Chapter CXVIII: The Lost Balance
The blinding light was slowly losing its intensity, but what remained was a void. A vacuum in which time and space seemed to dissolve, and we, caught in this room, became mere shadows in the midst of chaos. I felt reality itself unraveling around us, and each second seemed to pull the world closer and closer to a bottomless abyss.
"Antonio... what have you done?" Cesare whispered, his voice trembling slightly, like a leaf in the wind.
"What's happening to me? It feels like—"
"You've gone too far, Antonio! You should never have come here!" said Cardinal Dominici.
"Then why does such a thing exist in the Archives?!" I still held the book tightly in my hands, though it weighed on me with a force not of this world. My gaze was fixed on its pages, now blank and mysterious. The words had been swallowed by that vortex of light and darkness, leaving behind only an old, dusty shell.