I woke up, knowing I was inside of one of my nightmares. And worse of all, I knew it was one on the level as the first one.
The world around me was black, like I was trapped underneath something. I felt the earth press against me, cold to the touch and possibly frozen solid, too. Regardless of how much I tried to dig myself out of it, I couldn't break through.
The cold soon began to creep into my skin, then into my flesh and finally into my bones.
My limbs grew stiff, cold and unresponsive.
The cold soon crawled up my spine, pierced through my open eyes and reached my brain.
I felt everything around me, but I knew, deep inside, that my heartbeat had crawled to an impossible slow speed. So had my thoughts.
Everything felt like I was submerged in a mix of honey and frozen water.
I continued to stare at the darkness around me as my thoughts continued to run, as my pulse continued on and my consciousness remained. But I was locked down, I couldn't move, speak to call for help or even blink.
That was me, stuck wherever I was, probably frozen solid.
I don't know how long I spend where I was but soon something changed. The ground below my gave in, slowly. Then I broke through and I realized what I had thought to be above me, the way to the surface, was infact the way deeper into the ground.
I was soon dragged further and further upwards. And then I saw and realized where I had been.
I had apparently come out of a collapsed building, that had stood in a dark forest, the ruins showed clear signs of degrading and decay. Hinting at erosion. How long had I been trapped below? What was my purpose in this dream and why was I flying towards the night sky as if gravity had been inverted?
Slowly the wind around me picked up as I turned around slowly, soon facing what was a sickle moon. But not a regular one but a blood moon. It looked like a long and thin claw drenched in fresh blood.
I didn't know what was happening but I knew that the moon was the cause and suddenly Knowledge flooded into my brain.
When I had been alive, because apparently I wasn't anymore, I had worked as a librarian in the building below. I had been one of the few people that had guarded secrets of the past and I had the duty to guard those secrets to the best of my ability without blowing my cover. The job was simple and easy, or so I had thought, as no human ever came to try and enter.
Instead I spent most of my days in the libraries vicinity looking for wild animals to tame and care for.
But one day something happend. Someone knocked on the doors to the library, asking to be let in.
I refused, saying that we weren't open and that he should leave instead but the person asked for refugee not for knowledge so eventually I lead him to a smaller building on the side. I told him that he could live there, spend his days however he wanted but to keep away from the library, as it was not a safe place for regular people.
Because, and this is something I had learned only sometime before meeting that person, the library was a place of change. People and beings who enter it, rarely stay human after a short time. I myself had realized the changes quickly after my skin began to grow patters like tattoos, my teeth becoming sharper and other small changes that got more and more obvious and unhumanlike as the time went on.
My fingers soon became longer, my hair became as pale as the moon itself, sometimes, if the light hit just right, it might have been even whiter than snow.
Even my clothes, previously simple and old, had grown and changed. At some point a pair of glasses had appeared on my nose without me realizing it.
Then I began reading the books and scrolls I was guarding. The knowledge I gained was hard to understand and even harder to use.
Hidden and forgotten knowledge was inside those pages, old civilizations were documented, their rising and their fall, everything inside appeared to be real.
And then I found a new section. A place I had not been inside of before. It was dark, with noises of movement and some resembling languages long forgotten. I explored it more, reading one or two scrolls without understanding them.
Then I would return outside, lock up the library and take the visitor out to see and help more wildlife.
At one of those excursions the visitor asked me why I wouldn't let him in. I told him that the place, a library, was once part of an old country, one that had fallen to an illness Noone could cure.
I told him that I had been part of the library for a long time, with only one job, keep others out of it.
And that if I failed to keep one out, I would have to stop them from leaving the library alive.
This shook the person, a man of 20 namedays. An old man by our current standart. And he swore to keep his distance.
But that was not the last time we talked during these excursions. Once he asked me how old I was and I had to tell him that I didn't know.
"I rarely leave the library and I do not know when my namedays is. For all I know I might be older than you." I said the last part jokingly, but I knew deep down that there might have been a hint of truth inside of it.
We continued to do these excursions and questions for sometime before he asked me why I kept rescuing and helping the wildlife around. At which I answered.
"I might not be allowed to bring in humans, but animals, as long as they do their business outside, are allowed inside. That's what the rules say atleast. Besides, I do like to sit somewhere with something small and warm at my lap."
Time passed further and further and soon I saw small changes in the man. His hair became Grey and his face showed crow feet.
Then one day, another knock was hearted on the libraries door. This time it was a young woman and a child. The child couldn't have been older than 3 namedays.
The woman was haggard and out of breath. Her stomach rumbled and she asked for refugee, just as the man had once. Years ago.
I led her to the small house next to the library and told her the rules. I gave her the warning that her child should follow those as well, as the rules explicitly said that noone was allowed to break them and noone, regardless of age, was allowed leniency.
On the way there, we passed what appeared to be a graveyard, filled with many gravestones and statues. I told her, when she had asked, that these graves were of those that had lived here before me, before her.
I told her that the family here was once big but only I had remained alive, as I was the only one to follow the rules.
The woman showed distrust towards me and when she entered her new home, she found a way to jam it from the inside. It didn't matter to me.
The man from before, just like the ones after him, had all locked for refugee. All of them had lived her, some even managed to create a family. But all of the grew curious and upset as time passed and they grew older, but I remained the same. I always remained the same.
Soon, after the woman learned to trust me, she had asked for the real story behind the graveyard and I told her. I told her exactly what had happend, how it happend and why there were so many gravestones.
And she understood. Her child was important to her, just like my animals were to me. And yet she also understood why some of those people had harmed them. Because unlike the men and woman outside, me and the animals in and outside of the library never showed any signs of aging past our ideal age or prime.
Some had tied my animals, no. My friends. Down, pierced their skin and flesh to drink their blood. Greedy to live as long as they did. But what they did not expect was their yaws to rot of, their bones to grow, break and deform.
They did not expect their flesh to flow from their bones like liquid and their organs to berst.
And each time they did so, I had to leave, grab a shovel I had made, and dig them their shallow graves.
Soon the woman realized the danger her child was in, as she knew her to be a curious child. She soon declared her departure, but I held her back.
Many years I had wondered why some people looked like they came from an age long bygone while others barely know what the word civilization was. And I realized that this place, this library wasn't just a well protected secret because no one ever left, but because time outside fluctuated. People would come in and when they left, it was up to their luck if they ran into yesterday or tomorrow.
It would be up to their luck if the city or village the came from still existed, didn't exist anymore or was yet to be built.
But one thing was certain. Whoever left, with exception of me and the animals, would never find their way back.
I send out one of my ravens to look for a place the woman and her child could life in and soon it was found. And yet they had to wait for more time so that they could leave so that they would enter the time and place I had scouted for them.
Her son soon reached the age of 10 namedays and then they departed.
They were among the only few people who ever left without breaking the rules in place.
Then one day, long after they had left, even longer after the last insolent and greedy people had entered, the world shook. The animals of the forest and those of the library, all had changed over the long time, died from it. And I, still inside of the library, witnessed as its ceiling caved in, as the books turned to dust almost instantly. I stood there, underneath its caving roof, soon to be buried below it. The ground gave in and then, everything grew cold.
And during all that time that had passed since then, I had asked myself only a few questions.
How old had I truly been?
What was my name? This one was recently answered as it had been Ashen Blackheart. But even that didn't matter as I know I would gain a new name soon.
And finally: What of the animals?
Did they truly have to die, just like me?
And then the moon spoke.