Eliria of Quartz and the Book Thief

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The library of Cindralith was no ordinary place. Its halls were made of crystal arches, glittering in the light like frozen rainbows. Between the shelves, there were no rustling leaves, but small streams of sand, sliding like hours through invisible gullies. Eliria of Quartz moved within it with the steady ticking that came from her chest. Her steps were precise, and the hands of her clock faces glowed faintly in the gloom. For days, the halls had been commotion. Books were disappearing. Not ordinary volumes—they were those that dealt with time: chronicles, horary grammars, atlases of lost eras. Eliria had been tasked with tracking down the thief. In the third hall, she found clues: a row of bookshelves, their dust disturbed. One volume was missing, "The Night Seconds of Isoral." Eliria placed a mechanical hand on the wood, and inside, gears clicked. From her backpack, she pulled a small prism. She held it over the gap, and instantly a trembling trail of golden dust appeared. So the book thief wasn't human. He left a trail of time behind him—fleeting, as if he had sucked the words themselves from the chronicle. Eliria followed the thread through narrow corridors, past staircases that spiraled upwards. Her hat brushed the crystal arches, and its ticking echoed like a silent timekeeper. At the end of the thread stood a high reading room. The windows were blind with dust, yet a faint glow flickered within. A figure scurried between the tables—barely taller than a child, with arms too long and a body that seemed made of shadows. In its hands, the stolen book glowed, its pages fluttering as if reading themselves. "Put it back," Eliria said, her voice a cool bell. The shadow laughed hoarsely. "The books belong to no one. Time wants to be free." "Time without a guardian disintegrates," she replied. Her index eyes blazed, and for a moment, all the sand streams in the gutters froze. The thief stepped back, but he didn't let go of the book. Instead, he opened it, and from the pages rose a storm of seconds—little lights that flitted around the room like fireflies. They bounced against Eliria's body, tugged at the gears, tried to disrupt their ticking. But she stood firm, reached for one of the seconds, and gently pressed it against her clock face. Immediately, she calmed down, adjusting to her rhythm. "You don't just steal books," she said, "you steal memories." The shadow trembled as if it were itself formed from stolen hours. "I need them. Without them, I dissolve." Eliria paused. She recognized the jump, the flicker in its movements: it was a remnant of a time unlived, an echo seeking support. With a calm gesture, she opened her backpack. Inside lay a small hourglass, its glass frosted. She placed it on the table. "Give me the pages. In return, you will receive a vessel." The book thief stared at the hourglass. First suspiciously, then greedily. Hesitantly, he placed the book inside.