The E-Tram drove through the winding streets of Chromapolis. Graydon, seated by the window, kept his eyes trained on the world outside, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. He was still trying to decipher the cryptic messages and the strange events. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was unravelling at the edge of his life.
Goldie’s notebook sat on his lap, the pages slightly dog-eared. He flipped through it once again, the same notes swirling around in his mind like shifting patterns. „The Spectral Library“, „ask for the shadows where the light ends“.
The tram slowed, making its final turn toward Slate District. He could see the older buildings creeping closer, their faded brick exteriors barely visible beneath the soft glow of the city’s curated lights. It reminded him of Goldie’s sketch of a distorted city.
Slate. The part of Chromapolis that didn’t quite fit, a relic of the past that the city had not yet incorporated or long since abandoned, depending on who you asked. Maybe, he thought, it and its inhabitants didn’t want to fit. But who was he to judge. He stepped off the tram, tucking Goldie’s notebook into his coat pocket, and went down the cobbled streets toward the old School Library.
The library building was rather stunning. A relic of another age that favoured stone columns and heavy wooden doors of which strips of paint were now coming off. The building stood in stark contrast to the sleek, artificial brightness of the modern city.
Graydon hesitated momentarily before pushing through the door. A musty scent of what he guessed to be aged paper and dust washed over him as he stepped inside.
The place was quieter than he had expected. There were no hushed whispers of students or faint footsteps of librarians, just silence. The only light came from the windows, through which daylight filtered in, casting shadows across the floor. The place looked absolutely deserted.
Graydon glanced around, his eyes falling on rows upon rows of bookshelves. He couldn’t make out a light switch anywhere, and there was no obvious direction to go, no clue as to where the Spectral Library might be hidden.
He took a deep breath and pulled Goldie’s notebook from his coat pocket. He read through the note once more, his eyes scanning the words: „Ask for the shadows where the light ends.“ But there was no one to ask.
„Shadows where the light ends.“
He stood there looking at the shelves in front of him. A thought flickered through his mind. Light. Was this some sort of metaphor?
He was sure the phrase „shadows where the light ends“ could be understood in more than just a metaphorical sense. Maybe it was something real, something tangible. Could the shadows themselves be a kind of code? A key to something hidden?
The low light from the windows cast long, uneven shadows across the floor, reaching out like long fingers that crept between the shelves. It did, indeed, make for a secretive atmosphere.
Graydon knelt down, letting his eyes follow the way the shadows split and converged between the bookshelves and then finally lost themselves entirely in the darkness beneath the shelves. The angles seemed strange. He straightened himself and moved slowly between the aisles, following the shadows for traces of some kind of pattern.
He found… nothing. Nothing that made sense.
A faint rustling sound caught his attention, and he paused. He glanced around, scanning the rows of shelves and the empty, quiet library. There was no one else in sight.
He took another step. Then another.
Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. He saw a shadow flicker from one shelf to the next. This was not one of the shadows he had just so extensively studied. Someone was here in the library with him. Following him? „Hello“, Graydon called, the greeting sounding more like a question. No response, but could feel eyes on him, and every now and then, the shadows shifted unnaturally. Whoever it was kept a careful distance, always moving just out of sight, always in the periphery of his vision.
He froze, the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. His pulse quickened as he took a slow step toward the source of the movement. But the shadowy figure was quick, ducking back behind another row of shelves just as he tried to look.
A soft sound. Footsteps? Whatever it was scraped against the floor in the distance, followed by a low cough, muffled and deliberate.
Graydon stood there, still. His mind raced through possible explanations: A librarian? Another researcher? Or was it really someone following him?
Now, the figure was gone. Only the feeling of being watched by an unknown presence that refused to reveal itself remained. He glanced around the aisle, half-expecting someone to step out from between the books, but there was nothing. No one.
Graydon shook his head and muttered to himself. „I’m really becoming paranoid.“
He turned back to the shelves, his mind still clinging to the possibility that the shadows, the play of light in this place, held the answers. He refocused, trying again to see the patterns he had missed before.
That was when it hit him. What if it was something much more literal, something hidden in plain sight in a library? A book? Of course!
Graydon’s gaze darted across the room. Judging by the books in front of him, he was in the Library’s Geology section. Graydon suddenly had to smile, fondly remembering his secondary school geology teacher, Dr. Kibble. An unexpected, nearly soothing memory that broke the tension for a brief moment.
His thoughts were interrupted when his eyes finally caught sight of an old computer, an ancient piece of tech standing in the far corner of the room. He turned away from the shelves and approached it.
The keyboard was an odd mix of old and new keys, worn and slightly sticky, but they still made that satisfying click-clack sound when pressed that Graydon remembered from his childhood. His father used to repair old tech, and had gifted Graydon with his first gaming keyboard when he was ten.
He sat down, pushing aside a pile of books and dusty papers. He needed to adjust the chair, which squeaked under him like an old, tormented animal.
„Alright,“ he muttered to himself, fingers hovering over the keys. „Let’s see if this thing’s still alive.“
He hit the power button. The screen flickered slightly as if it had grown tired with age. Then it came to life with a jolt, and then immediately froze again for a few seconds. The bright white screen hurt his eyes for a moment, before it dimmed to a sepia tone.
A notification popped up: „System Update“
Graydon blinked at it. Great. The thing hadn’t been used in ages. He could practically hear it groaning from years of neglect.
