The Sixth Layer of Hell was unlike the realms before it.

It was not a battlefield of blood, nor a garden of lies.

It was a prison made of words.

Naqharon, The Black Library.

A boundless labyrinth of towers and shelves that reached beyond sight, stacked with books bound in skin, inked in blood, and chained with whispers.

The air burned, not with fire, but with the ceaseless crackle of thought, a suffocating heat of knowledge too vast, too venomous, to be contained.

Every step echoed like a sentence written.

Every breath was a word forced into the lungs.

Every glance at the shelves carried a weight, for the books were not mere paper.

They were souls.

Men, women, angels, even demons who had dared to trespass here, each was bound into parchment, endlessly rewritten with their own despair. Pages turned themselves, letters bleeding, as if the stories resisted their own endings.

Some screamed through ink, others wept through margins, and many begged silently for the mercy of being unread.

Above it all, the shelves leaned and twisted, alive, shifting like serpents around prey. The library was sentient.

The knowledge itself hungered.

And within the heart of Naqharon sat its master: Glasya-Labolas, the Profane Scholar.

He was not a beast of war, nor a lord of flame. His was a subtler tyranny. A Duke under Orobas, he wore the form of a tall, robed figure, stitched together from manuscripts of forbidden scripture, his flesh a mosaic of languages no tongue could safely speak. His eyes were black pits that bled glowing ink, and his hands, long and skeletal, dripped with words that crawled away like insects when they touched the ground.

Before him hovered an open tome, its pages turning by themselves, though no wind stirred. Every line was a death. Every word, a soul erased.

"Knowledge," Glasya-Labolas whispered, his voice a chorus of overlapping scholars, priests, madmen, "is the purest corruption. Wisdom is the kindest cruelty. Tell me, little intruders… what truth would you sell your souls to know?"

The silence of the library broke, and all around, the books began to laugh.

But...

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Somewhere within Naqharon, the Black Library, Taufik took his first step. For the first time, he was all alone, without Lembuswana, Kl'lara, or Basukhi at his side.

The scenery around him caught his attention.

The air was thick with ash and burning ink, heavy enough to sting his lungs.

All around him stretched colossal shelves of charred black wood, spiraling infinitely upward into a skyless void.

The shelves were crammed with books, tomes, and scrolls that writhed like living creatures, their bindings pulsating faintly with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Pages fluttered without wind, whispering in voices too many to count.

Some hissed, some laughed, others sobbed with ceaseless agony.

The floor was made of obsidian tiles, cracked and glowing faintly with veins of molten script.

Each step Taufik took echoed like a gavel striking judgment, though the sound was muffled quickly by the overwhelming chorus of whispers.

He turned a corner and froze.

A book was lying open in the middle of the path. Its pages dripped black ink that slithered across the ground like tendrils, forming words that crawled toward his feet.

Against his better judgment, his eyes fell on the text... and he saw his own name written there, in countless variations, endless stories of his death, betrayal, and ruin.

The voices of the Library grew louder, pressing against his skull. He staggered forward, clutching his head, his own thoughts being drowned beneath the avalanche of alien knowledge.

He felt as if the Library itself was trying to rewrite him, unraveling his soul, stitching him into a book to be shelved among the damned.

And in that suffocating silence between whispers, a voice rose, clear and sharp, echoing directly inside his mind:

"Welcome, trespasser. You are already written. You are already ours"

Taufik's breath grew ragged as the voices clawed deeper into his head.

The books shivered in their shelves, some bursting open, their pages unraveling like wings of ash.

He tried to focus, tried to center his Concept, but every time he grasped at Darkness, it slipped through his fingers, smothered by an endless tide of words not his own.

The whispers shifted into a single unison chant.

"He comes. He comes. He comes"

The aisle stretched unnaturally long, bookshelves leaning inward as though bowing. The shadows thickened, not with his power, but with something far older, something that had been etched into the bones of the Library itself.

From between the shelves, a figure emerged.

A tall, robed shape, his garment woven of parchment and stitched with living ink. His face was hidden beneath a porcelain mask cracked with veins of scripture, and where his eyes should have been, streams of black letters poured endlessly down his cheeks.

In his hands, he held no weapon, only a Quill of Blood & Bone, a jagged staff-quill that writes not on parchment but on flesh, inscribing runes that burn reality itself and a tome bound in flayed skin, its pages exhaling the stench of burning souls.

Glasya-Labolas, the Profane Scholar.

The books fell silent as he appeared, their whispers swallowed by reverence.

He opened his tome without looking, and the air trembled with power.

The ink spilling from his eyes twisted into shapes, snakes of black ink, circling Taufik like predators tasting blood.

"Ah… a living page, wandering without ink." His voice was neither loud nor soft, but each syllable struck Taufik's mind like a nail hammered into wood. "Tell me, child of mortality, do you come to be written, or to erase what is already scribed?"

