. There is much to repair, and the frost has not finished seeking hearts to still."

I nodded, stepping into the widening glow. Alone? No—not anymore. Lumivis was barred, my friends out of reach, but the Library itself had allies who endured.

My path was set: thaw the halls, decode the monolith's tether, and, eventually, follow Danatallion wherever he'd been summoned. But for tonight, we would stitch warmth back into the veins of this frozen giant—page by page, hearth by hearth, until the Halls of Everlasting Ice became, once more, the Library of Living Lies.

And with every book re-warmed, I would remember: even winter surrenders to the tidal spring.

***

She followed me in silence back to the hearth. The fire we'd kindled earlier still hissed softly, casting flickering amber light across the walls that no longer wept frost. Her cloak rustled faintly, whispering with a sound like turning pages.

Without a word, she knelt beside the fallen figure—the small parchment-winged assistant I'd rescued—her hands brushing the boy's frozen cheek, then gliding down to his pulse. Her eyes, clouded pearls veined with ink, betrayed neither relief nor sorrow. Only certainty.

"Evali will live," she said, matter-of-fact. "The boy won't be able to move his left arm ever again, but he'll live."

My eyebrow arched. Before I could ask anything further, she extended one finger and drew a delicate thread of mana—thin, sharp, gleaming like glass under starlight. Without hesitation, she sliced clean through the boy's arm at the shoulder. The wound hissed, clean and bloodless for a second, before red bloomed beneath. She pressed a bandage soaked in what I recognized as phoenix balm into place, and the bleeding slowed to a trickle.

I opened my mouth—closed it—then exhaled slowly. "Was that necessary?"

She didn't look up. "Yes."

That was all she offered. The kind of finality that didn't invite protest.

She rose smoothly, the hem of her cloak billowing as she turned to face me. Her presence was quiet, but it pressed on my skin like library dust—ancient, patient, weighted with pages unread.

"Let me introduce myself properly," she said. "My name is Chief Archivist Falias. One of the few born here, in Danatallion's Halls, from flesh, blood, and bone… not ink, parchment, and papyrus."

The firelight caught a silvery mark at her collarbone. A tattoo? A brand? I couldn't tell. Her skin shimmered like old vellum, but it was warm. Alive.

"The boy you rescued is Evali. He's contracted to the Library. Apprentice-level. I'm grateful you found even one. But you'll find no others beyond this wing who aren't dead." She paused. "Or worse."

My eyes narrowed. "Define worse."

"Swallowed by silence. Mind unraveled. Manuscripts collapsed into flesh. A hundred thousand ways to die here, Custodian. All of them poetic." Her tone remained steady, almost impersonal.

Danatallion's Halls never stopped shifting. I'd always known that. But this? This was carnivorous. Malicious.

"So this wasn't just environmental," I said slowly. "This wasn't some weather-arte backlash. Something is happening in the Halls."

Falias gave a single nod, the sort that carried entire eulogies. "The Library is being eaten from within. Something cold. Something older than ink." She stepped to one of the nearby shelves, brushing her fingers along it until a scroll snapped open on its own. Its glyphs were frozen mid-unravel, warped by a language that no longer had a grammar.

"It began here, in the Apocrypha wing," she continued. "The deep collections. Books that were never meant to be found began rising to the surface. Whispering to archivists. Consuming reason. Turning warmth to ice."

"And Danatallion?" I asked. "Where is he?"

Her lips tightened. "Gone."

"Gone how?"

"He answered a summoning."

I felt my heartbeat hitch. "That's… possible?"

"Not usually," she said. "But he forged a loophole in his own constraints. One no other Dominus ever dared attempt. I do not know which realm called him. I only know he severed his tether here to do it. And when he left… the protections fell."

I swallowed the ache forming in my throat. No Dominus. No protection. Just me. Just her. Just cold.

Falias turned back to me. "You're the Custodian now. That means something here. You carry authority—limited, but recognized. The only thing keeping the ink from curdling and the frost from swallowing what's left."

I knelt next to Evali. His face twitched as sensation returned. He breathed shallowly but steadily. I pressed a hand to his forehead. "Then let's get moving. Let's rebuild. This place isn't going to survive without a fight."

"Correct," Falias said. "But not here."

She snapped her fingers. From the ceiling, a hundred lanterns burst into warm golden light. One shelf slid aside, revealing a spiraling brass staircase that led downward—lit, vibrant, untouched by the cold above.

"Where does that lead?"

"To a hearth older than the Halls themselves," she said. "Where the first archivists penned the Songs of Preservation. A place that still burns."

My spine straightened. "And it's still intact?"

"It's buried," she replied. "Sealed. But I have the key. So I certainly hope so."

"Then lead the way."

Fallias extended a hand, her eyes glinting. She picked up Evali with no effort, slinging the unconscious male over his shoulder. "Prepare yourself, Custodian. This time… the book fights back."

Then it's about time I learned how to bleed in ink.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.