The candle light flickered, causing a small but noticeable change in the energy of the room. Like a small pebble falling into a lake, the ripple of that candle light grew. It tore me from my reverie, from the minuscule words on parchment, and brought me back to some semblance of reality.
The words of the book still flashed across my eyes as I looked up at the room around me, at the ornate space that housed a seemingly endless supply of the written word.
I had been in the library for some strange length of time. I wasn't sure. It works differently in here, time. I had learned a lot but one thing I hadn't learned was how much it was or wasn't passing. For a while I thought I could count it in books. In pages or words. But the more I read, the more I found myself so enamored by the stories I was immersed in that time seemed to slip away all together.
I had begun to think of myself as a multihyphenate librarian with a time traveling twist, bending the rules of the universe with books as my vehicle. But I think the reality was, I was lonely. Books are a fair companion, to be sure -- they had been by my side for all of my very long life. But while they can tell stories, they can not whisper to you in the dark-- nor can they laugh with wild abandon at a joke. They exist in your world, but you do not exist in theirs.
That was the tragedy of being the guardian of this space. Endless knowledge was at my fingertips, and for centuries that had been enough for me. But what was the point of all of this if I had no one to share it with?
Maybe there was a way around the laws that ruled over this sacred space. I had been bound not to tell anyone about it, and I had lived by that promise. But perhaps, if they were clever enough, there was a way to invite people in without ever speaking the words. With clues and riddles. With signs.
Maybe they could make their own way to the Lost Souls Society.
After all, if I had learned one thing from books it was that heroes always found a way to break the rules. Perhaps it was time I did just that.