The Library of Forgotten Gods

 

I found the library by mistake.

It was buried deep beneath the old cathedral in Marrowhill, where the stained-glass saints watched in silent judgment and dust clung to everything like skin. I'd been sent to catalog the remaining manuscripts before the place was demolished. They said it had been condemned—mold, asbestos, time. I’d expected rats and rot. I hadn’t expected the trapdoor under the altar.

It wasn’t locked. Just… forgotten.

The staircase beneath twisted in a slow spiral, and I descended with only the flashlight on my phone and the growing sense I was doing something very wrong. At the bottom, the air grew colder, like the breath of something old exhaled in the dark. Stone walls, carved with script I couldn’t recognize, stretched into shadow. A single brass plaque above the archway read:
"Scriptorum Deorum Oblitorum" — The Library of Forgotten Gods.

And I, idiot that I am, went in.

It wasn’t like any library I’d ever seen. There were no rows of organized shelves. Just winding corridors and towering stacks of ancient tomes piled haphazardly, as though the books had grown like fungi in the dark. Candles burned without wax, without fire—just steady blue flames that offered no warmth. I could hear whispering before I saw anything. Low. Like breathing through paper.

One book stood out. Bound in cracked leather that pulsed ever so slightly. Its cover bore a symbol: a jagged circle, broken through the center, bleeding ink that stained the surrounding pages. It felt warm to the touch. Alive.

I should have left. But curiosity is a cruel god. I opened it.

The whispers rose instantly, swirling around my ears like smoke. The words on the page shifted, refusing to stay still. I read them aloud anyway, driven by something between instinct and madness.

“Ek'shal Vorrin Atek—The Echo of the God-Blood.”

And then… pain.

It started as a flicker in my spine, a heat that spread into my bones. I dropped the book. My skin itched. My eyes burned. But when I looked at my hands, they were unchanged. For a moment, I thought it was over. I told myself I was tired, hallucinating. I turned to leave.

But the staircase was gone.

In its place stood another hall, this one lined with mirrors instead of books. My reflection stared back… except it wasn’t mine. The face looked like me, but wrong. Eyes blackened at the edges. Veins twitching like worms beneath the skin. And it smiled, even though I wasn’t.

I ran.

No matter how far I went, the library stretched on. Corridors folded in on themselves. The architecture made no sense. I passed doors carved from bone, ladders made of teeth, shelves that breathed. Time lost meaning. Hunger came and went. I stopped feeling tired. I only felt watched.

And then the dreams began.

When I closed my eyes, I saw pieces of something vast and broken—an eye as wide as the sky, half-lidded and bleeding stars. A hand reaching from behind reality, made of roots and rust. A voice, speaking in a thousand dead tongues, crawling under my skin.

I woke with my hands soaked in ink.

By the third day, the changes were impossible to ignore. My veins glowed faintly blue in the dark. My voice echoed when I whispered. My thoughts were no longer mine alone. They pressed against the inside of my skull—memories that weren’t mine. Prayers to beings whose names shattered logic. Names like Yth’rek, The Maw-Walker, T’lune of the Endless Thirst.

I found another book. This one pulsed faster, like a heartbeat.

The whispers were louder now.

I read it anyway.

This time, the transformation was immediate. My left arm cracked and lengthened. The skin peeled back, revealing bone inscribed with golden script. It didn’t hurt. That terrified me more than anything.

A part of me—something still human—tried to resist. But the library knew. It wanted me to read. Each book was a prayer, a piece of godflesh, and I was the altar.

I became addicted. Each reading filled the hollowness with meaning. Purpose. I was rebuilding something greater. And I was no longer alone.

They spoke to me now—the Forgotten Ones. Fragments of gods, exiled from existence, shattered in ancient wars no mortal had ever known. They’d been waiting for a vessel. And I had opened the door.

They offered me truth. Power. Sight beyond the veil of man.

I saw Earth as it really was. A thin crust floating over madness. The stars? Wounds in reality, bleeding forgotten light. Humanity? Ants building sandcastles in the bones of sleeping giants.

The more I read, the more I changed.

My eyes could see heat and memory. My voice, when raised, could silence breath. My blood no longer flowed red—it shimmered, thick and silver, carrying knowledge instead of oxygen.

I forgot my name.

Eventually, I reached the heart of the library—a cathedral of impossible geometry, lit by a sun that did not exist. Floating above the altar was the Final Codex, bound in obsidian and stitched with threads of shadow.

It called itself The Root Book. The origin. The key.

I read it.

And they woke up.

All of them.

In pieces.

Screaming.

They tore themselves through me. Twisting from my ribs, from my jaw, from every pore and scar. I should have died. I think I did. But I was no longer human. I was the sum of forgotten prayers, the altar and the prophet, the scripture and the blade.

I don’t know how long I stood there, reborn. The library hummed with power. Books rearranged themselves to bow before me. The ink from my skin dripped upward, joining the glyphs carved into the ceiling.

Then, I heard footsteps.

Another mortal. Another curious soul.

I smiled.

They wouldn’t find the staircase again. Not the way they came.

The library shifts for the worthy.

Or the cursed.

I followed them quietly, ink trailing behind me like smoke.

When they opened their first book, I whispered the prayer into their ear.

“Ek’shal Vorrin Atek…”

It always begins the same.