Davo let out a slow breath as he surveyed the library's grand facade, its towering columns and weathered stone steps speaking of an era when knowledge had been meticulously preserved rather than scavenged. Vines curled along the edges of the entrance, creeping up like nature itself had begun the slow process of reclaiming human civilization. The air smelled faintly of dust and rain-soaked masonry, the lingering scent of old books mixing with the damp musk of forgotten corridors.
The city center had a different kind of life than the outskirts. It was not abandoned, nor was it thriving—it existed in a state of quiet reclamation, where people moved like ghosts, careful and deliberate. The towering high-rises, once symbols of wealth and power, now stood hollowed out, some repurposed as shelters, others left. Street corners harbored small clusters of survivors who had banded together, carving out their own territories in the remnants of a world that no longer belonged to structured governance.
Davo had noticed the shift over the past few days. Conjuration had spread like wildfire. What had once been a desperate scramble for resources had given way to something different—innovation. No longer were people merely conjuring food and water for survival; they were experimenting, modifying texture and taste, bartering improved recipes for tools and supplies. The first time he had seen someone sell a loaf of conjured bread with an actual crust, he had grinned. They were adapting.
The library, however, had been an unknown. He had been drawn to it not just for the knowledge it might hold, but because he needed to see whether anyone had thought to protect it.
He ascended the stone steps cautiously, each footstep pressing against the silence that surrounded the grand building. The heavy doors stood slightly ajar, revealing a darkened interior where only slivers of morning light pierced through the high, arched windows. He could feel the shift in the air as he stepped inside—he was being watched.
The scent of aged paper and leather filled the cavernous space, mingling with the damp, earthy aroma of a building left to the elements. Dust motes floated lazily in the sunbeams that streamed through panes, casting fractured light across the marble floor. Shelves lined the walls, stretching upward in endless rows, their contents still intact despite the chaos outside.
Then came the voice.
"You lost?"
Davo turned toward the sound, his eyes adjusting to the dim interior. Near the main desk, a group of people had gathered, their postures tense but not immediately hostile. They weren't scavengers—not quite. Their clothing was patched but well-kept, their gazes sharp, calculating. These were people who had claimed the library, not just as shelter, but as something more.
He raised his hands slightly, a gesture of non-aggression. "Not lost. Just looking to make a deal."
A murmur passed through the group. A tall man with short-cropped hair and wary eyes stepped forward, arms crossed. "What kind of deal?"
Davo tilted his head toward the bookshelves that stretched beyond the grand hall. "I want access to the books. In exchange, I'll teach you conjuration—food, water, basic materials. You won't have to scavenge anymore."
Silence. Then more murmurs. A woman with dark hair pulled into a loose braid narrowed her eyes at him. "You can actually teach it?" There was skepticism in her tone, but also something else—hope.
Davo smiled. "I can. And I will. You were going to go out looking for a teacher anyway, weren't you?"
The tall man rubbed his chin, his expression shifting from suspicion to reluctant consideration. Finally, he extended a hand. "Alright. You teach us, you get the books."
Davo grasped his hand firmly. "Deal."
Davo lowered himself onto the creaking wooden floor of the library's grand hall, sending a gentle swirl of dust motes spinning in the golden sunlight. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment and faded leather bindings, a reminder of what this place had once stood for. Across from him, the gathered survivors—librarians turned guardians of this bastion of knowledge—watched with tense curiosity. Someone coughed softly, the sound echoing off distant shelves, as though the library itself were waiting for something extraordinary to happen.
With a small, almost imperceptible gesture, Davo extended his hands. A faint shimmer of energy coalesced in the stillness, manifesting first as a warm, crusted loaf of bread, and then as a neat stack of dense food cubes. It landed on the floor with a gentle thump, the bread smelling faintly of yeast and the cubes carrying that neutral, nutrient-packed aroma. The reaction from the onlookers was subdued. They had heard the tales, caught glimpses of conjuration in passing, but never had someone offered to unravel the mystery. Until now.
"This," Davo said, his voice low and focused, "is the simplest form of conjuration. It's just energy molded into matter—something we don't fully understand but can still wield." He paused, scanning the wary, intrigued faces. "Don't think of it as magic. It's a skill, one you can learn if you're willing."
Several of them exchanged glances, uncertainty mingling with a hint of hope. After all they'd endured—empty streets, hasty meals snatched from the ruins—this was a chance to move beyond mere survival.
"Let's begin small," he continued. "Focus on one simple object. A drop of water—visualize it, feel it, and pull it into being."
