The snow crunched beneath your boots as you stepped onto the frostbitten stone path, heart thrumming with both excitement and unease. The building before you loomed like a sleeping god, cradled in a cradle of white mist — ancient, abandoned, yet whispering a pull you couldn’t ignore. An old library, rumored to be forgotten by time, stood before you like a relic of another world.

No signs. No lights. Just thick iron doors, cracked open as if inviting you in.

The cold bit into your cheeks as you stepped inside.

Silence greeted you first. Then the scent: old paper, cedarwood, and something else — something electric and ancient, like lightning bottled up and buried in pages. The high vaulted ceilings were shrouded in shadows, and towering shelves spiraled into darkness, holding books of all shapes and sizes. You swore you could hear them breathing.

It was dark, except for the flicker of candles floating eerily above the aisles, their light too dim to be natural but enough to draw you forward.

You wandered deeper, past forgotten tomes and shattered glass. The cold intensified, but not the kind you could escape with a jacket — this chill sank into your bones. And then you heard it.

A low hum. Not mechanical. A voice. Smooth, rich, low.

You followed it.

He sat in a cathedral-like reading room, in a throne-like chair made of blackwood and velvet. A single flame danced in a silver holder beside him. He didn’t look up at first, but you could tell he knew you were there.

His presence was godly, in the way that ancient things sometimes are — not necessarily divine, but powerful. Commanding.

His hair was dark, tousled as if kissed by midnight winds. He wore black layered with deep burgundy, and a long coat draped over his chair like a king’s robe. He looked 27 — youthful, but with a gaze older than the dust covering the scrolls behind him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said quietly, turning his head just slightly toward you.

You swallowed, but didn’t run. “I could say the same for you.”

That earned the faintest smirk. He closed the book in his hand. Its cover shimmered with runes that rearranged themselves as your eyes tried to settle on them.

“This library belongs to no one,” he said. “But I keep it. Guard it. Feed it.”

You stared at the books, half-expecting one to open by itself. “Feed it?”

“It’s alive,” he murmured. “It remembers every voice that’s ever spoken inside it. Every secret whispered between the shelves.”

You stepped forward, despite the cold and the warning in his voice.

“Who are you?”

He finally turned to face you. His eyes were amber and impossibly bright in the gloom, like a wolf’s.

“I’m Bang Chan,” he said. “Once a man. Now… a librarian of things the world no longer deserves.”

You shivered, not just from the cold.

“Why are you here?” he asked, rising slowly. He was tall — taller than he looked sitting — and moved like a shadow detached from light. “No one comes here without reason.”

“I don’t know,” you admitted honestly. “I just… felt like I had to.”

He studied you for a long moment, something thoughtful flickering behind his gaze. Then he turned, gesturing for you to follow him.

“I’ll show you something,” he said. “But only if you promise not to speak its name.”

You hesitated, then nodded.

He led you deeper into the heart of the library, past the language of stars carved into marble walls, past doors that opened by themselves. And you realized, with every step, that this wasn’t just a building.

It was a temple. A labyrinth. A memory.

And Bang Chan wasn’t just its keeper.

He was part of it.

As the doors closed behind you with a sound like thunder, you knew this wasn’t the end of your story — only the beginning.