“Cold… it’s cold.”

  “My back hurts… why is it so cold?”

  “…Did I leave the AC on or something?”

  His voice sounded distant in the still air, muffled like it was wrapped in velvet. As his eyes fluttered open, an unfamiliar sight carved itself into his consciousness.

  A vivid crimson light bathed everything in sight — sensuous, seductive, mournful. The sky above wasn't a sky at all, but a shattered dome of glass and iron veins, jagged shards like the teeth of some ancient beast. And beyond it… hung the moon.

  Bleeding.

  The blood moon glared down through the cracks, casting the library in a feverish red hue. It wasn't natural. It wasn’t romantic. It was the kind of moon that watched as worlds died.

  “A blood moon?” he whispered, lips dry. Then, noticing the chill licking up his spine — “Wait… why am I naked?”

  The scarlet illumination clung to his bare body like a silk sheet soaked in wine, highlighting every lean contour — wiry, sickly pale, his skin stretched tight over bone, desperately grasping at his ribs like it too was afraid of being left behind.

  His gaze drifted downward.

  The marble beneath him was smooth and frigid, a pristine white once, now stained with the faintest hues of old rust — blood faded into memory. Its cold embrace was unyielding, cutting into his flesh like sharpened stone. It didn’t hold him so much as claim him, its cruel touch anchoring him to a reality that refused to explain itself.

  “What the… what’s happening?” he muttered, voice dry and hoarse — but the sound didn’t bounce. His words fell flat, absorbed by the silence, as though the room refused to acknowledge their presence.

  His eyes finally began to adjust.

  The grand hall — circular, cathedral-like — stretched into shadow. Towering shelves circled the room endlessly, carved into the very stone like ribs of a great beast. They overflowed with tomes ancient beyond comprehension — thick and cracked, some swollen with moisture, others bound in strange hide, some twitching softly as if dreaming.

  And opposite the marble altar where his naked form had just lain, across a floor choked in dusky rot, stood a pedestal.

  It was modest in height, but unnatural in presence. Its surface pulsed faintly — not with light, but with life. Upon it rested a knife.

  Its blade was slender and wicked, curved like a serpent's smile. The hilt, however, was grotesque — not carved, but grown. A leafy, fibrous material wrapped it, pulsating gently like it breathed. Veins ran through the wood-like mass, glowing faintly with a sickly green light. It hummed a little, not with sound, but with intent.

  He shivered — more in memory than fear — and pushed himself off the altar.

  Sawddsh.

  A soft, wet tearing.

  He froze. Beneath him, the floor let out a meaty, fibrous sigh. What he had assumed was dust or mold was in fact something else entirely — a fleshy overgrowth, slow and parasitic, stretching across the marble in tangled threads. It clung to the altar like ivy wrapping a corpse, pulsing gently underfoot, warm and moist like tongue-meat.

  He took a cautious step back, watching as the growth twitched, but didn’t follow. Not yet.

  “…Fantastic,” he muttered with a dry smile. “I wake up naked in a meat cathedral, and my only friend is a breathing knife. Peak immersion.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The blood moon glared down through the broken dome, judging in silence.

  He turned to face the pedestal again. The knife’s pulsing had grown more erratic — impatient, like it was aware of him now.

  He stepped forward, feet squelching against the damp growth. The knife pulsed harder.

  Moving toward the altar, his mind began to spiral — not in panic, but with surgical precision. Thought branched into hypotheses, spiraling in tight, controlled arcs. Each step was deliberate, mechanical. He needed to understand his circumstances. That meant data.

  The pedestal stood at waist height, unassuming in form, yet undeniably central. Upon it lay a copper-hued blade — its sharp edge gleaming dully beneath the blood moon's glow. The hilt was a contradiction: rough and bark-like in parts, gnarled and fibrous, while other sections pulsed soft and spongy, as if freshly grown.

  Curiosity overrode caution.

  He reached out.

  The moment his fingers curled around the hilt, it groaned. The living material shifted under his grip, compressing, reshaping — adapting. The faint green light that once flowed gently through its fibers now flared violently, clashing against the blood moon’s dominion. Just for a breath, the green won.

  Then it yielded.

  The blade twisted in his hand, elongating. A pulse of heat surged through the metal as it transmuted — the simple knife now a dagger, larger, black as volcanic glass. Obsidian shimmered in the moonlight, smooth and malevolent. Etched across its surface were small carvings — alien runes etched in a script unspoken by any human tongue, unclaimed by any known past or future. It didn’t look old. It looked wrong.

  But the oddity didn’t end there.

  Numbness crept up his left arm, a crawling tingle that birthed tremors. His fingers twitched — once, twice — and then began to move of their own accord.

  His hand raised the dagger high… and drove it into the center of the pedestal.

  Ssskrrrk.

  Marble screamed beneath the obsidian bite. The dagger slid into a shallow bowl carved into the pedestal’s heart — the very cradle it had once rested in.

  Then, slowly, his rebellious hand turned. The blade was now angled toward him.

  And he didn’t fight it.

  His palm rested against the obsidian edge.

  A sharp sting.

  Numbness gave way to pain — real pain. Hot. Immediate.

  His breath caught as a warm slickness welled up and ran down his fingers. With his right hand, he gripped the bleeding left — not in panic, but reflexively, trying to slow the flow. The cut was clean. Deep. His blood slid down the dagger in languid, glistening lines.

  Brip. Brip.

  Droplets fell.

  One after another, they landed in the bowl atop the pedestal.

  And the room responded.

  Keeeerk.

  The shelves that had once stood in reverent silence now shook. A deep hum reverberated through the library — ancient, unholy. Books trembled. Dust leapt into the air. The ground sighed.

  But amidst the chaos, one book did not tremble.

  It simply moved.

  Floating down from the upper shelves, it glided toward him like a silent priest delivering final rites. Its cover was plain — far too mundane to belong among the leather-bound horrors that lined the shelves around it.

  It opened itself before him.

  Its pages were a pale, fleshy white — disturbingly close to the color of his own skin. As he stared, the droplets of blood that had pooled in the altar began to rise. They floated upward, winding like mist before threading through his clenched fingers — drawn inexorably toward the book.

  As they touched its pages, the wound on his palm sealed.

  No scar. No mark.

  It was as though the injury had never happened.

  His eyes drifted to the inscription now scrawled across the open page, lines of ink written in perfect, sterile precision.

  [ CATALOG ENTRY: 001 ]

  Name: Mo Xue Lián

  Age: 21

  Affiliation: N/A

  …….