His words hung in the hush that followed, just as the library's heavy doors groaned open. Davo's team—Jane, Emma, Calla, and Liora—stepped inside, their footfalls echoing against the arches overhead. Liora, arms crossed and a teasing glint in her eye, took one look at Davo's makeshift lesson and raised an eyebrow.
"Teaching again?" she asked, leaning against a tall shelf crammed with dusty tomes. Her voice carried a light mockery. "It's like you're allergic to downtime."
Davo flashed a tired grin. Before he could reply, Liora strolled over and gave him a good-natured nudge with her elbow. "Go find those books you've been obsessing over," she said, her tone affectionate but firm. "I've got this. Your next grand discovery can wait until you track down the library's physics section."
He let out a slow exhale, nodding. She was right, as usual. He stood, brushing a light coating of dust from his pants. "Fine," he muttered, fighting a smile. "But no pyrotechnics while I'm gone, yeah?"
"No promises," Liora quipped, an impish smirk on her lips.
A middle-aged woman with stern, intelligent eyes stepped forward—her nametag battered and mostly illegible, but still clinging to her jacket. Davo recognized a certain guarded warmth in her posture. "You'll need help finding what you want," she said. "It's a maze in here. I've been a caretaker of these shelves for decades."
"Thanks," he murmured. "I'm looking for advanced physics. Quantum mechanics, specifically anything on communications or faster-than-light theories."
She tilted her head in interest but didn't question it. "Follow me," she said, gesturing toward the library's deeper recesses.
The shift in atmosphere was immediate as they left the bustling entrance behind. The air cooled, the musty smell of ancient bindings growing heavier, as if centuries of knowledge weighed down every corner. Dim light cut through lofty windows high above, illuminating the dust that danced in slow cascades. Faint echoes of hushed footsteps trailed them down the corridor.
"We protected this place," the woman said quietly, leading him around a precarious pile of scattered books that formed an impromptu barrier. "Food and water—sure, those keep us alive. But knowledge is what'll shape what we become. We need more than full bellies."
Davo nodded, the truth of it resonating with him. In a world where survival had once been the only aim, now something else stirred—a hunger for understanding, for direction.
At last, they reached the physics section—towering shelves that soared up into the shadows. The woman guided him to a cluster of volumes in worn, methodical order. His gaze traveled over the cracked spines, the faint gold lettering of titles that whispered of subatomic realms and cosmic wonders. Then he spotted it:
Davo smoothed a hand across the tattered cover of the hefty tome labeled Quantum Entanglement and Information Transfer, brushing away the fine layer of dust that clung to its edges. Long rays of late-afternoon sunlight cut through the library's towering windows, illuminating the drifting motes of dust in the air. Each breath he drew carried a hint of musty paper, tinged with the faint, almost sweet aroma of decaying leather bindings. The contrast of this ancient fragrance against the extraordinary ideas nestled in the book's pages filled him with a quiet but intense sense of wonder.
He drew in a slow breath, letting his gaze flicker toward a row of shelves that reached nearly to the vaulted ceiling. Titles half-faded by time loomed in precarious stacks, silent witnesses to an era when entire worlds of knowledge were left to gather dust. Now, after society's abrupt transformation, these words felt more vital than ever—fragments of thought that could be the key to understanding the chaos enveloping the world.
The battered hardwood under his feet emitted a groan as he shifted his weight. Above him, old stone arches soared overhead, and the subdued echoes of distant voices hinted that the once-hushed corridors were now inhabited by survivors. Quietly, he cracked the book open to its first page, scanning diagrams that hinted at a "spooky action" bridging unimaginable distances. Complex equations twined around each other in tight, compact print, and references danced across footnotes, linking centuries-old physics debates to brand-new theoretical leaps. Once, Davo might have regarded these as mere academic curiosities, but in this haunted silence, they took on an urgent significance.
A gentle cough interrupted his thoughts. Startled, he glanced up to see the librarian—a woman of middle years, gray streaking her tied-back hair, her gaze steady as if measuring him. She wore a sweater with worn elbows, a relic from the days before everything collapsed. The glint of her faded nametag caught the light, hinting at a time she once proudly guided visitors through these aisles. Now, her silent question—Would he be staying long?—hung in the air.
"I'll be a while," Davo murmured, letting a note of apology slip into his tone as he closed the book. "If you see the others, can you let them know I'll catch up with them later?"
She nodded, her face revealing neither skepticism nor enthusiasm, just the calm acceptance of someone who had spent decades among shelves of stories. With measured steps, she turned to walk away, the floor creaking under her deliberate pace. Shadows from the high windows played across the back of her sweater, swirling in the dust like ghostly patterns.
