The entrance to the Librarium Gerardi, the restricted sections of the library, is marked by a tall archway of stained glass whose panes depict shifting mosaics of colour. With written permission from a professor, they part just enough to allow entry before sealing again into a seamless whole.
Inside, dark wood and iron shelves stand in tight rows, while ironwork lattices and narrow walkways connect the stacks at impossible heights, reachable only by ladders. The lighting is dim to protect the books, casting long, controlled lines across the stone floor. Unmarked spines sit beside cracked tomes and pristine volumes, many written in unfamiliar scripts or bound in foreign materials.
At the entrance of the chamber stands Mercator’s catalogue: a single, austere desk of dark stone, where a quill records who enters, what is taken, and when it was returned. Records go back to the founding of Penwick.