Trial of Identity
The library doors close behind you, their sigh echoing in the hush of endless shelves. Candlelight trembles across towering tomes, dust drifting like tiny ghosts through the narrow corridors. The air tastes of old ink and whispered memory, thick and intoxicating.
Ahead, a chamber widens impossibly. At its center, a pedestal cradles a single book, bound in deep indigo leather, its pages sealed by a thin ribbon of silver thread. When you reach for it, the light flares, filling the chamber with brilliance. Your fingers hover above it. The leather pulses faintly under your touch, warm as if it is alive and your reflection dances across the metal clasp.
You open it.
At first, its pages are blank; pure, unmarked, serene. But this is only for a moment. Suddenly, ink spills across the pages, spreading like veins. You see a reflection of yourself drawn in script, each word a line of your face. Every nuance of your being - a quiver of a shoulder, the slope of your brow, the pulse of your heartbeat - takes shape in ink that moves like water, warm and viscous.Beneath the ink, something moves. You realize, the book is trying to read you.
The pages turn on their own. Images flicker - not sights, but sensations.
A choice you regret. A truth you turned from. A pain you gave to another so you could sleep.
The book mirrors you, but it is not merely your reflection: it begins to reveal subtler forms, shapes that feel familiar yet alien, patterns that suggest choices you have not made, truths you have avoided, consequences yet to unfold.
The book seeks to hold them all, tenderly, mercilessly.
The lines continue to etch themselves, showing not just what is, but what could be: connections, hidden threads, possibilities that shimmer like ghosts between the inked folds. The book does not simply copy you. It understands you.
And understanding is exposure.
You snap the book shut.
The sound cracks like thunder through the chamber. Dust flutters down from the shelves like falling ash. The silver thread around the binding tightens, cutting through the air with a faint, metallic cry.
For a moment, silence. Then, movement beneath your skin.
Something struggles there, frantic, desperate to escape. You feel the memory of the ink trying to complete its work, clawing for definition it was denied. Yourself half-formed, half-understood and trapped.
The candles gutter. Their light bends backward, sucked toward the closed book. Every shadow grows teeth. You back away, but a sound follows: a wet, scribbling noise beneath your heartbeat. The scent of ink fills your lungs until you choke on it. The book remains sealed, yet you feel it pulse faintly on the pedestal, whispering a question you refuse to answer.
The chamber no longer feels like a library. It feels like a wound.
And like every wound left untreated, it festers.
This path is not yet open.
If this was your choice, make sure to come back again to check it out!
The pages tremble as if uncertain, then the words begin to move again, slower this time. They trace shapes around you, binding your outline in threads of light and shadow. The ink spills beyond the page, coiling through the air like smoke until it finds your hands.
It sinks into your skin.
There is no pain; only a steady warmth, as if the book is giving something back. Then, faint marks rise from beneath the surface of your palm: sigils, names, fragments of language that are neither yours nor wholly unknown. They pulse faintly, like old scars remembering their origin.
Each symbol is a story: a life you touched or a choice that still echoes. You recognize some; others are strangers, yet they carry a familiarity that makes your throat dry. The final mark blooms at the center of your palm: your own name, etched in the same deep crimson ink. The moment it forms, the silver ribbon around the book loosens.
A door takes shape at the far wall, its surface engraved with the same marks that now live upon your skin. You do not know if the book has finished reading you, or if you have finally begun to understand what it saw.
Still, the door waits.
Your hand, your marks, your name: the key and the consequence.
All written content is original, drawn from myth, memory, and madness.
All images are generated via Midjourney using custom prompts by the author, unless otherwise stated.
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