The dormitory was quiet—too quiet.

Ed lay on the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling where the pale light from the hallway seeped through the blinds. The hum of the ventilation system was the only sound, steady and sterile. Yet beneath it, he could still hear something else—an echo, faint and rhythmic, like the turning of pages that weren’t really there.

He pressed his palms to his ears. “Stop it,” he whispered.

But the words wouldn’t stop.

Fragments of sentences he’d read—or imagined reading—slid through his thoughts like whispers in another tongue.  

*Welcome, Ed Relven. Stay with us. The story isn’t over.*

He sat up, heart pounding. The clock on the wall read 2:46 a.m.  

He hadn’t slept at all.

Across the room, his issued gear—standard-issue sidearm, data pad, containment gloves—lay neatly on the desk, untouched. The badge beside them reflected the dim light: **A.R.C. Foundation – Probationary Field Agent.**

He exhaled slowly. “First day, and I almost got myself killed.”  

The admission hung heavy in the air.

He thought of **Markel Hoffman**—the older man’s harsh words in the car, his eyes filled with something between fury and fear. Yet beneath that, Ed had sensed a strange kind of concern. Hoffman had seen too many rookies consumed by things they didn’t understand.

Ed rubbed his temples. The images from the library still burned in his mind—the living paragraphs, the way the book had *known* his name. He felt a chill.  

That wasn’t coincidence. The anomaly had reached into him, left something behind.

He turned on the small reading lamp and opened his field notebook. The pages were blank, but he hesitated before writing.  

A part of him feared the ink might start moving again.

Instead, he scribbled one sentence, hand trembling slightly:  

**“Curiosity is the first step to madness.”**

He leaned back, staring at the words. For a long while, he said nothing.  

The fluorescent light buzzed faintly above him.

Somewhere deep beneath the A.R.C. headquarters, containment teams were probably sealing *The Shifting Tome* into reinforced storage, tagging it with a new classification code and sending reports up the chain. Another anomaly restrained. Another secret buried.

But for Ed Relven, the damage was already done.  

The line between his thoughts and the words on that page had blurred, if only for a heartbeat. And now, as the night dragged on, he realized how easily that boundary could dissolve again.

He closed his notebook and turned off the light.  

Darkness returned—thick, silent, and absolute.

Yet even in that darkness, Ed could still hear it…  

A single page turning, softly, somewhere inside his head.

He whispered to himself, barely audible:  

“I’ll be careful next time… I have to be.”

And though the whisper faded into the dark, a faint echo answered back—  

*You will read again.*