Dragonstone Tablet

The city felt different after midnight—a hollowed-out version of itself, where shadows grew teeth and familiar streets took on a sinister bend. Normally, I'd be on my way home at this hour, but the glow from that storefront had been impossible to resist. "Galactic Heroes," the neon sign proclaimed, a relic from some cheesy space opera. Had it always been there? In all my years in this town, I'd sworn I'd never laid eyes on the place...

The interior was pure comic book chaos. Every surface was a proof to the printed word – towering stacks of back issues, shelves overflowing with dog-eared trades, walls lined with longboxes. I waded through knee-high piles, the scent of aging paper tickling my nose with a potent dose of nostalgia.

And then there was the shopkeeper. He seemed to have materialized from the shadows, slumped behind the counter like a question mark. His eyes, the pale blue of faded denim, held an unnerving intensity beneath a wild mane of white hair.

"Welcome," his voice crackled like static. "May I be of assistance?"

"Just browsing," I muttered, trying to sound casual. It was a lie, of course. My collector's heart had done a double-take seeing the sheer volume in this place. "You've got... well, you've got quite the hoard here."

"Time passes," he said with an enigmatic shrug, "and so pages pile up."

Intrigued, I decided to test the waters. "So, do you have any classic 'Daredevil'?"

He didn't even glance up, just extended a knobby finger toward the rear of the store. "The Man Without Fear, yes? A connoisseur, I see. Follow the shadows."

I hesitated. The back of Galactic Heroes was cast in an almost impenetrable darkness. Still, the allure of the fabled Miller run, those gritty masterpieces I'd only dreamt of finding in the wild…that yearning was too strong to resist. A tremor of unease prickled along my spine as I pushed deeper into the stacks. How did he know I was here for Daredevil? Had he glimpsed it in the way I glanced towards the '80s titles?

It was then I saw the shelf – a sliver of light revealing the penmanship of a true believer, the label scrawled in a hand trembling with adoration: 'Miller & Mazzucchelli'. This was it, my holy grail.

As I reached out, the old man's voice whispered from the mouth of the comic book labyrinth, "Those are special. Powerful."

I spun back towards the dim front counter. "Yeah? How so?"

"Miller's Daredevil…it's a turning point. Not just for the character, but for the reader. There's a brutality there, but also a strange beauty." A ghost of a smile twitched the corners of his thin lips. "Sounds a little intense, doesn't it? Yet here you are, wandering a shop you've never noticed before, your feet leading you straight to it."

The implication hit me like an unexpected punch. He was right. I didn't just stumble into random comic stores late at night – the lure of the back issue hunt wasn't usually my style. Some instinctual part of me, a part I'd barely acknowledged, had been craving exactly this.

"Well, you seem to know your stuff," I admitted, a nervous laugh escaping me. "I guess I'll take my chances."

The transaction at the counter was quick. His fingers rustled like dry leaves as he bagged my prize.

"Excellent choice," he rasped. "And may your path be a curious one."

I stepped back into the neon-tinged night, my mind reeling. The streetlights seemed sharper, the sidewalk cracks a little more menacing. Galactic Heroes was more than just a comic shop, I realized. It was a place where the lines between coincidence and fate blurred, where destinies seemed written in pencil sketches on brittle, yellowed pages. I'd gone in looking for Daredevil, but now I wondered, just what might have found me instead?