Chapter 009 - More Than Just Stories

  Mark pushed himself out of the comfy chair with a groan, whatever magic that Valerie had used was starting to wear off. At a glance he saw the first book ‘The Titan and the Foundations of the Collective’ was back where he had removed it from, he was sure the silent librarian or whoever it was had taken it with them.

  He held the two books she had pointed out, their weight feeling significant in his hands. The Ark of Dying Stars. Istos: The Lonely Collector. They didn’t seem related, other than the name Istos appearing, but something had him holding them securely, like he had been given a value for them he didn't understand.

  Deciding it was better to be with the others than to be surprised alone again, he walked back towards the main desk. Valerie and Tori looked up as he approached, their conversation with Jenny dying down. Tori did not look to have been pleased by however their conversation was going. Her eyes fell to the colorful books, and couldn't help herself as a flicker of her old condescending demeanor returned, maybe as an escape from Jenny and Valerie, or just because of who she was.

  “Finished already?” she jabbed, a slight smirk on her face. “Or are you just trading one bedtime story for another?”

  Before Mark could formulate a reply, Jenny leaned forward over the desk, her kind eyes narrowed with a sudden, professional focus. She wasn’t looking at Mark, but at the book in his hand, the one depicting a small world drifting through the stars.

  “Tori, please,” Jenny said, her soft voice cutting through the tension with surprising authority. She pointed a delicate finger at the book. “Where did you find that one? The Ark of Dying Stars, I was under the impression it had been removed from public display.” Her gaze shifted from the book to the children's alcove and back again, a hint of genuine concern in her expression. "And it certainly does not belong in the children's section."

  Tori’s smirk vanished, replaced by a look of mild confusion. “It was on the shelf right over there,” Mark answered for her, gesturing back toward the alcove.

  Jenny’s gaze followed his, her expression growing more troubled. “Highly unusual.” She looked back at the book in his hand, her focus sharpening. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to keep that one with you, Mark. It’s an original printing, one of the few left. Its value is significant, and the content is… questionable…”

  This immediately captured the attention of the two healers. “Value?” Valerie asked, her professional curiosity piqued. “It’s a children’s book, isn’t it? What makes it so important?”

  “Some stories are more than just stories,” Jenny replied, her voice taking on the quiet, profound weight of a keeper of secrets. Her eyes met Mark’s, then shifted to include Valerie and Tori, a silent negotiation taking place. “The book will be returned to the archives for its own protection.”

  She saw the disappointment and frustration on their faces. She offered a small, conciliatory smile.

  “However,” she said, her voice dropping slightly. “Given the unusual circumstances around Mark, and irregular appearance of this book, I believe a level of exception can be made. I will need the book back, but if you would all join me in a more private reading room, I can offer you a summary of its contents.”

  Mark looked at Valerie, who gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. The decision was made. Intrigue drew their gaze back towards the children's book that apparently wasn't for children.

  Jenny led them from behind her desk, through a discreet door tucked away behind a large tapestry depicting a star-filled sky. The room they entered was cozier than the grand main hall, yet it felt even more significant. The walls were lined with glass-fronted cases containing rare-looking books and strange, unique artworks that looked like they belonged in a museum. Mark saw what looked like a fossil of a creature with far too many wings and a twisted piece of metal that seemed to absorb the light around it.

  “A fragment of the Screaming Sands,” Jenny mentioned, having noticed the gaze at the twisted metal artifact, “It is very unfriendly and best left alone”

  Tori had stopped completely in front of the artifact, her face contorting as if in pain as even looking at it. “It's…” Tori trailed off, and Valerie was there to catch her as she became unsteady and losing focus.

  “Please, sit her down, it will pass in a moment,” Jenny motioned as she glared at the twisted metal before taking a seat herself. “That is a sapphire artifact, it holds memories of that place, we suspect they may even be alive. As a memory specialist, Tori probably saw something that she didn't want to. “

  Valerie looked between Tori who was thankfully looking a lot clearer just by sitting then back to Jenny, “I mean no offense, but why keep something dangerous in the library?”

