Evander crouches at the threshold of the flooded archive reading room. Water laps at waist height. The bookshelves form a grid of islands — some stable, some listing badly. He spots a dry section in the northwest corner with an intact desk. He tests the nearest bookshelf: it sinks slowly. He marks it and edges around via a stable shelf, staying low.

Evander reaches into the flooded desk — water soaks his arm but he finds a dried inkwell, two quills, and a leather satchel. Inside the satchel: a brass key (corroded but functional) and a page torn from a codex. The text reads: "The Codex is not IN the archive — it IS the archive. Every word is a room. Every room is a word." He takes the key and keeps the note.

From the adjacent shelf, a voice. Wet and tired, but alive: "Another thief? Wonderful. Come to rob me too?" A half-drowned figure in waterlogged robes clings to a bookshelf. An archivist — or was. She says the flood was deliberate: "The Archive Council wanted the wrong people to stop reading. They flooded the lower stacks. The Codex survived — it always survives — but the way down is through the Drowned Stacks and no one goes that way." She has a map fragment but can't swim anymore.

A shape rises from the water between the shelves — pale, bloated, the skin split along the seams. A waterlogged corpse that still has opinions about trespassers. It pulls itself onto the nearest shelf, wood groaning under its weight. It has a rusted arming sword and no apparent interest in conversation.

Evander draws his sword and lunges — the corpse's arm is slow. Roll: 12+2=14 vs AC 10 = hit. Damage: d6+2=5. The corpse takes the hit without reaction. It swings — a clumsy blow from the rust-eaten sword. Evander tries to dodge, but the shelf shifts under him. Roll DEX: 9 vs DC 10 = fail. The corpse's blade catches his arm: d6=3 damage. His HP drops to 2. He is Slowed — the wound makes him clumsy. He needs to finish this fast.

Evander shoves the corpse backward — STR check: 8 vs DC 12 = fail. The shelf crumbles under the corpse's weight. Water rises. Evander is standing on a half-submerged bookshelf. If it sinks, he goes under. He calculates: there is a stable-looking shelf to his left, a dry beam above him he could reach, or the corpse (now waist-deep in water) that might give him a moment if he uses it as a platform. He decides to reach for the beam — INT check to assess stability: 14 vs DC 14 = hit. The beam holds.

Evander has the brass key, the codex page, and a healing herb he found stuffed in a book. He chews the herb — not medicine but it dulls the pain. HP: +1 (back to 3). He can move without limping. He uses the brass key on the door at the north end of the reading room — it fits. The lock clicks. Beyond: a staircase descending, and the smell of more water. The Drowned Stacks lie below.

The Drowned Stacks. Chest-deep black water. Bookshelves rising from it like coral. The water is cold but not lethal. Evander swims between shelves, testing each one before committing. He finds the catalog — a dry shelf at chest height. The catalog shows a section called THE CODEX CHAMBER — it is not on any map. It requires a reading key: the codex page he has. He holds the page up to the dim light filtering from above and sees the hidden text: "ENTER BY READING ALOUD." He reads the words on the page. The bookshelf in front of him... opens. Not physically. Something shifts. The way to the Codex is open.

The archivist is still on the shelf. She is not swimming after him but she calls out: "What did the page say? What did you read?" Evander tells her. She goes quiet. Then: "The Codex was a person once. A scholar who read so much that they became the library. If you speak to it, it will ask you a question. If you answer wrong, it will keep you. If you answer right, it will tell you what you came for and let you leave. But you can only ask one question." She pauses. "I asked it how to stop the flood. It said: Read backward. I have been trying ever since."

The Codex Chamber. The page was the key, and the reading was the entry. Evander stands in a space that isn't quite a room — the walls are pages, dense with text, floor to ceiling. At the center: a figure. Not a person — a pattern. A scholar who read so much that they dissolved into the library they were trying to understand. The Codex speaks: "You have come to take knowledge. What will you give?" Evander has nothing material it wants. It wants: what he learned in the archive. All of it — the route through the water, the drowned corpses, the archivist's question, the codex page itself. "I will give you the answer to the question you came with. But you must forget how to get here." Evander agrees. The Codex: "The knowledge you want is that the archive is drowning because someone wants the Codex to stop existing. The Codex cannot stop existing — it is knowledge, and knowledge cannot un-know itself. But it can forget. You have made it forget. The archive will dry. The water will recede. The archivist will survive." Evander wakes on a dry shelf, the water at his ankles. The water is receding. He can't remember how he got to the Codex. He has the answer and not the path. His HP is restored. His conditions clear.