Stories from the Aether Library Serenya Gearlight and the Index of Silent Prophets

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The hall lay in twilight as Serenya Gearlight first descended the black marble steps. The dust on the railings wasn't just dust: it sparkled, as if each grain bore the memory of a voice long since faded away. Torches were unlit, yet the room shone with a glassy clarity that came from neither sun nor moon. Here, she knew, lay the Index of Silent Prophets—the register that wrote not in speech, but in silence. The air smelled of parchment, iron, and the faint scent of wet stone. Serenya stroked the rings of her chrono-mirror, the instrument with which she peered through the veils of time. But even the mirror, which was usually like an open window into every era, fogged up from within. No glimpse seemed possible. "No eye, no voice," she murmured, "silence itself is the limit." A desk rose before her, so high she had to tilt her head back. On it lay the index: a book thicker than any volume in the Aether Library, its cover made of blackened glass, its edges framed in metal that seemed like frozen light. No title, no inscription. Only lines that moved like breaths. Serenya placed her hand on it, and immediately the trembling stopped. Instead of letters, she felt a coldness that beat like an alien heart in her hand. "He doesn't speak," said a voice behind her. She turned around and recognized one of the librarian-machines she had seen before in Solvinarneu. A being made of brass and glass, its head like a clock, without numbers, only hands that ran backwards and forwards. "He writes in silence," the machine continued, "and only those who can read the silence may learn what the future holds." "And if you can't?" Serenya asked. "Then you remain blind, even if you have eyes." She took a deep breath. For weeks, she had followed the trail of lost minutes, those cracks in the stream of time that erased memories. And here, she knew, was a key. The index held not only prophecies—it held the echoes of those who had once tried to redirect the flow of time, and who had sacrificed their voices to do so. She opened the first page. No writing. Just a sheet of white parchment, which nevertheless had a weight, as if it bore a thousand unspoken words. Serenya suddenly heard something: a rapping, irregular, like a distant heartbeat. And then the scraping of chalk, though no one was writing. Shadows on the page formed into gestures: a hand warning, a finger pointing upward, a mouth that remained open, soundless. "They speak in signs," she whispered. "No," the machine corrected. "They speak in absentia." Serenya bent closer. The parchment cooled her cheeks. With the tip of her finger, she traced a line that had no beginning. Then she felt her own breath being sucked into the page. Words she wanted to say caught in her throat, as if someone had taken the language out of her. Panic rose. But then she understood: this was the price of the Index. Only in silence could one read.