"Wake up! Wake your sleepy ass now!"
A sharp, insistent voice shattered the void, yanking me from an eternity of slumber. My eyes flickered open to… nothing. A boundless expanse of pure white stretched infinitely in every direction, a stark, unsettling emptiness that mirrored the hollowness in my mind.
"What the...? What happened?" I mumbled, my voice swallowed by the oppressive silence.
"You seriously don't know? You, the librarian—the one meant to manage the Library—vanished for millennia!" The voice accused, its tone sharp and grating, laced with a disbelief that bordered on contempt.
"Millennia? I… I remember someone else managing the Library. Wasn't it… her?" I replied, my mind reeling from the sheer scale of the statement. The enormity of the claim pressed down on me, a weight of incomprehensible time.
"Yeah, her. She's dead. Killed by the Guardians the moment she stepped outside your door." The words struck me like a physical blow, a wave of shock and grief washing over me. The image of her, the previous librarian, flashed through my mind, a fleeting glimpse of a face I couldn't quite recall.
"What? The Guardians killed her?" Anger flared, a burning injustice igniting within me. The Guardians, protectors of the Library, had murdered the one who held the mantle before me.
"Yeah, wild, right? But more importantly, what the hell happened to you?" The voice pressed, its impatience palpable, its tone laced with a hint of frustration.
"I… I remember being in the world of Gamma. It was night. I went to sleep… and now I'm here," I stammered, struggling to piece together the fragmented memories, the disjointed timeline that stretched across an unfathomable expanse of years.
"Well, you slept through a few millennia. Plural. Millennia." The voice dripped with sarcasm, a mocking undertone coloring its words, highlighting the absurdity of my situation.
"Wait. Millennia? With an 's'? You mean… more than one?" I questioned, still struggling to comprehend the sheer scale of time that had passed.
"Duh. That's basic, Racshak. You really are slow, aren't you?" The voice sneered, its contempt unmistakable.
"Unbelievable… But what about the Library? What happened to it?" I ignored the taunts, focusing on the fate of the institution I had dedicated my life to, the place that held my memories, my purpose.
"Gone. Wiped from existence." The words hung in the air, heavy with finality, the weight of loss pressing down on me.
"And the Tower?" I pressed, anxiety clawing at me, the thought of the Tower's destruction adding another layer of devastation to the already overwhelming reality.
"Also gone. Poof." The casual dismissal of such significant structures sent a chill down my spine. The casualness of the annihilation was chilling.
I stood there, the silence amplifying the turmoil within me. If the Library was gone, and she was dead… then how had I survived for so long? A suspicion began to form, a seed of unease taking root in my mind. I turned, my eyes narrowing, focusing on the unseen entity behind the voice.
"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice firm, demanding answers.
"Me? I'm… something too powerful for Heaven and Hell to handle. They pretended to wage war, but they were just trying to seal me. Heaven barely won, Hell was just for show." The voice revealed its identity with a chilling nonchalance, its power evident in the casual dismissal of celestial entities.
"And the 'Day'? The celestial armies?" I asked, suspicion lacing my voice, questioning the narrative presented to me.
"A lie. They kill souls, pretending it's for balance, feeding them to the cage they trapped me in. Your coma kept me caged. Now you're awake, I'm free. Got bored, erased everything. Library, Tower—gone. But you survived." The voice's explanation was both shocking and terrifying, painting a picture of cosmic manipulation and casual destruction.
"So what do you want now?" I asked, bracing myself for the inevitable request.
"Make me a world." The voice's request was simple, direct, yet laden with the weight of its power.
"Three continents," I began, gathering my thoughts, drawing upon my lifelong experience with stories and worlds. "The first will have towering mountains, ancient forests, and mist-shrouded lakes. The second will be meadows of flowers, with a grand waterfall cascading into a crystal lake. Finally, deserts of shifting sands, hiding vast underground caverns filled with bioluminescent plants."
The void shifted, my words shaping reality, the raw power of the entity bending to my will. The landscapes I described began to coalesce, taking form in the endless white expanse.
"This… isn't bad," the voice admitted, a hint of surprise coloring its tone. "Keep going. Make it interesting."
And so I began—building, creating a world born from destruction and hope, a world that was mine to shape, a world that would rise from the ashes of the old, a testament to the enduring power of creation in the face of annihilation. The weight of millennia fell away, replaced by the exhilarating challenge of building something new, something beautiful, something lasting. The task ahead was immense, but I was ready. I was the librarian, and I would build a new library, a new world, from the void.