Of Manuscripts and Secrets

The doctoral student is in the Library with other researchers. The tables are covered with papers, magnifying glasses, and notebooks. The air smells of parchment and frozen time. Everything seems normal until, suddenly, something changes: the light.

A golden light begins to envelop the room, as if the sun had decided to enter without permission. Dust particles float in the air, suspended, almost motionless. The doctoral student looks up from the text he was copying and, without knowing why, stares toward the back of the room. There is something there, a faint vibration, a calling he doesn't understand, but which compels him to stand up.

He walks slowly between the tables, passing other readers who seem to notice nothing. And then he sees it: a half-open door, a hallway he's never seen before. And something inside him—curiosity, destiny, or simple obedience to silence—drives him to walk through it.

The golden light of the open halls fades, and what follows is something else: a corridor that seems to swallow up sounds, as if the walls knew how to keep secrets. He descends some stone steps. The smell changes: less illuminated parchment, more dust and old leather.

There are no tourists there, no glass display cases. Only closed doors and locks that seem to watch over him. In the dimness, red seals can be seen on iron boxes, ribbons closing nameless folders. Papal bulls, royal letters, diplomatic reports: words not born for the public, but for the shadow of power.

He walks slowly. Each step resonates as if someone were counting it. He wonders if the Library is also a labyrinth that decides which voices to let be heard and which to keep silent. An archivist passes in the distance, almost a ghost, and disappears behind a door.

For a moment, the doctoral student has the absurd feeling that he's not alone: that the walls themselves are speaking to him in a low voice, that the accumulated paper murmurs in ancient languages. Then he realizes that the true secret isn't in what's hidden, but in what can't be said.

🔭 Galileo's letters
In a dark wooden drawer, a slanted handwriting still speaks. Galileo writes to Rome, justifying his observations: rotating moons, worlds that don't fit into the old Aristotelian sphere. The doctoral student imagines the still-wet ink, trembling under the weight of a Church that refuses to look through the telescope. The paper seems like a silent battlefield: between science and dogma, between heaven and earth.

⚔️ The Templars' Scroll
An immense scroll, seven meters of stitched leather, sleeps rolled up in silence. It is the record of the trial against the Templars, bearing the seals of the inquisitors. There, the voices of kneeling knights still resonate: confessions extracted, accusations of heresy. The doctoral candidate toys with the idea of unfolding it: each meter, a wound; each wax seal, a sentence.

👑 The letters of kings and ambassadors
Deeper inside, in yellowed envelopes, diplomatic intrigues lurk: kings asking for favors, ambassadors offering secrets. The doctoral student pauses before a letter signed with an impossible-to-pronounce title, surrounded by coats of arms and solemn formulas. It's not literature, but it has the tension of a drama: alliances are made and broken with a signature.

Silence thickens the air again. Three paths lie before him: the science of Galileo, the faith of the Templars, or the diplomacy of kings. He doesn't know which he will open first, but he senses that, whatever his choice, nothing will ever be the same.