Chapter 1 The Library of wisdom

My name is Erick. Erick Rikson. From the moment I was born, I possessed an ability that never belonged to ordinary people. My eyes were different. They did not merely see the world, they understood it. 

With a single glance, I could see truth and lies, friendship and hostility, fear and affection. Every person was an open book to me, their intentions written clearly where no one else could see. There was never uncertainty in my world. My eyes made sure of that.

It was on an ordinary afternoon, the kind that feels insignificant while living it, that something impossible appeared before me. I was walking home from school, my mind wandering through meaningless thoughts, when suddenly a door stood in my path. It had not fallen from the sky, nor risen from the ground. 

It simply existed, as if it had always been there, waiting for me to notice it. Slowly, the door began to open. As the gap widened, a cold wind escaped from within, brushing against my face and making my shirt tremble softly. 

The air felt strange, ancient, as if it carried the weight of something far beyond my understanding. Light emerged from the opening, gentle at first, then brighter, until it revealed the silhouette of a man standing on the other side.

He stepped forward calmly, his eyes wide and steady. “Come with me,” he said. His voice was not warm, nor threatening. It carried neither invitation nor persuasion. It was an order. I looked directly into his eyes, searching for deception, danger, hesitation. 

I found none. There were no lies, no hidden malice, nothing that warned me to turn away. So I followed him. I crossed the threshold, leaving behind the ordinary world without resistance, without fear, guided only by the certainty my eyes had always given me.

What greeted me on the other side was beyond anything I had ever imagined. It was a library, yet calling it a library felt insufficient. Books stretched endlessly in every direction, towering shelves rising higher than buildings, disappearing into a distance that seemed infinite. It felt less like a room and more like an ocean, a sea of knowledge without end. 

The man beside me spoke, his voice quiet yet clear. He told me the name of this place. It was called the LIBRARY. I stood there in silence, absorbing its presence, feeling both small and strangely calm within its vastness.

My gaze drifted upward, and what I saw made my breath still. There was no roof. Above me was the cosmos itself, endless and alive. Stars burned in silent brilliance, galaxies spiraled slowly as if dancing to a rhythm older than time itself. I watched stars being born in distant flashes of light, and others collapsing into darkness. 

It felt as though I stood outside the boundaries of reality, witnessing the universe without limitation. The beauty of it was overwhelming, yet beneath that beauty was something unsettling, something that made me feel as though I did not belong there.

My attention shifted when I sensed movement. A woman was approaching us. Her steps were calm and deliberate, her presence carrying a quiet authority. She stopped in front of me and looked directly into my eyes. “I am Kimich,” she said softly. 

“I am the Watcher.” Her voice was gentle, yet it carried a weight that made the words feel absolute. She studied me for a moment before speaking again. “Look into my eyes,” she said. “What do you see?”

I met her gaze without hesitation. For my entire life, my eyes had never failed me. They had always shown me everything. But as I looked into her eyes, I saw nothing. No truth. No lies. No emotion. No past. No intention. It was not darkness, nor emptiness. It was simply nothing. My mind struggled to understand what my eyes could not explain. For the first time, I felt uncertainty. “Nothing,” I said quietly.

She nodded, as if my answer had only confirmed what she already knew. “Just as I expected,” she said. There was no disappointment in her voice, only calm acceptance. Around me, the library began to fade. The shelves dissolved, the stars vanished, and the vast cosmos disappeared as if it had never existed. Her voice reached my ears once more as everything fell apart. 

“He is no use,” she said to the man behind me. Those words struck something deep inside me, though I did not understand why. Before I could react, a bright light consumed everything, and the world disappeared.

I woke up suddenly, my body drenched in sweat. My heart pounded against my chest as I stared at the familiar ceiling above me. My room. My bed. Everything was normal. Too normal. I tried to steady my breathing, my mind desperately trying to understand what had just happened. 

Was it a dream? The memory felt too vivid, too real to dismiss so easily. Searching for an answer felt impossible, like trying to find a single grain of rice in an endless bowl.

My eyes moved toward the clock beside my bed. It was 5:00 AM. The early morning silence filled the room, undisturbed and calm. Something soft brushed against my hand, pulling my attention away from my thoughts. It was Zira, my cat. Her white fur felt warm and comforting as she curled against my legs. 

I looked into her eyes and saw what I had always seen before. She loved me, and she was hungry. The certainty of it grounded me in a way nothing else could.

I gently set her aside and walked to the kitchen. The cold floor beneath my feet reminded me that I was awake, that this was real. I grabbed a slice of bread, spread butter across it, and ate slowly. 

My throat felt dry, so I opened a bottle of water and drank deeply. The cool sensation felt refreshing, almost reassuring. For a brief moment, everything felt normal again. But the memory of the Library lingered, refusing to fade.