Alone again, Davo resettled on a low wooden stool, the seat a relic from a time when patrons crowded these halls for research instead of survival. With the book balanced on his knees, he reopened it, delving into a realm of quantum entanglement that once belonged strictly to fringe physics. Rows of text spoke of instantaneous effects, unbreakable cryptographic keys, and bizarre phenomena that defied conventional logic. Strange as it sounded, none of it felt out of place anymore.
He read about advanced quantum states—entangled pairs, collapsed wavefunctions, Bell inequalities—and hypothetical backdoors for communication that transcended distance. Outside, he could hear faint traces of Liora's voice filtering through the library's thick walls. She was undoubtedly guiding newcomers in conjuration, imparting the skill of forging food and water. His mind conjured the image: Liora's arms folded, her tone half-playful, half-urgent, as Emma, Calla, and Jane offered comic relief, or barked pointers with no-nonsense clarity. They were forging a new world out of battered ruins, while he tried to glean the deeper puzzle from ancient books.
Yet the deeper he delved, the more his thoughts drifted toward the world's inexplicable changes. Since the Event—whatever it truly was—human bodies healed unnaturally fast, entire infrastructures collapsed not in epic destruction but in slow, unstoppable decay, and the mightiest weapons turned impotent. Could it be that something or someone else was orchestrating these shifts? The text in his hands seemed to raise the possibility. If an off-world intelligence or force existed, how would it communicate across interstellar voids? If the entire planet had become a test site, might that explanation—quantum entanglement on a cosmic scale—offer clues?
He imagined invisible threads woven through reality, linking every corner of the universe. If so, perhaps these beings—or forces—had found ways to manipulate matter, bypassing the normal laws. The illusions of unstoppable weapons were undone, replaced by a system in which conjured food and water might be the least of the wonders. Could the same principles he read about—a technology so advanced it looked like magic—enable them to shape worlds from a distance?
Pages rustled beneath his fingertips, the quiet library all but cocooning him in thought. A faint skittering in the far corner made him wonder if some small creature had taken refuge there—rats, but at least not menacing enough to bother him. The structure's hush was broken only by that occasional patter, the drifting footsteps of other survivors seeking knowledge or simply a safe haven.
He let his gaze drift across the lines describing quantum entanglement's implications for faster-than-light illusions. They mentioned how entangled particles appeared to communicate instantly, yet never truly broke the cosmic speed limit. The suggestion was that information might be shared, albeit locked behind complexities of measurement and no-communication theorems.
Davo found himself mentally debating the text: if these cosmic travelers, if they existed, were truly in control, they wouldn't be limited by the usual constraints. The simplest moves—stopping a nuclear war, guiding the world into a pacified state—would be child's play if they had harnessed quantum entanglement to such extremes. The scattered rumors of massive missiles launching only to become inert seemed to support that very notion.
He turned a page, where complex diagrams illustrated "spooky action at a distance." Boxes, arrows, and wavefunction equations spanned the margin, calling back to decades of post-Einstein debate. Photons entangled across labs, their states linked in ways Einstein had scoffed at. The real question, as the text suggested, was whether these phenomena could scale infinitely, bridging galaxies. Possibly, yes—if the participants fully understood how to encode and decode quantum states across unimaginable expanses.
A brittle laugh escaped his throat. Just weeks ago, this would have sounded outlandish. Now, after witnessing the meltdown of entire cities, the uselessness of conventional might, and the improbable wellspring of conjured sustenance, it no longer felt far-fetched. If quantum entanglement formed a cosmic communication network, perhaps it explained the quiet infiltration that changed Earth at its foundations. Maybe no unstoppable invasion force was required—just a subtle shift of the universal rules.
Pages turned, and the hush of the library enveloped him once more, as though the building itself recognized the gravity of these secrets. If knowledge was indeed the remedy, he was set on brewing the cure, no matter how many footnotes or dusty volumes it might require. A faint sense of determination, steady and new, blossomed in his chest.
--
Davo emerged from the library's dim corridors into the late afternoon glow, rubbing a faint ache in his shoulders as he reoriented to the bustle beyond. The lingering odor of old parchment and dust still clung to his clothes, but out here the atmosphere felt alive, threaded with low chatter and the sharp bursts of laughter echoing through the half-ruined streets. He'd assumed the others would have finished teaching by now, yet the group had only grown larger.
Jane spotted him first, detaching herself from a circle of learners and strolling over, her eyebrows lifting in playful challenge. "Look who finally crawled out of the archives," she quipped, nodding at the worn book tucked under his arm. "Did you find your Holy Grail in there?"
He offered a lopsided grin. "Plenty to chew on, though it'll take some effort before I figure out how to use it."
