The Dream Archive

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Last night, I dreamed — not of shelves or ink, but of a presence older than the Gods. Waiting.

Hungry.

I drifted through the west wing, though my feet never touched the floor. The air pressed close, thick with the hush of something unsaid. When I saw it, my stomach lurched. A Dream Fragment, suspended between two shelves. Not placed. Not caught. Simply there. It shimmered like breath on glass. And it was listening.

A single drop slid from its center.

When it struck the floor, everything shifted.

I forgot where I was. Not who I was. Not why. Just where. The Library swam. The shelves leaned in. And then I heard him.

The Piper.

Not a voice — a growl. Low. Starving.

His desire struck me like heat through marrow, sharp and aching. I felt him like we were one — not touching, but filling. Urging. Demanding. 

And as his presence bled back into silence, one thought remained, etched behind my eyes:

“The key is in the acrostic.”

I woke with the words burning in my throat like a spell half-cast.

He needs these Fragments solved.

And I... I fear what might answer when we do.

— The First Lorekeeper

This page was damp when I opened it.
No ink. Just heat.
As though it had been left too close to something… still burning.

The lake hasn’t spoken in years.

Not since the idols sank, and the bells of Sarnath choked on silence.

But last night, I saw it.

Beneath the surface —

not movement, not light, but a slow rhythm.

Seven lanterns, flickering in the shape of a circle.

Not drifting.
Not rising.

Waiting.

As if the water had learned to hold its breath.

As if flame could burn without air.

As if something forgotten still remembered us.

(Whispered from the drowned edges of the Archive. Fragment III.)  

They say the Lantern Keeper never speaks.
Only watches.
But tonight, I saw the seventh lantern flicker.
And beneath it… a shape in the dust,
something that hadn’t breathed in centuries —
now listening back.

~This page was found long before the fragments began to file themselves…But now we know. The seventh lantern has flickered more than once. Compare this early record with Dream Fragment III when it is found. Though they will come to you out of order, be alert for hidden connections. The dust may remember what the dreamers do not.

-Filed by the First Lorekeeper

This page was already on the desk.
But I do not remember placing it there.
And it was still warm.

The page was blank when I placed it on the desk.

I turned away.

Just a breath — a candle relit.

When I turned back…it was written.

Not with a pen.

With ink.
Rising.

It climbed from the lower edge upward, against gravity,
against expectation, against me.

I watched the curve of each letter form in reverse —
as if the paper remembered the sentence before I asked it the question.

I did not write it.
But it knew my name.

And it ended in a whisper I don’t remember hearing.

But I haven't spoken aloud since.

(Whispered from the mirrored study. Fragment VIII.)  

I saw a shelf where no candles burned. No dust gathered, no spines aged. But beneath it, bones. Small, delicate — birdlike. Arranged in a perfect spiral, as though they’d flown there and died waiting. When I placed my hand on the wood, I heard a voice that wasn’t mine say,

“It’s not your turn to open it.”

~This page was found long before the fragments began to file themselves…But now we know. The bones formed the same shape as the path. Compare this early record with Dream Fragment VIII when it is found. Though they will come to you out of order, be alert for hidden connections. The dust may remember what the dreamers do not.

-Filed by the First Lorekeeper