Zira brushed against my leg again, reminding me of her presence. I fed her and watched quietly as she ate, her simple existence untouched by the questions consuming my mind. Afterward, I made coffee and stepped onto the balcony. 

The morning air was cool, and the world was still waking. I sat down and took a sip, allowing the silence to settle around me. My thoughts returned to the Library, to the endless stars, and most of all, to her. Kimich. Her words echoed in my mind. “He is no use.” I did not understand why those words affected me so deeply, yet they lingered, sharp and unrelenting.

Time passed without my notice. When I finally looked at the clock, it was already 7:00 AM. I needed to get ready for school. Reality was waiting for me, whether I understood it or not. And her. I sighed quietly at the thought of seeing her again. She was annoying. Yet for reasons I could not explain, I felt as though something had already begun to change.

The road to school felt as ordinary as it always had, quiet and predictable beneath the pale morning sky. My footsteps moved forward without thought, guided by habit rather than intention. The cool air brushed against my face, grounding me in reality, yet my mind remained trapped in the memory of the Library. 

No matter how much I tried to dismiss it as a dream, every detail remained clear, too clear to ignore. The stars, the endless shelves, and most of all, her words, lingered within me like something unfinished.

A sudden gust of cold wind passed through, causing me to pause slightly. Before I could return to my thoughts, a familiar voice called out from behind me, bright and full of life. 

It was Arinika. My childhood friend. She approached me with the same energy she had always carried, her presence steady and persistent. When I looked into her eyes, I saw the same truth I had seen for years. 

She loved me. It was not something new or uncertain. It had remained there, unchanged, quietly growing over time. Alongside that love was fear, the fear of losing what she already had, the fear that speaking the truth would break something beyond repair. 

At first, I believed it was nothing more than childish affection, something that would fade as we grew older. But five years had passed, and her feelings had not weakened. They had only settled deeper within her.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, her voice carrying a nervous softness she tried to hide. Her question was simple, yet her eyes revealed far more. She was not merely asking about my sleep. She was asking about me. For reasons I did not fully understand, I answered her. I told her about the dream, about the door, about the Library, though I did not explain everything. 

Her reaction was immediate. Surprise filled her eyes, but it was not the dream itself that shocked her. It was the fact that I had shared something personal at all. I had never done that before. Not with her. Not with anyone.

“Oh… you never share things like that with me,” she said quietly. There was no anger in her voice, only a fragile sadness she tried to conceal. I did not respond. I simply continued walking, my gaze fixed forward. She remained beside me, refusing to leave, her footsteps matching mine as she continued speaking, trying to pull me back into a conversation I no longer wished to have. 

Her words reached my ears, but my mind did not hold onto them. My thoughts were still elsewhere, still trapped in the memory of the Library, in the impossible emptiness I had seen within Kimich’s eyes. 

Arinika continued talking, her voice soft yet persistent, but I gave her nothing in return. The distance between us was not physical. It was something far greater, something she could not see, no matter how close she walked beside me.

" Hey don't ignore meeee "

Arinika continued walking beside me, her voice filled with the same familiar energy as always. I was not fully listening, my thoughts drifting back toward the memory of the door and the impossible Library. 

Every detail remained clear in my mind, refusing to fade like an ordinary dream. The cold wind, the endless shelves, the stars above, and Kimich’s eyes that showed me nothing. I was so lost in those memories that I almost missed what she said next.

“You passed out yesterday,” she said, her tone casual but carrying quiet concern. Her words immediately pulled my attention back to her. I turned my head slightly and looked at her, unsure if I had heard correctly. She continued speaking, unaware of the weight her words carried. She told me that I had suddenly collapsed right there on the road. 

She had been the one who found me. She had carried me all the way to my house and placed me on my bed. She said it as if it were nothing unusual, as if it were simply another part of an ordinary day.

I stopped walking for a moment and looked around. The road, the air, the surroundings, everything was the same as I remembered. This was the exact place where the door had appeared in front of me. I looked into her eyes carefully, searching for any sign of a lie, any hidden distortion in her words. 

There was none. Only honesty and concern existed there. She was telling the truth. That meant my body had never left this place. That meant I had never physically crossed the door.

My mind struggled to accept the conclusion forming within it. If she had carried me home, then everything I experienced must have happened while I was unconscious. It must have been nothing more than a dream created by my mind. Logic demanded that explanation. It was the only explanation that made sense. 

And yet, something within me refused to accept it completely. The memory was too vivid, too detailed, too real to be dismissed so easily. I could still remember the feeling of standing beneath the endless stars. I could still hear Kimich’s voice clearly in my mind.

I began walking again, my thoughts heavy and unsettled. The world around me remained ordinary, unchanged and familiar, yet my perception of it no longer felt the same. For the first time in my life, I could not fully trust the certainty my eyes had always given me. 

Whether it was a dream or something beyond that, I knew one thing for certain. That experience had left something behind within me, something that would not disappear so easily.