She crossed her arms, a satisfied glimmer in her gaze. "Sounds about right. While you were busy cracking cosmic secrets, we learned this place is part of a network—trading messages with nearby communities, sharing lessons. We figure we can stick around, teach from here, maybe pick up intel on what everyone's doing."
Davo glanced across the courtyard. Clusters of people sat on the library steps, practicing conjuration with Emma and Calla, while Liora guided others with quiet confidence. It was oddly uplifting, watching a ragtag band of survivors evolve into something organized, knowledge flowing faster than he'd expected.
"So," he asked, scanning for Liora, who was just finishing with a student. "Where do you want me?"
She waved the newcomer off and pivoted to Davo. "Well?" she prompted, hands on her hips. "Did you get what you wanted?"
He let out a satisfied breath, tapping the book's cover. "Yeah, though I'll need to figure out how it fits with everything else, but—"
She arched a brow, half a smile on her lips. "Still on about that alien theory?"
He rolled his eyes. "We all need a hobby, right?"
For days, he'd been pressing them about his suspicion that something beyond human comprehension had twisted the world's rules. They neither agreed nor dismissed the idea. Their priorities lay more in practical concerns—feeding people, forging alliances—while Davo's interest veered toward unseen forces that might be tinkering with reality.
"Look," he said, "the pattern in all this chaos isn't random. Something's behind it. If I can just decipher how external forces manipulate matter—"
She shook her head, still smiling. "You do remember we're teaching people to conjure bread out of thin air, right? That's enough weirdness for one day."
Before Davo could retort, a fresh knot of anxious faces approached, wanting to learn. Liora patted his shoulder. "Back to work, genius. Solve the universe later."
Afternoon faded in a steady rhythm of lessons, new arrivals drawn by rumor and curiosity. Some struggled with conjuration, looking to Davo or Jane for patient corrections. Others took to it with striking ease, already tinkering with flavor or texture. Davo found himself impressed by their resourcefulness, gleaning as much insight as he gave. By dusk, the old library and its surroundings teemed with an air of determined hope.
As the sun dropped behind skeletal towers in the distance, they settled on spending the night a few blocks away. A long-deserted house, walls still standing, caught their eye. It smelled faintly of mildew and old carpeting, its once-lived-in charm buried under dust. Broken furniture and scattered papers testified to a hasty abandonment, but it was sturdy enough for the night.
They cleared space in a shabby living room, setting up a makeshift fire in a salvaged metal drum. Flickering light danced on the walls, revealing faded photos stuck behind shattered frames. Davo leaned against a wall, book in his lap, though he wasn't reading. Instead, he watched the others chatting in a huddle of worn blankets.
Jane stretched out, hands propping her head. "Alright," she announced, waggling her brows at Davo. "You're the local weirdo with big theories—spill. What do you think really caused all this?"
He pushed himself upright. "Something from outside. Something planned. Governments, infrastructure, all failing in sync? People healing freakishly fast? This doesn't just happen. Feels like… we're being steered."
Emma snorted, crossing her arms. "Steered by who, exactly? Galactic babysitters?"
Jane grinned. "Or ancient space wizards, come to rescue us from ourselves?"
Calla chimed in, her grin conspiratorial. "We're obviously inside a simulation. Somebody just rebooted the server, right?"
Liora let out a short laugh. "I heard a new one yesterday. A guy claims the world ended, but we got quietly switched to a clone dimension. So now we're stuck with leftover everything."
Emma raised a hand in mock solemnity. "Another rumor says the planet itself woke up and decided we were messing up too much, so it reset the entire system."
Jane faked a gasp. "Mother Earth ex machina? That's a plot twist."
Davo sighed. "You're all hilarious. But come on, you don't think my theory's that crazy, do you?"
Liora's smile dimmed slightly. "We've all seen weird stuff—can't deny it. But we've got to keep people fed, safe. We can't all chase shadows."
He angled his gaze at the book in his lap, fingers brushing its spine. "Yeah, but what if it's not just a shadow? If something's out there, orchestrating this, maybe we can figure out how to talk back."
A hush fell, the fire's glow flickering against the peeling wallpaper. Emma shook her head, exhaling. "You and your big questions, Davo."
He opened the book, scanning the opening lines again. "Well, we can't fix everything by feeding folks conjured bread, can we?"
The conversation meandered then—snatches of humor, old stories, musings about the next day's plans. Yet that lingering question stayed with Davo, swirling in the back of his mind long after the others drifted off. If someone—or something—was guiding these changes, understanding its methods might be everything. If he could piece together how to communicate across cosmic distances, maybe that knowledge would be the key to unraveling all the chaos they faced.