  It was Tori that answered, surprising everyone. “Danger with memories is subjective, and that thing has a lot to talk about. I saw far worse from him.” before briefly pointing a finger weakly at Mark. He was both slightly hurt by her gesture, and concerned by her interaction with the artifact and his own mind.

  In the center of the room, where they were now sitting , was a low, wide table unlike anything he had ever seen. Its surface was a shallow basin filled with fine, deep-red sand.

  The comfort from the plush armchair was a welcome relief for Mark's aching body. Once they were all settled and Tori appeared back to normal. Jenny requested the book from Mark, he held it towards her.

  “Here,” he said.

  Jenny took it from him with the careful reverence of a museum curator handling a priceless artifact, standing for a few moments to place it in an empty glass case before returning to her seat.

  Jenny gave them all another moment before she spoke, her hands resting calmly on the red sand table. “Before I begin,” she said, her voice soft and measured, “it is often best to start with what is already known. Tell me, what do you know of The Ark?”

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  Tori answered immediately, her voice regaining some of its familiar, authoritative confidence, she seemed to want to move past her encounter. It was clear she was on solid ground, reciting some text from school, the truth she had known her entire life.

  “It’s the world our ancestors escaped to when Earth died,” she stated simply. “A great cataclysm destroyed the original home, and they were brought here. Istos, one of the First Beings, protects this world as it travels through the void to our new, final home.”

  Mark listened, a strange sense of detachment washing over him. Tori spoke with such absolute certainty, stating the death of his world as an indisputable, historical fact. He looked down at his own hands, then at the two women beside him. He was living, breathing proof that her foundational truth was, at the very least, incomplete, he was there only a few days before.

  Jenny nodded slowly, her expression giving nothing away. “That is the simple version, yes. It is the story that has been told and understood for the last seven hundred years or so.” She paused, letting the weight of that timespan settle in the room. “And the Titan Collective, as you know it, is only five hundred years old.”

  The numbers were staggering, making Mark’s head spin. He had read about the "Second Exodus" from a place called First Landing, but he hadn't grasped the sheer scale of the timeline. Seven hundred years. An entire history had been built, lived, and passed down, all while he hadn't even existed, he had secretly hoped the first book was just a children's story, not an apparent historical fact.

  Jenny’s gaze drifted to the book she had set aside. “This book was removed from the main collection a long time ago precisely because it tells a slightly different, more complicated story. A story that was written and understood in the early days, in First Landing, before the exodus to the mountains.”

  Mark glanced at the two healers. Their professional facades were replaced with open and intense curiosity. He found a small, dark satisfaction in it. For a day, they had treated his complete ignorance of their world as a strange, medical anomaly. Now, it seemed, they were about to find out they may be just as ignorant of their own history as he was.

  Jenny took a slow breath, placing her hands palms-down on the table, just above the layer of red sand. “Please forgive me if I am a little out of practice with this,” she said apologetically. “It has been a long time since this kind of opportunity has occurred.”

  As she spoke, the Mark of Knowledge on the back of her hand began to glow, its soft, silver light far brighter than before. The fine red sand on the table stirred, vibrating in response to her power. It flowed like liquid, rising from the surface and coalescing in the air above the table. With impossible precision, the grains of sand shifted and settled, forming a perfect, miniature, three-dimensional map of the entire Iron-Tooth mountain range, complete with the impossibly high peak of Titan and the deep gash of the Vapor Chasm. It was a breathtaking, magical display, and Mark realized this was no ordinary summary.

  Mark stared, utterly captivated. He had seen magic here, the raw, invasive power of Tori’s dream-walking and the subtle, diagnostic light of Valerie’s healing. But this was different, this wasn’t just a tool, it was art given form, a visual spectacle of impossible grace. The sand sculpture was so detailed he could make out individual ridgelines and valleys, a perfect, silent replica of the world outside.

