Archaic and ancient, the latticed ceiling of the crumbling library towered far, far above their heads, the beams rent open like clawed hands praying to the shadows beyond. Light, cold and faint, dripped through the cracks and crevices in the stonework, painting the chamber in a ghostly hue that did little to permeate the endless dark. Dust swirled within those tendrils of light, rising like the whispered remnants of eons past, like the ashes of those who'd once dwelled here.

The peace felt brittle, breakable, filled with the stagnant scent of decay. Shelves, bowing beneath the weight of tomes and time, leaned unsteadily against each other like the last ones standing at some raucous party. The volumes had long begun to degrade, their spines cracked and the pages yellowing from age.

Aislinn reached out to appraise one of the volumes, fascination swimming in her eyes as the room almost held its breath in anticipation. But the moment her muzzle grazed the spine of an ancient, leather-bound book, chaos erupted like ash from a volcano.

The library had awoken.

With sudden violence, frenzied tomes tore themselves from the broken shelves, their fragile pages snapping to life with a myriad of hissing as they flapped wildly through the air. The room was a maddening orchestra of deafening screams, in languages too old, too twisted to be understood. It was an overwhelming cacophony, a storm of words in harsh, jarring syllables, growing louder and louder until it seemed as though the very walls were howling at them.

The tomes filled the air, hundreds of them, until all the group could see were yellow pages and peeling covers, hounding them and diving at them.

"Shit," Karlach growled, her voice undercutting the din, somewhere to Castalla's left, "not again."

Beaky hissed in alarm from her shoulder, his wings flaring as the books swarmed closer and closer. Before Karlach could react, a stray volume careened straight into her shoulders with the force of a charging beast, knocking the pygmy drake from his perch. The tiny creature tumbled inelegantly to the floor with an indignant screech, flapping wildly to regain his balance amid the hurricane of tomes closing in around him.

"Beaky!" Karlach's roar echoed through the chamber, her hooves slamming into the ground as she fought her way through the chaos. But Castalla was quicker. Barely dodging a book that swooped dangerously close to her head, she spun into action, grabbing the drake's tail between her teeth and tossing him into a crevice between tumbling shelves, where nothing could reach him.

"We need to shut this down," she growled, voice barely audible over the maelstrom of paper and the screaming texts. "There must be a source!"

Wolf and Aislinn both searched wildly, as much as they could beneath the madness, pushing in whatever direction they could see through the whirling storm.