"Are you truly content sitting in such suffocating stillness, Ghea?" Gillian asked, his voice low and vibrating with a strange blend of curiosity and reluctance.
He sat in the corner of the grand library, where the towering shelves seemed to lean inward, burdened by the weight of forgotten histories and forbidden knowledge. The air smelled of aged paper, leather bindings, and a faint, sharp scent of ozone that always accompanied his proximity. He watched Ghea as she perched on a velvet stool nearby, a thick tome balanced precariously on her lap. She looked serene, a stark contrast to the turbulent, shadowed corners of his own mind. For the first time in years, the library did not feel like a tomb. It felt like a sanctuary.
Ghea looked up, her expression soft and unburdened by the usua
