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墨書 Inktalez
The words of Spero about the "Fifth Night" lingered like a shadow in every dream that followed.
After that night, I did not return to Spero Restaurant immediately. Even when Leiflo invited me as usual, softly whispering in my ear, "Tonight, you won't want to miss it," I could only force a smile and decline. My body was not ill; my appetite remained strong, even stronger than before, as if a deeper hunger was silently expanding within me. But I knew it was not a craving for food; it was an indescribable thirst pointing towards some dark chamber beneath knowledge, beneath truth.
I stayed away from Spero Restaurant for three full days. On the fourth day, I awoke to find a charred invitation lying beside my pillow—one of those parchment letters sent to secret old patrons when the restaurant first opened.
But there was no name written on it. Only a single line:
"The Fifth Night has arrived; the manuscript awaits its reader."
I could no longer escape.
That night, I went to the restaurant alone. Leiflo was absent—he seemed to have vanished since that night’s reading ritual, never to appear again. It was as if he had been consumed by the pages, drawn into a black hole of knowledge. With an inexplicable sense of guilt and responsibility, I pushed open the familiar iron door, my steps trembling and palms sweating.
The waiter said nothing but looked at me with sorrowful eyes, as if he knew I would come and also knew I would leave with some unbearable conclusion.
The restaurant was empty.
The lights were dimmer than usual, illuminating only one table at the center of the hall, where Spero sat waiting. Dressed in black, the shadows on his face were carved into strange contours by the candlelight; he looked less like a person and more like a living monument sculpted from stone.
"You've come," he said.
I nodded but did not make a sound.
He gestured with his chin towards the seat across from him. I walked over and sat down in the chair, feeling the cold wood beneath me like the frame of a coffin.
"Today, there will be no books, no soup, and no meat," he said, his tone resembling an opening line of an obituary. "Only one page—the final page. You must read it yourself."
He took out a piece of paper from his coat; it glimmered faintly, like some new kind of skin. At first, I thought it was a manuscript copy, but when it was placed before me, I recognized the familiar handwriting—it was Leiflo's script.
"This is..."
"He left it behind," Spero said.
I trembled as I took the paper, which contained only a short passage:
"If you are reading this, it means you have stepped into the deepest feast. Spero said that truth cannot be lightly savored; it must be simmered slowly, chewed thoroughly, and ultimately digested over a lifetime. As for me, I have begun to digest myself. May you at least remember the taste of that first bite of meat. That is the moment when the soul begins to rewrite itself."
My fingers shook as I looked up, and Spero's gaze was fixed directly on me. In that moment, I finally understood.
This restaurant was not a restaurant; it was a slaughterhouse of memories, an autopsy room for souls.
"Are you ready?" Spero asked.
My throat felt choked with ink, rendering me speechless. But I nodded.
He handed me a pen, its tip glimmering not with ink but with blood. I stared at the blank page as if gazing at my unwritten ending—or rather, the narrative that was preparing to swallow me whole.
So I picked up the pen and began to write down what I saw, heard, and thought at that moment... The paper started to absorb my words; with each line I wrote, my fingers stiffened a little more, and my memories became a little less clear. Language was no longer a means of expression but an exchange.
Spero slowly rose and whispered in my ear, "Congratulations on becoming the youngest menu in this establishment."
I continued writing, but the pages seemed endless, like a black hole devouring time or an abyssal well swallowing me bit by bit into the depths of its woven language. I could feel no passage of time and could not discern whether it was day or night. The pen in my hand was no longer a tool but an extension of myself, my nerve endings reaching out, my consciousness's tendrils frantically pouring everything within me onto the page without reservation.
With each sentence I wrote, it felt as if another memory collapsed. I wrote about the dark night of my childhood that I had forgotten out of fear; I wrote about the song my mother sang in the kitchen; I wrote about the moment I first told a lie. I inscribed a dream that I should not have known or remembered—a dream in which a sightless creature opened its arms to me at the end of a corridor, uttering words I had never heard yet completely understood. I did not know if it was truly a dream or if this page was creating another reality through me.
My soul seeped into the page like ink, transforming into the texture deep within the fibers of paper. Those sentences no longer belonged to me or even to human language; they belonged to books—those born from the very foundation of existence, serving as devourers, recorders, and secret vessels for reconstructing worlds.
"Every dish," Spero's voice whispered in my ear, his breath mingling with the lingering scent of sandalwood and mildew, "requires time to simmer. And the aroma you release at this moment is more complex and profound than anyone before you. Your memories are smoked, your emotions possess the resilience and cracks of old paper."
I wanted to turn and look at him, to question him, to challenge him, or simply to plead with my eyes, but I found myself unable to move. My neck felt like a rusted gear, my shoulders heavy as if burdened by lead that had been sealed away for years. My lower body had long since lost sensation, while my hands continued to grip the pen as if it had grown into my flesh, entwined with my bones and veins.
I began to hear voices; those whispers were no longer mere background noise but had entered my being. They conversed, confessed, and wept within my mind. They told their stories, recounting the extinction and exile of a fractured era. They were not strangers; they were all those who had once sat at this table as part of the "menu," those who had also taken up the pen and struggled for existence. Leiflo's voice stood out among the myriad of words: "Don't be afraid; you've merely become a book... this is the most complete form we can achieve."
"You still have a few pages left to write, and then you will sleep until the next guest opens you." Spero's voice was like a dying person's final lament, slow and filled with pity. He gently draped a cloth over my shoulders; it was not a blanket but a cover, the soul's binding.
My vision began to fade like an old photograph, yellowing with age. My world gradually lost focus, leaving only one last line to complete.
—And when I finish this sentence, I will no longer remember who I am or know whether I ever existed.
The pen slipped from my fingers, its sound faint as the last breath of air escaping a dying body. My eyelids slowly closed; in a blend of dim light and shadow, the last thing I saw was Spero sitting across the table, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth, as if he were both smiling and saying goodbye.
The candlelight illuminated his face; that glow was like a guiding star in the early night or the final flame during an ancient civilization's book burning.
I finally understood—it was not light.
It was the fire of burning books, the fuse igniting consciousness into words, the moment when all memories combusted in self-immolation.
And I would be forever read within this flame.
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