The night was cold.
Far colder than Lucian Ravencrest remembered.
He sat alone upon the stone floor of the palace library, his back resting against the heavy wooden leg of a reading table while the towering shelves around him disappeared into darkness. Moonlight slipped through the tall windows high above, falling across the floor in pale silver lines that barely reached where he sat.
For a long time he did not move.
His eyes were open, yet they were not truly looking at the library anymore.
They were lost somewhere far away.
Lost in memories.
Memories that had begun to pull at him the moment he allowed his heart to weaken.
Memories of a time when things had been simpler.
When he had still known how to laugh without forcing it.
When there had still been a reason to smile.
Lucian lowered his head slightly, letting out a quiet breath as the past slowly unfolded within his mind.
Then, slowly, Lucian placed one hand against the marble floor and pushed himself up.
And he did something he had never wanted to do.
Lucian reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out a book.
The book was bound entirely in black leather. At first glance it looked impossibly ancient, as though it had existed for thousands of years.
The edges of the cover were cracked with age, and the pages inside were worn and fragile. Dark ink had spread across the parchment like stains of shadow.
Yet even in that ruined state… the words could still be read.
Lucian lowered his eyes toward the title written across the first page.
"The Void's Requiem."
He whispered the name once.
Then again.
"The Void's Requiem…"
As the final syllable left his lips, the air inside the library changed.
A strange silence spread through the room.
The ink upon the pages began to move.
Slowly at first… then more violently.
The dark writing seemed to melt and flow across the paper like thick liquid. Drops of black ink slid from the edges of the page and began falling toward the floor.
Lucian's eyes widened.
Startled, the book slipped from his hands and struck the marble floor with a dull sound.
And then—
Everything vanished.
No sound reached his ears.
No sensation touched his skin.
His body began to tremble violently. His breathing grew uneven as a crushing pressure filled the air around him. His vision darkened, the world turning black at the edges.
His knees struck the floor.
Lucian struggled to stay upright, reaching desperately toward the fallen book. But his fingers refused to obey him.
The room spun.
His balance vanished.
And a moment later he collapsed face-first against the cold marble floor.
Meanwhile the ink continued to pour from the book.
It spread across the floor like black water, crawling across the stone and climbing slowly up the surrounding walls.
The darkness expanded until it seemed as though the entire library had been swallowed by it.
And then—
A voice echoed through the darkness.
"Not yet."
The words were distant… heavy… ancient.
"The time has not come."
Silence followed.
Then the voice spoke again.
"When the time arrives…"
"…you will come."
For a moment nothing moved.
Then suddenly the black ink stopped flowing.
The dark liquid that had flooded the room began retreating slowly across the marble floor, sliding backward as if pulled by an unseen force. The black tide returned to the fallen book, the liquid climbing back into the pages from which it had escaped.
The suffocating pressure disappeared.
Sound returned to the room.
The library, which had seemed cut off from the world, slowly returned to normal.
The book lying upon the floor turned a page by itself.
Then another.
Until finally—
The cover closed.
And Lucian remained where he had fallen.
Unconscious upon the marble floor.
His mind had already slipped away into the deepest, most painful memories of his past.
Fragments of before.
But he was not alone in those dark alleys of pain, in the painful thoughts of the past.
Back then there had been someone who never looked at him with pity.
Someone who had never laughed at him.
Someone who had never whispered behind his back.
The little sister Lyra Ravencrest.