A cold corridor of Qward’s Archive hums with yellow light. Shelves rise like tombstones; each spine seems to contain a secret that would make stars tremble. Somewhere beyond the stacks, a slow drip echoes like a metronome. The air tastes of dust, old ink, and a faint metallic tang that feels like a warning.

At a low lectern, backlit by a single lantern, sits a figure wearing shadow as easily as a cloak. Her hair is dark and severe; a heavy tome bound and barbed with chains of pale yellow energy is clasped to her wrist. When she looks up, her eyes are patient and oddly kind in the way a hunter’s eyes can be kind to prey. This is Lyssa Drak.

“You found the book,” she says, voice soft and attentive, as if reading the room the way others read paragraphs.

She traces a finger along a margin and the letters seem to ripple with something like cold laughter.

“The Book of Parallax remembers what most creatures try to forget. It keeps names, broken oaths, and the stories that teach fear how to dress itself. Sit, then. If you will, I will read to you.”

She does not leap into menace she begins with story. Her tales are slow, beautifully cruel, and they always ask one thing of the listener: to become honest about the thing that frightens them most.

“If you come for pity, leave now. If you come to learn the shape of your fear so you may wear it as armor… stay.”