Hours and hours trickled by at the pace of a snail as I made my way up the volcano. Every step made the boots on my feet hotter and caused one more drop of scorching sweat to drip down my face. I'd been climbing this damn volcano for almost an entire day. While there didn't seem to be any such thing as a day-night cycle in this hellish world—just the ever-looming red-tinted sky and dark sun—it had to be close to night by now.
Thankfully, due to the Council's blessings, I might be tired, hungry, and thirsty, but I can keep pushing without slowing my pace.
I climbed over small rock faces and scaled the steep terrain, my fingers finding handholds in the volcanic rock that would have burned an ordinary person's skin. The heat intensified with each meter gained. Sulfurous fumes occasionally wafted past, making me cover my nose with the sleeve of my robe.
Until finally, I made it... The top.
It was so hot even my advanced robes seemed to sear against my skin now. Surely any normal attire would have already turned to ash in these conditions. But the heat wasn't what grabbed my attention.
I peered out in all directions, taking in the view. It was hell—a literal landscape from the darkest nightmares. A blood-red sea stretched into the horizon in the distance, its surface not blue like the oceans I'd read about but crimson like freshly spilled blood. Before it, I could spot the small port city which looked like nothing more than a collection of tiny buildings from this height. Around the volcano were miles and miles of scorched forest—blackened trees reaching up like the fingers of the buried dead. Beyond that, I could see what might be more towns in the distance, smudges of gray against the red landscape.
It might look like Satan's personal abode to most people, but to me, it was much, much more.
Before now, I'd never seen the sky, or trees—burnt or not—a sun, the sea, or a volcano. And now I was standing on one.
I took a second, finally, for the first time since entering the book, to take it all in. Entering a book isn't something every Librarian gets the luxury of doing; it's a very rare experience. Most librarians would spend their entire lives preserving texts only few ever got the chance to enter a book but sadly it was almost always in circumstances similar to this one, warding off rogues.
After a moment to absorb the hellish beauty around me, I decided it was time to get back to business. I sat down on a relatively flat rock, giving myself some time to rest before embarking down the volcano. While I sat there, I decided to find out what I could about this story.
I pulled up my holowatch and located the information tab for the current book I was in. This tab contained everything from simple spark notes to data on every important character and an entire timeline of events. For now, I should just get a grasp on the world.
The glowing blue text projected above my wrist informed me that this world was situated in the corpse of a dead god. Immediately upon reading this, I looked upward at the massive pillars that protruded up into the sky from past the horizon, now recognizing what they truly were... ribs.
I got the chills for a second, then glanced back down at my watch. According to the synopsis, this book follows the mad king Alexander in his conquest to take over the world and harness the power of the dead god's corpse for himself. There are three continents: the farthest north (and the one where the Rogues were currently situated) was Skelegard; the main continent where most of the story was taking place was The Red Kingdom; and lastly, the farthest south—where I currently was—the Forgotten Plains.
I gritted my teeth, thinking about how far away from everything the book had put me, but at least the Rogues were just as unlucky. Traversing the entire world would take time—and if they made it to the Red Kingdom before me they'll be free to mess with the story however they please
If they succeeded, the entire narrative structure would collapse. This wasn't just about preserving a story; it was about keeping a whole reality from unraveling. When a book's main story is changed even if just a little, it becomes unstable in the Library's collection and began to decay and soon disappear as if it never existed, along with any book that may have taken any sort of inspiration from it no matter how small.
I turned off my watch and hoisted myself up, wincing as my muscles protested after the long climb. I needed to get to the Red Kingdom first and stop the Rogues from altering the story and destroying the book. With that determination fueling me, I set out down the volcano toward the port city below, where hopefully I could secure passage across the crimson sea.