The screen paused for a moment, then began to load the update, slow and sluggish A few minutes later, another message popped up: „Update Error: No Updates Found. Initiating Reboot…“ The system chugged to a start again, this time even slower than before, almost as if it were trying to recall its old settings.
“Loading… 99%…” The words appeared slowly, as though the computer had taken a small, reluctant breath before continuing. Graydon stared at the screen. It was always at 99%, wasn’t it? He glanced around the room. Was this library truly as forgotten as it seemed, or was this part of the city’s attempt to cling on to something?
A loud beep.
99% complete.
Then, with a dramatic whirr and a few reluctant clunks, the interface loaded. A single, blinking cursor in the top left corner stared at him, waiting for a command.
Graydon grimaced. Finally.
He typed in the supposed book title: Shadows Where the Light Ends.
Nothing.
He hit ‚Enter.‘ Still nothing. The cursor blinked back at him, almost as though it was mocking his desperation.
„Seriously?“ Graydon muttered, leaning in closer.
He hammered the enter key again, but the screen remained unchanged. It wasn’t until he tapped it three more times that he noticed the screen blink once, then another time, slowly, like a signal struggling to stay alive.
Then, at last, a page started to load. Graydon felt a spark of hope rise in his chest, but it quickly dimmed when the screen displayed something more akin to an abstract painting than any usable information.
The words were there, but they were scrambled.
„Shwos hter the iighl…„
Graydon blinked. „Come on, don’t do this to me…“ He sighed, exasperated, and hit a few more keys. The screen froze for a moment before spitting out an even stranger jumble of letters.
„Shtooooowss w…„
A few more taps. The letters jumbled again. He stared at it, and then something like a miracle happened: The words finally seemed to line up.
The Shadows Where the Light Ends by I.C. Groove, I.M. Hook, and R.U. Paylor.
„Ahh, finally,“ he muttered, his voice tinged with triumph.
But before he could get too excited, the screen froze again. This time, it wasn’t just the interface. A low, mechanical hum filled the library but passed as quickly as it had come, leaving the screen flickering back to life.
„Yeah, no one said this would be easy.“ He rubbed his temples, feeling the beginning of another headache, but ignored it, focusing instead on the screen. The search results appeared in a slow, jarring rhythm, like some kind of ancient glitch in the matrix.
It was almost absurd, yet, strangely fitting. In a city obsessed with speed and precision, here was a piece of technology as reluctant to move forward as the city’s hidden history. It felt like the library, like the district itself was stubbornly holding onto its age, refusing to be swept away by the brightness of the modern world.
Graydon chuckled to himself. „They say old things are best left in the past, and here you are, still holding onto your secrets.“
Then, a flashing icon appeared at the bottom of the screen: „Search complete“. He clicked it, almost afraid to see what would come next.
„WST-49“ was blinking clearly on the lower part of the screen.
Graydon leaned forward, squinting at the display. Suddenly, the familiarity of the format struck him. It was a standard location code for the library’s vast archives. A system used for shelving across all sections. It wasn’t a cryptic clue, not a hidden message, just a regular categorisation.
WST—West Wing, section 49. Geology.
That was right here, wasn’t it? He looked up at the towering shelves surrounding him, rows upon rows of thick, leather-bound tomes and brittle paperbacks.
„WST-49,“ he murmured to himself. He had spent most of his morning chasing both literal and metaphorical shadows. Now, it seemed the answer might lie just a few feet away.
He stood a little shakily and began walking between the rows of bookshelves. As he moved, he kept his eyes fixed on the familiar call numbers and titles, the weight of Goldie’s scribbled notes in his mind. The Shadows Where the Light Ends. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something significant about the book, something more than just its title.
The smell of old paper filled his nostrils, and the shelves creaked under their own weight. The faintest glimmer of a shadow moved just out of his peripheral vision, but this time, he dismissed it as the play of light in the dusty air.
And then, there it was. The Shadows Where the Light Ends. The book’s cover was cold as he pulled it from the shelf with slightly trembling fingers. With the book in hand, Graydon moved toward one of the nearby tables, his mind racing with anticipation.
He opened it, scanning the pages. The book was dense, filled with technical language, scientific diagrams, and what appeared to be case studies.
The text described the initial Spectral Library, a place where various soils, minerals, and man-made materials were analysed for their reflectance spectra. More intriguingly, it detailed how specific wavelengths of light could induce or counteract eco-stress and environmental degradation. It was a fascinating, if obscure, blend of geology, environmental science, and light theory.
His mind raced. Spectral Library. Light ends. Was this about perception? The very nature of seeing? He read on, absorbed, and a few more chapters in, a strange sensation crept over him. This was more than academic research. It felt like a blueprint, a manual to something far more extensive. He paged back to the beginning of the book to see if he could find a publishing date, but there was no mention of it. He flipped through the pages to the end of the book. There was also no publishing date given. Instead, he found a detailed map of Chromapolis, but one unlike any he had ever seen before. The city was laid out in precise grids, but overlaid on the streets were strange markings, symbols that he didn’t recognise. At the centre of it all was a location: Geology Department, University of Chromapolis.
His eyes landed on another detail. A bronze circle was etched into the lower part of the map’s margins. Etched into it was the same symbol he had seen the previous evening on the door to the underground room, just before the encounter with Marigold. It was impossible to ignore. There was clearly a connection.
He closed the book with a soft thud, tucking it under his arm. The library had given him his answer, and the path was now clear: He would find Professor Tilda Umber at the University of Chromapolis. He could have thought of that himself, really.