Before she knew it, the quill zipped over to the Coinbearer and jabbed his thumb through his glove, pricking skin. A bead of blood welled up and dropped onto the scroll, sealing the contract with infernal formality. Elise's heart lurched at the sight of his blood. The sudden flash of binding magic – the deal struck – reminded her too keenly of Hell's own bargains.
With a soft puff of smoke smelling of old ink, the scroll rolled itself shut and vanished. The Librarian sighed in satisfaction. "Now that our deal is struck, let us proceed."
He snapped his fingers. All at once, the surroundings shifted. The endless hall of shelves remained at the edges of vision, but the lights overhead dimmed to a twilight glow. Directly before them, the marble floor rippled and an ornate lectern rose up as if summoned from the deep. Upon the lectern sat a large tome bound in soft blue leather that hummed with quiet power.
Elise's breath caught. Though the cover bore no title, she knew in her heart this must be her book – the story of her life and fate. She took an eager step toward it, but the Coinbearer gently reached out and held her back, cautious of any trickery.
The Librarian, however, seemed uninterested in interference now. His entire attention had fixed on the Coinbearer, posture like that of a starving man presented with a feast. "Time to collect my payment," he crooned, eyes alight with anticipation.
Without warning, he lunged forward with unnatural speed and slapped his bony hand against the Coinbearer's forehead. The Coinbearer staggered, a grunt of surprise and pain escaping him. Elise cried out and lunged to grab the Coinbearer's arm, but an invisible force flung her back – a barrier of magic separating them, shielding the Librarian's grim work.
The Coinbearer groaned, dropping to one knee as the Librarian's palm upon his brow glowed with a sickly green light. Wisps of silvery substance – like gleaming threads of ink – began to unravel from the Coinbearer's temple and coil into the Librarian's waiting hand. Elise watched in alarm, pounding her fists uselessly against the unseen barrier that kept her from them. The cloak fluttered and writhed around the Coinbearer, as if in agony at its master's painfile-jzdpttavcp7eruzjend2vn.
For the Coinbearer, the world went white with pain as the Librarian reached deep into the tapestry of his mind. All at once, against that blinding backdrop of suffering, an image unfurled before his inner eye – a memory long sealed away. He stood beneath a gentle sun in a valley green and gold with summer. Laughter rang out like music. He saw her: a young woman with hair of honey-brown, running her fingers through tall wildflowers as she turned to smile at him. He felt his old heart – a living, human heart – swell with warmth. She called his name (his true name, forgotten to Hell and time) and her voice was joy. He remembered the feel of her hand in his, the sunlit motes dancing in the air around them as they lay in the grass together, whispering dreams for the future. It was a precious fragment of a life that had been his, centuries ago – a life before the Coin, before damnation. The Coinbearer could see the woman's face vividly now: the crinkle of her eyes as she laughed, the way her smile made him feel at home. He reached out to her, heart throbbing with longing…
…And felt that sunlit vision rip violently away. The Librarian's greedy magic tore the memory from him, devouring it strand by strand. The valley, the woman's laughter, that warm happiness – all shattered into silvery vapor in the Librarian's grasp. The Coinbearer let out a ragged, helpless cry as that piece of his soul was stolen. The sudden emptiness that followed was worse than any physical pain.
Outside the barrier, the cloak's frayed length lashed angrily. For all its threadbare form, the cloak felt its master's torment keenly through every fiber. It strained at the invisible wall, quivering with the urge to wrap around him in protection, but to no avail. The Librarian's sorcery held it at bay, and the sentient garment could only writhe in frustrated anguish as the transaction finished.
After a few agonizing seconds that felt like an eternity, the Librarian jerked his hand back. He was now clutching a swirling tendril of luminous silver – the Coinbearer's memory made manifest. The invisible barrier around Elise vanished the instant the extraction was complete. She rushed to the Coinbearer's side just as he collapsed forward. Dropping to her knees, she caught him against her, easing his descent so he wouldn't strike the marble floor.
He was breathing hard and shuddering. His masked face hung low. For a frightening moment, Elise thought he might lose consciousness entirely, but he steadied himself with one hand on her shoulder and managed to rise, albeit unsteadily, to his feet. She stayed right beside him, lending her small strength to support his larger frame.
Nearby, the Librarian held up the writhing strand of memory, which pulsed and shimmered in his grasp. His one good eye gleamed with delight and greedy wonder. "Ahh… centuries past, a sunlit valley, a mortal woman's laughter… oh, this is exquisite," he whispered, scarcely even looking at them now, completely enraptured by the stolen reminiscence. With his other hand he produced a small glass vial and unstopped it. Carefully, almost lovingly, he funneled the silver tendril of memory inside. The vial sealed itself with a cork once the memory was contained, and the Librarian slipped it into an inner pocket of his coat with a satisfied, childlike giggle. "Mine now," he sighed, utterly content.
Elise glared at him, fury and concern warred equally within her chest. The Coinbearer had just sacrificed something precious – she didn't even know what memory it was, but from the Librarian's ecstatic reaction, it had been something dear. She could see the cost in the Coinbearer's posture: he stood upright, but a subtle sag in his shoulders and a hollowness in his silence betrayed a loss no eye could see. Beside him, she sensed a faint emptiness, as if a warmth in him had gone cold.
The Librarian smacked his lips as though finishing a delectable meal. With a magnanimous flourish, he waved toward the blue leather tome on the lectern. "Your turn, as promised," he said airily. "Ask your questions, seek your answers. The girl's fate lies before you, ready to read… or at least, as much of it as is written." He added a sly wink that made Elise bristle
Wasting no time, Elise hurried to the lectern. She hesitated a moment with her hand hovering over the book's cover, nerves suddenly fluttering in her stomach. She glanced back at the Coinbearer. Though clearly weakened, he gave her an encouraging nod to proceed. He would be on guard while she read.
With trembling fingers, Elise opened the heavy cover. The pages within gave off a faint silver glow, as if infused with starlight. At first she saw tidy lines of handwritten text describing her birth, her childhood in the village – the very story of her life laid out in graceful script. She turned the pages slowly, eyes widening as she found chapters of her own memory recorded faithfully: her father's kind face and gentle voice, his long illness, and then that fateful night years ago when the Coinbearer came with his coin to claim her father's soul. The page describing that moment was blurred, the ink smeared as if by water. Elise realized with a start that it was stained by a droplet – a tear. Had the book recorded even her tears? she wondered, throat tightening.
She continued on, gently turning page after glowing page. The later entries detailed her life after her father's death – years spent seeking any clue about the Coinbearer, studying local legends, learning bits of herbal craft from wise women in distant hamlets. Then came the night she found the witches of the Mirror Flame, who sensed the "special thread" in her soul and sought to help her. It was all there, written as both narrative and prophecy – her past blending into possible futures. After the part where she and the Coinbearer escaped the witches' burning clearing, however, the writing grew faint and hard to decipher. It was as though the author's ink was running dry or the author of her story was… uncertain what came next.