The book lay open like a relic exhumed from the heart of the world—an artifact too old to belong to the present, its leather binding cracked and blackened like bark struck by lightning, its pages lined with sigils and script that pulsed faintly with the memory of things long buried. It sat in the grass like something that had grown from the earth rather than been placed there, and with every slow, self-turning page, the air around it thickened—as though space itself grew heavy in its presence.
Each turn was deliberate, the dry rasp of vellum folding over itself like the soft snapping of ancient wings, summoning images that blurred the line between art and dream. These weren't simple illustrations—they were living echoes captured in ink, imprisoned truths that stirred now that eyes had found them again.