  “Five hundred years ago,” Jenny began, her voice a soft, steady narrative as she moved a single grain of sand with her fingertip. The entire display responded, the perspective shifting. “Gwen Morgan and her followers arrived at the base of these mountains, seeking a new home.” A tiny cluster of glowing motes appeared at the edge of the range, representing the first settlers of the Collective.

  Then, with a gentle wave of her hand, the display began to move, the timeline rapidly rewinding. The miniature mountains shrank as the perspective pulled back at an incredible speed. The sandy landscape blurred, reforming into the vast forest they had apparently crossed, then past a great shimmering lake. The journey continued in reverse, moving steadily across the continent toward the eastern coast.

  Finally, the sand display settled, the motion ceasing. The landscape now showed a wide, calm river mouth flowing into a vast ocean. But dominating the image, rendered in breathtaking detail by the flowing red sand, was a city. It was surrounded by impossibly high, seamless white walls, and its entrance was sealed by a set of colossal gates that seemed to have been closed for an eternity.

  “This,” Jenny said, her voice laced with a profound and ancient sorrow, “was First Landing. The cradle of our civilization on The Ark. And the place where the truth was forgotten.”

  Tori shifted in her plush armchair, her expression a mixture of confusion and ingrained teachings. "But First Landing was sealed from within three hundred years ago," she interrupted, her voice sharp with the certainty of a well-learned lesson. "The last of the First Settlers grew greedy and isolationist, hoarding the old knowledge for themselves. The Collective sends an envoy every few years to see if the gates will open. They never do."

  Jenny did not even look at her. Her focus remained entirely on the flowing sand and the story it was telling. "That is the story told to explain the silence, yes," she said, her tone gentle but firm, dismissing the interruption entirely. "But we must go further back. Before the silence. Before the exodus."

  With another wave of her hand, the perspective of the sand display plunged downwards, passing through the seamless white walls of First Landing as if they were mist. The image resolved again, no longer showing the city from the outside, but a scene from within the city heart. The sand formed into a vast, open plaza surrounded by magnificent buildings. The architecture was unlike the rustic wood and industrial stone of the Titan Collective, these structures were elegant and grand, with sweeping archways, soaring columns, and ornate carvings reminiscent of ancient Rome. In the center of the plaza stood a particularly complex, temple-like structure, its steps wide and welcoming.

  Almost in union, both Valerie and Tori whispered, “It’s beautiful…” Given the time spans involved Mark assumed they would have never seen the inside, or even what Roman architecture would look like.

  “This is the history the new nations have chosen to forget,” Jenny said, her voice a near whisper, yet it commanded the absolute attention of everyone in the room. “The truth of why we are still here. It's understandable, the choice to forget.”

  The sand display responded to her words, the perspective gliding forward, up the wide steps and through the grand entrance of the Roman-style temple. The interior was even more immense than the outside suggested, a cavernous, single chamber of truly monstrous size. The sand perfectly replicated a high, vaulted ceiling and rows of colossal statues lining a path toward a massive, elevated dais at the far end.

  “Here,” Jenny explained, her voice echoing with the importance of the place, “was the Gateway. The one, single passage between The Ark and a living, vibrant Earth.”

  A living Earth. He wanted to shout, to tell them it was still living, that he was from there, that it was only a few days, but the word died in his throat as Jenny’s hand clenched slightly over the sand table.

  The beautiful sand-sculpted temple suddenly distorted, the image convulsing violently. The graceful columns cracked and shattered. The vaulted ceiling collapsed inward. The entire structure dissolved into a chaotic ruin of broken sand. When the image settled again, the temple was a blasted, broken husk of its former glory.

  Jenny looked up from the display, her kind eyes now filled with a deep, ancient sorrow that seemed to belong to someone far older than she appeared to be.

  “And this,” she said, her voice soft but devastating, “is what happened within the first ten years here, we were sent here to learn, to grow and return, to save the Earth. Then stranded. With the time that's passed, this is why we call it the Dead Earth now.”