The Library seemed to lean closer, waiting for Taufik's answer.

Taufik tightened his grip on his katana in his hand, the edge humming faintly, resisting the suffocating pressure of the Library.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears, but his eyes, clear, cold blue, locked onto the masked figure before him.

"I didn't come here to be written," Taufik said, his voice hoarse yet steady. "And if erasing is what it takes to keep walking forward, then so be it"

A pause. The ink-serpents circling him recoiled, hissing like boiling oil.

Glasya-Labolas tilted his head ever so slightly, the porcelain mask cracking further as though grinning beneath.

"Forward? Hhhhhh~" His laugh was not a sound but a wave of paper tearing, of pens scratching against stone. "Such a pitifully mortal word. Forward. As though time is a line. As though fate can be outrun"

The Scholar's quill twitched once in his hand, and the tome bound in flesh snapped open on its own. The pages rustled violently, as if screaming, and Taufik's legs nearly buckled when he saw... His own story, written there.

From birth, to the faces of his wives, his children, his countless paths. But each one ended the same, his failure, his fall, his erasure.

The weight of it slammed into his skull, drowning his breath. He felt the ink trying to stitch itself into his veins, his heart, his thoughts.

Glasya-Labolas's voice oozed through the cracks in his mind: "Knowledge is not power, child. Knowledge is doom. And I… I am its author. Every path you have walked, every choice you have made, I have already written. You are only the echo of a sentence long since concluded"

The books all around shivered, their bindings snapping open, hundreds of thousands of eyes, no, words, turning toward him.

Taufik stumbled, clutching his head, his Concept fraying under the avalanche. But somewhere within the suffocating tide, he forced a breath, steady, ragged, alive.

"Then you've written a lie," he spat, forcing his body upright. His power roared, stabilizing as his will surged. "Because I'm still moving"

For the first time, Glasya-Labolas stilled.

The quill froze above the page. The mask did not shift, but the air itself recoiled, as though the Library itself was… surprised.

The Scholar leaned forward slightly, his voice now a whisper that sank like hooks into the marrow: "Interesting… Perhaps I miscalculated. A blank space that refuses to be filled"

The ink-serpents twisted tighter, ready to strike.

"But tell me, Taufik, O Dafient…" Glasya-Labolas raised the quill, dripping with liquid scripture that burned the ground where it fell. "Can you withstand being read by me?"

The shelves slammed shut all around them, cutting off escape, leaving only the burning pages and the Profane Scholar standing before him.

"Read me?" Taufik's voice rang out, calm, indifferent, mocking. "Are you sure about that?"

Glasya-Labolas faltered. "...What do you mean?"

A sigh came, not from Taufik, but from everywhere at once. "You and Orobas... always playing with knowledge, twisting minds. You change truth into lies, evil into good. But you… You are just a subordinate. Are you sure you can handle me, when even Orobas fled before learning the truth? Look at me"

Confused, Glasya-Labolas fixed his gaze on Taufik. The boy remained motionless, not resisting, not striking back.

But then...

"...Not there. Above"

"Above?"

Glasya-Labolas tilted his head upward.

In the skyless void, a pair of colossal golden eyes glared down at him. Eyes that pierced through lies, through souls, through eternity itself. His breath froze. "... W-What? W-When...?"

The voice returned, colder, intimate, unescapable: "Knowledge is the purest corruption. Wisdom is the kindest cruelty. Tell me… would you sell your soul to know the truth?"

Recognition struck him like a blade. This presence… this wasn't the first time he'd felt it.

Then Taufik's voice cut through, sharper than any weapon: "Open your eyes, Glasya-Labolas. Look around you"

The Profane Scholar obeyed, and his blood ran cold. "...You've already been defeated"

As the words fell, Glasya-Labolas jolted as if struck by something unseen.

A crack, sharp and invisible, echoed inside his skull. He staggered, then dropped prostrate onto the blackened floor, the whispers of his library screeching into silence.

Memories surged unbidden, tangled like chains dragging him down: "Knowledge is the purest corruption. Wisdom is the kindest cruelty. Tell me, little intruders… what truth would you sell your souls to know?"

He remembered saying those words, proud, mocking, certain of his dominion. But then... His mind wavered. What happened after that?

A blur.

A presence.

A single motion, swift as death itself.

And then... Pain. Not of flesh, but of soul. A searing emptiness cut through him.

Glasya-Labolas' eyes widened as he realized: he had been defeated. Not through debate, not through unraveling of knowledge, not through the endless games of logic and lies he and Orobas so loved. No. His defeat had come with the simplest, purest expression of power, one single slash of Taufik's katana.

His body trembled, his voice cracked, whispering as if to no one but himself, "… Impossible…"

....

...

..

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