Eryndral

The clock tower over Marrow Square chimed six times, each note reverberating through the winding alleys and glassy skyscrapers of Eryndral. In the golden haze of dusk, the city looked almost ordinary—if you ignored the faint hum beneath it all, the kind of hum you didn’t hear with your ears but felt in your bones.

Somewhere in the distance, a street magician was making fire dance between his hands, earning wide-eyed stares from tourists who didn’t realize the trick wasn’t a trick at all. In the shadows of the older districts, whispered deals were struck between figures with too-sharp features, their eyes glinting with something other than human emotion.

But Callan Soren didn’t notice any of this. Callan didn’t believe in magic.

Well, they believed in magic the way a physicist believed in gravity—something measurable, explainable, and entirely under control. If they’d been paying attention, they might have felt the hum of the city, the subtle pull of something ancient and alive. But Callan was too busy racing up the university library steps, clutching a lukewarm coffee and a bag full of overdue books.

The Eryndral University Library of Mythic Studies was an imposing building, all carved stone gargoyles and stained-glass windows. The irony wasn’t lost on Callan that they spent most of their waking hours in a place dedicated to myth when they didn’t believe in half the things people whispered about.

They dropped their bag onto a cluttered desk in one of the quieter corners, sending a stack of papers cascading to the floor.

“Brilliant,” Callan muttered, kneeling to gather the mess. “Exactly the level of professionalism they expect from someone trying to secure a grant.”

The grant. That was the whole reason they were here, drowning in crumbling scrolls and half-translated cuneiform tablets. Their proposal — “The Comparative Linguistics of Mythical Glyphs in Pre-Babylonian Cultures” — had been met with polite disinterest by the university board. Apparently, no one cared about dead languages unless they came with flashy artifacts or lucrative funding.

Which was why Callan had spent the last three nights poring over a particularly stubborn tablet that refused to make sense. They pulled it from their bag now—a nondescript slab of clay, its surface etched with tiny, intricate symbols. The archivist who’d handed it over had called it Fragment 37-A, which wasn’t exactly the most inspiring name for what could (possibly, maybe) be the key to their academic breakthrough.

Callan ran their fingers over the surface of the tablet, tracing the grooves of the glyphs. They’d spent hours trying to decipher them, comparing them to other known languages, but nothing fit. It was frustrating and thrilling all at once—the kind of puzzle that kept them awake at night.

They reached for their notebook, flipping to a page filled with sketches and annotations.

“It’s definitely not Akkadian,” they muttered to themselves. “And it’s too structured to be proto-Elamite. So what are you?”

The glyphs didn’t answer, of course. But as Callan stared at them, the room seemed to grow quieter. The faint hum of the city outside faded, replaced by a different kind of sound—a low, rhythmic whisper, like the rustling of leaves in a windless forest.

Callan frowned, glancing over their shoulder. The library was empty, as it always was at this hour. Still, the whisper persisted, soft and insistent, like it was coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Probably just sleep deprivation,” they muttered, though their voice wavered slightly.

They turned back to the tablet, squinting at one of the glyphs. It looked almost like a spiral, but with jagged edges that made it seem less like a symbol and more like... a wound.

As they stared, the glyph glimmered. Just for a moment—so brief they almost convinced themselves they’d imagined it. But then it happened again, and this time, the whisper grew louder.

Callan leaned back, their heart pounding. “Well, that’s... new.”

The tablet’s surface began to glow faintly, the glyphs shifting and rearranging themselves like liquid metal.

“Okay,” Callan said aloud, gripping the edge of the desk. “This is fine. Totally normal. Just a standard case of hallucinating because of too much caffeine and not enough sleep.”

The tablet pulsed once, and before they could react, a burst of light filled the room.

When the light faded, the room was filled with smoke—thick and cloying, like incense burned too long. Callan coughed, waving a hand in front of their face.

“Great. I’ve probably just unleashed ancient Babylonian asbestos. That’s going to look fantastic on my obituary.”

But as the smoke cleared, they froze. Something was standing in the middle of the room.

It wasn’t human.

Callan couldn’t decide what it was, exactly—a shadow given form? A creature made of sharp angles and darker-than-black edges? Its eyes (or what counted as eyes) glowed faintly, fixed on them with unsettling intensity.

The creature tilted its head, as if assessing them. Then it spoke, its voice low and resonant, like the hum of the city amplified a thousandfold.

“You are the one who called me,” it said.

Callan blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

The creature stepped closer, its form rippling like smoke. “You touched the codex. You awakened it. Now the path begins.”

“Path? What path? I didn’t awaken anything! I was just —”

The creature raised a hand, and the tablet on the desk began to glow again.

Callan groaned, burying their face in their hands. “Of course. Of course this is happening. I spend my whole life trying to prove I’m more than just a glorified librarian, and now I’m summoning cryptic shadow monsters. Fantastic.”

The creature leaned closer, its glowing eyes narrowing. “Do not mock what you do not understand, mortal.”

“Pretty sure ‘mocking what I don’t understand’ is my coping mechanism,” Callan muttered.