Library Part2

Caelan stared at the floating screen.

"…'Functioning barely'?" he muttered. "Well, someone's honest."

The status window blinked once before quietly fading out. He was left alone with shelves of forgotten knowledge and a mind that now processed everything three times faster than it should.

He wandered among the towering shelves, his fingers brushing against leather-bound spines and dusty titles that smelled of past pride—"On Proper Posture During Duels," "The Genealogy of House Valeborne, Vol. XII", "Economic Warfare in the Age of Mana." All useful if he were a professor or extremely bored.

He was neither.

A flicker of instinct—or maybe just morbid curiosity—pulled him toward an older wing of the library. It was less polished and less monitored. This section had history that wasn't sanitized for polite conversation.

Then he saw it.

A thick tome, half-tucked out of a shelf, wedged between two untouched scrolls as if it had been shoved in a hurry. Its spine was cracked and the title nearly worn away, but he could still make it out:

"Elandor: A Chronicle of Realms and Blood."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Now we're getting to the fun part."

He pulled it free with both hands—it was heavier than it looked—and carried it to a reading table under the soft glow of an enchanted lantern. The moment he opened the cover, he felt it:

His mind sharpened. The words practically jumped into his head.

The book crackled softly as he turned the page. The ink felt strangely warm under his fingertips—enchanted, probably, to preserve the script through centuries of dust and noble neglect.

The seven realms of Elandor. Once a unified land, or so the legends claimed, before it was ripped apart by magic, pride, and about seven too many gods with different opinions.

Caelan's eyes followed the flow of ornate script as it described the lands and their rulers.

Humans didn't dominate, not really. They had cities, trade routes, messy alliances, and enough political drama to fill ten libraries—but compared to the other races, they were loud, short-lived, and painfully average. They had no true affinity of their own. Some tapped into magic through bloodlines or contracts, but more often, they depended on tools, tactics, and an absurd amount of paperwork.

Still, they tried to matter. The Human Domain, one of the human-led realms, had built its name on temples, golden palaces, and exporting righteousness as if it were a marketable good. A few centuries of stable rule, and suddenly they saw themselves as the "guiding light" of civilization. Typical.

Then came the elves—eternal, graceful, and insufferable. Their realm was covered in forests so thick with mana that trees occasionally exploded during thunderstorms. They didn't call it magic; they called it weaving the essence, which was exactly the kind of thing someone smug and barefoot would say.

The dwarves were simpler. Underground empires, mountain fortresses, metal everything. They fought hard, drank harder, and built cities that could outlast empires. Their realm wasn't pretty, but it was permanent—scarred stone, glowing runes, and forges that hadn't gone out in a thousand years.

The beastkin roamed the stormy plains to the far west. Caelan remembered them vaguely—sharp teeth, sharper tempers. They didn't believe in kings, only in chieftains strong enough to keep order and quick enough to outrun the next challenger. Magic wasn't studied there; it was inherited, like instincts.

Further south, the dragon-blooded ruled the skies—or at least pretended to. The Dracari were rare, winged, and born with tempers that made fire look subtle. Their realm was wild, filled with unpredictable mana storms that only they could survive. Some said they once ruled the entire continent. Others claimed they still believed that.

And then there were the seafolk—hybrids, traders, pirates, diplomats. Their lands shifted more than their loyalties, a mix of floating cities, coastal fortresses, and underwater courts. No one truly ruled that realm, but it somehow kept existing anyway.

Caelan paused at the next page. The ink was darker here. The parchment felt colder.

The final realm.

The seventh.

It didn't have a name.

Only a warning.

It was called many things—The Hollow Expanse, The Wound, The Beyond. But most simply called it what it was: The Dead Lands.

No kings, no order, no rules. Just twisted land, corrupted mana, and things that shouldn't speak but do. Monsters roamed freely. Demons ruled like lords, their minds as sharp as their claws. And then there were the Hollowborn—creatures that once were something else. People, maybe. Soldiers. Children.

Not anymore.

The page described them in detail, and Caelan wished it hadn't.

Void-warped, soul-split, drawn to mana like moths to flame. They didn't age. They didn't sleep. And worst of all, they remembered just enough to make you think they were still human.

He closed the book slowly, his fingers lingering on the cover.

Seven realms.

Six clinging to power, identity, and structure.

And one that whispered to all the rest like a rot beneath the floorboards.

Caelan leaned back in the chair, letting the library's silence settle around him like a cloak.

"…Yeah. Not ominous at all."