Chapter 15: The Library Without Keys

Silence. That was the first sensation.

Not the silence of the world outside, but a deeper, inner quiet—the kind that stretches across centuries and waits patiently for the mind to notice it.

Zagor sat cross-legged in the center of the dim room, eyes closed, body unmoving. The breath in his lungs belonged to a human, but the soul that lingered within… did not.

He reached inward, not as a spell, not as a technique—just a whisper of will, sliding across the folds of a mind that had once held galaxies like marbles between its fingers.

He sought memories. Lifetimes. Triumphs. Failures. Knowledge accumulated across eternities. He knew they were there. He could feel the weight of their presence.

But something was wrong.

He could recall the feelings of events—elation, grief, triumph, betrayal. But not the events themselves. No names. No faces. No locations. No incantations. The essence was intact. The structure, hollow.

"This is not forgetfulness," he murmured into the void of his mind. "This is… locked."

And as if the thought had opened something deeper, the world shifted.

He was no longer sitting. He was no longer even physical.

His awareness stood now in the heart of a vast, impossible library, where the ceiling arched into darkness and the floor stretched endlessly in all directions. Towering shelves spiraled upwards, filled not with books, but with doors—each unique, each humming with ancient power, each radiating a distinct truth.

Some were crystalline, reflecting emotions he had not yet named.

Others were wooden, cracked, and covered in glyphs from languages no longer spoken.

One pulsed like a heartbeat. Another breathed like it mourned.

Zagor stepped forward, no longer surprised, but curious in the way only the truly ancient can be.

"I'm not here physically… but mentally. Spiritually. A projection? No—more like an anchor. This place is me."

He approached one of the doors—tall, bronze, and covered in linear script that shifted when observed. He reached for it. It did not resist him with force. It simply… remained closed.

And yet—behind it, he felt something. A flood of information, an aura of dominion, a piece of his own self waiting to be reclaimed. Not magic. Not memory. Something more fundamental.

He turned to another. This one was obsidian-black, with a single, perfect eye etched into its surface.

"Not locked by spell or seal," he whispered. "But by requirement."

He looked around. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Maybe more.

Each door pulsed with familiarity, and yet none gave way.

There were no instructions. No clues. Just the overwhelming truth that he was not yet worthy.

"Not worthy?" he said aloud, almost laughing. "I have conquered planes, dethroned gods, restructured reality—"

And still, the doors stood silent.

Unmoved.

Closed.

It wasn't punishment.

It was… structure. A system older than reason. A law that even he, in his current state, could not rewrite.

"Then this is the game," he said, slowly walking between the endless halls of unopened truths. "Each door, a fragment. Each fragment, a cost."

His smile was faint. Calculating.

"Not power to be seized. But power to be earned."

And I have all the time in existence.