On the other side of the library, Rowan and Nyra moved deeper into the third hall, where the shelves stood taller and the rune-lamps burned dimmer. The silence there felt different from the lower halls. Not peaceful. Not scholarly. It was the kind of silence that made every small movement sound too loud.
Even the air felt heavier.
Colder.
As if the hall itself had no interest in welcoming anyone.
At first, they followed their guru's instructions with discipline, scanning spines, pulling old records free, checking seals, dates, and markings one by one. It was part of their training, and both of them treated it seriously. But as the minutes stretched longer, something about the place began to feel strange.
The deeper they went, the less the books felt like objects.
And the more they felt like things asleep.
Rowan slowed near the end of one aisle.
His eyes had settled on a single book that did not belong with the others around it. It sat just slightly crooked, its spine too clean, its cover too plain, as if someone had placed it there recently—or as if it had placed itself there and wanted very badly to be noticed.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"...Was this book always here? I don't remember seeing it yesterday."
Nyra followed his gaze and frowned. "What book?"
She looked again, then said, "Maybe someone took it out before and returned it today."
Rowan's eyes narrowed.
"No. This is the third hall. No one is allowed to take books from here."
Before Nyra could stop him, Rowan reached toward it.
The moment his fingers touched the spine, a faint warmth pulsed beneath his skin. It was subtle—almost gentle—but something about that gentleness made it feel wrong. Not welcoming.
Aware.
Still, he slid the book free carefully.
The title was written across the cover like a sentence cut in half.
Protect Your Estate… Until
Rowan stared at it for a beat, then let out a faint, puzzled breath. "That's a weird name."
His thumb brushed the edge of the cover.
"Is this even a novel?"
Nyra's expression tightened. "Rowan, don't—"
He opened it.
And the third hall vanished.
Nyra's voice reached him first, then seemed to tear apart before it could fully exist. The air itself went mute. His senses began to fade one by one, not violently, but with terrifying calm, as if something unseen were gently peeling them away from him.
Rowan blinked.
And the world behind his eyes turned black.
Then the darkness rushed in.
It swallowed the shelves. The lamps. Nyra's voice. Everything. His legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees, still holding the book. In his hands, the cover began to glow—not with clean light, but with something sickly.
Something alive.
The ink pulsed faintly, as if it were breathing.
Nyra was beside him in an instant. "Rowan!"
He did not answer.
His body had gone rigid, and thin purple lines were beginning to rise from the corners of his eyes, spreading faintly across his skin.
Nyra's face lost all colour.
"Rowan!"
Nyra dropped beside him so fast her knees struck the floor without her even noticing. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him once, then again, calling his name, but he did not respond.
His eyes were open.
But he was not there.
Then she saw them.
Thin purple lines rising from the corners of his eyes, spreading faintly across his skin like veins of violet light. At first, they looked almost delicate—almost beautiful—until the terror behind them became clear.
Nyra's breath caught.
Her fingers trembled as her gaze flicked from Rowan's face to the glowing book still clutched in his hands. It pulsed again, and this time she felt it in her bones.
Something was feeding.
"No… no, no…" she whispered, her voice breaking under its own fear. She tried to force herself to stay calm, but panic had already cut too deep.
And then, all at once, she remembered.
A story her mother had told her long ago—not as comfort, but as warning. In this world, there were some books that were not truly books. They were scripts. Forbidden script-books, older and crueller than cursed weapons. If someone opened one, the script entered through the eyes and bound the mind itself.
By the time its roots spread fully, the victim's mana would be drained.
Their consciousness would collapse.
Nyra's chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.
And with that memory came the rest of her mother's words.
There was only one way to interrupt it.
First, press at the corners of the eyes—not too hard, not too soft—to disrupt the script's access to the victim's mana. Then replace what the script was stealing by feeding mana from another source.
The fastest transfer was through breath.
Lips to lips.
Nyra's whole face heated at once, shame and panic colliding so hard it made her dizzy. Her eyes widened, and she shook her head quickly, as if she could throw the thought away before it became real.
"No… no, no… how can I do that…?"
But Rowan's breathing had already gone shallow.
His brow twitched as if pain was trying to break through the stillness. The glow in the book pulsed harder. Moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes, and though his face remained frozen, the strain in it was unmistakable.
Nyra stared at him.
And then the decision locked into place.
Sharp. Final.
There was no time left for embarrassment. No room for hesitation. Rowan was her only true friend in this place.
If she froze now—
he would die.
Her hands steadied.
With trembling control, Nyra pressed her thumbs against the corners of his eyes, firm and precise, just as her mother had once described. Rowan did not react. The purple lines only flickered faintly beneath her touch.
Her heart hammered so loudly it felt violent. Then, before her courage could fail, she leaned in. Her mind was screaming. Her body moved anyway.
And slowly—her lips moved toward his.
Inside Rowan, there was only darkness at first.
