Felix lay on the stone floor of the central archive, his chest heaving. Phantom pain of the Blood Script was gone, but memory seared in his nervous system—a full-body convulsion replayed in his soul. The Codex of the Unseen Tide had returned to its usual dim, silver-notated background, its frightful, commanding incursion over. It had saved him, but at cost, a profound and terrible understanding: information he sought was not inert. It lived, and it starved.
He remained on the ground for a long time, just breathing, with the rock's unmagical, hard surface against his back, anchoring himself in the mundane. The desire to flee, to never return to the Banned Wing, was a physical draw. Yet he couldn't. The book was still within. A "key, a door, a mouth." And he had almost eaten lunch. If he di
