Elias realized the books didn't just have to be for reading. He started a "Biblical Art" workshop at the center. People came to sketch, to write poetry in the gaps of the ancient text, and to find their own stories tucked between the lines.

"I'm not much of a reader," Marcus said, turning the gold-edged pages. "But the paper in these... it's thin. Good for sketching."

"I tried returning them," Elias said, leaning against a stack of NIVs. "The shipping cost more than the books. I’m a librarian of a very specific, very repetitive library." "Give them away," she suggested.

The next week, Marcus showed Elias a page. He hadn’t read the verses; he had drawn over them. He used the narrow margins to sketch intricate designs of chairs and tables—the things he wanted to build again.

But it wasn't until he met a man named Marcus that the boxes started to feel less like a mistake. Marcus was a carpenter who had lost his shop in a fire. He sat on a bench outside Elias's building every day. One afternoon, Elias handed him a copy.

By the time the last box was opened, Elias’s apartment felt strangely empty. He looked at the spot where the bedside table used to be. He didn't need the bulk anymore. He just needed one copy—the one where Marcus had sketched a blueprint for a new beginning on the very last page.

The cardboard boxes were stacked so high in Elias’s studio apartment that they functioned as furniture. He had a bedside table made of King James Versions and a coffee table built from New Testaments.

Elias tried. He left a stack at the park; they were gone in an hour. He left a box at the bus stop; it vanished by noon. He started leaving them in "Little Free Libraries," then at the local hospital, then at the prison outreach center.