He stood in an endless void where nothing existed except one sound—
a heartbeat.
He did not know whether it was his own, or the book's. But it was the only proof he had that he was still alive.
Then a light appeared.
Far away. Small. Distant.
And Rowan ran toward it, his legs heavy as if he were moving through deep water.
As he drew closer, voices began to form. At first they were only murmurs, too broken to understand. But then they sharpened into screams, pain giving them shape, and the moment Rowan recognized them, the realization struck him like a fist.
When the light widened, he stumbled into fire.
His hometown was burning.
Streets he had walked a thousand times were drowned in smoke and flame. People ran in every direction, colliding into one another, their faces twisted in terror. Bodies fell. Children cried. Somewhere in the chaos, monsters tore through the crowd as if it were a feast, ripping, crushing, chasing screams the way wolves chased blood.
Rowan froze.
For one terrible second, his mind refused to understand what he was seeing.
Was this a nightmare?
He ran anyway.
"Father! Mother!"
His voice broke as the names tore out of him. He turned one corner and saw his house—or what remained of it. It was already half-destroyed, collapsed into ash and broken beams. At the center of the ruin stood a giant monster, its shape so wide and unnatural it looked like something that had forced itself into the world by violence.
In one of its hands was a woman.
Rowan knew her.
Their housemaid.
Her scream did not sound human anymore. It sounded like the last piece of hope being dragged apart.
The monster crushed her between its fingers.
The crack of bone snapped through the fire. Then, without pause, it lifted what remained and devoured it.
Rowan's stomach turned so violently he nearly choked. His feet rooted in place, as if the ground itself had nailed him there. He could only watch, breath trapped somewhere deep in his chest, while horror spread through him too fast to name.
Then the monster's head tilted.
Slowly.
Its eyes turned toward Rowan.
Its mouth opened into a wide, bloody smile, and thick threads of blood slid from its teeth as if it was still savouring the taste.
Rowan stepped back. His heel struck something behind him, and he fell hard onto the ground. His palm scraped through ash, and when he looked down, his breath stopped.
Mr. Oceayne.
Dead.
A massive sword had been buried through his stomach, pinning him to the earth like a trophy. But his face was not twisted in fear. It held a strange, satisfied smile, as if he had seen something he wanted just before dying.
Rowan shoved himself back up, heart hammering, his mind splitting beneath the weight of it all. Only moments ago, he had been in the library.
Now he was here.
Watching his home burn.
He turned desperately, searching through the fire, the smoke, the collapsing shadows of people and monsters—
and then he saw another body. A man lying face down.
Rowan moved toward the body without thinking, and the moment he saw the face, the world seemed to tilt beneath him.
It was him.
Older. Taller. Familiar in a way that struck harder than any wound. Dead in the ash, his open eyes fixed on nothing.
Rowan's breath broke into a shaking gasp. He stumbled farther, panic clawing through him so fast it became difficult to tell where one horror ended and the next began. His mother lay beyond, twisted in soot and blood. His father was farther still, his body broken beyond the kind of damage the mind wanted to understand. Rowan's knees hit the ground again, and for one splintering second, it felt as though his thoughts might burst apart just to escape what they were being forced to see.
"What the hell is going on…?"
Then footsteps sounded behind him.
Soft.
Calm.
Rowan lifted his head slowly.
A boy was walking toward the bodies, white hair catching the firelight, blue eyes reflecting the flames as if they belonged there. Rowan recognized him instantly.
There was no doubt.
Ahaan.
But not as a baby.
Ahaan at sixteen… maybe eighteen… walking with the stillness of someone who had already passed through death and returned with nothing soft left inside him. In his arms, he carried a girl—perhaps twelve years old.
She was dead.
Ahaan's face was expressionless, yet tears poured continuously from his eyes, falling without pause. And that made him more frightening than the monsters. Not because he looked enraged.
Because he looked quiet. Quiet in the way that promised something worse than rage.
His lips moved.
But Rowan heard nothing.
No sound reached him in that vision. Only the fire. Only that heartbeat, still pounding through the world like a drum beneath everything.
Then Rowan noticed Ahaan's eyes.
The blue began to darken.
Slowly.
Patiently.
Black swallowing colour as if it had always belonged there.
His hair dulled too, the white turning gray, then ashy, like soot spreading across fresh snow. And behind him, a shadow began to rise.
Not darkness. A shadow.
Living. Peeling away from his body like a second skin. It spread wider and wider until it stood behind him like something enormous trying to take shape. It opened like a mouth.
And the world began to disappear into it.
Street.
Fire.
Bodies.
Sky.
Everything dragged toward black.
Rowan tried to scream.
No sound came.
The darkness swallowed the vision whole, and then there was only black again—black across his eyes, black through his breath, black inside that terrible heartbeat. And in that final silence, a girl's voice whispered.
Cold.
Distant.
Not fully clear, as if spoken from the end of a curse.
"Protect your estate… Until."
To be continue…