The next morning, Iyar went to school, as usual.
She even made it through the first period. But her attention was mostly on the book which she was eager to continue. The book called to her like a phantom itch she couldn't ignore. She raised her hand, and told the teacher she felt sick, he allowed her, and she walked out without a drop of hesitation.
Not a single drop. That should've alarmed her. It didn't.
Forty minutes later, she was back home, her parents were out for work, so she was safe from explaining to her mother, she didn't bother to eat she went straight to her room and locked the door.
Her shoes were still on; she then opened the book on her lap like it was the only warm thing in the world.
The pages picked up where they'd left off.
And suddenly Rayi Nimth wasn't just a name anymore she was a person.
A girl who grew up in a palace of white stone and unbearable silence. Her mother died when she was four. Not the way Iyar's mother was functionally absent or present in the body, absent in everything that mattered, but actually, permanently gone, dead. A queen who drove a sword through a tyrant's heart and paid for it with her own life.
Rayi had almost no memories of her, she only remembered her voice. The faint sound of a lullaby she couldn't remember the words to.
Iyar's throat tightened. She knew what it felt like to live with someone and not know them. She just didn't have the luxury of blaming death.
The pages turned, and Rayi grew up.
She had White hair with every tip of it taint black, that was her look which made her different from others. Worst of all she has no powers. In a kingdom where everyone could bend light like it was breathing, Rayi was the equivalent of a phone with full bars and no signal, looked perfect, functionally useless. The court whispered behind fans. The servants pitied her openly. And her father, King Leon, looked at her like a crack in the wall he kept meaning to fix but never had the time.
But this was the part that made Iyar sit up straight.
Rayl didn't curl into a ball and wait for it to end.
She trained. Not with magic, she had none, but with her own body. A wooden staff until her palms blistered and bled. Hand-to-hand combat until she dropped. Running the palace walls at dawn while the rest of the kingdom slept. She threw herself at pain like it was the only thing that could prove she existed.
Iyar read that and thought: "I get it."
She got it so deeply it almost hurt. The King's pressure wasn't wrapped in lavender cleaner and schedule charts like Iyar's mother it was colder, louder, wrapped in crowns and duty, but underneath, it was identical.
"You will be what we need. You will carry what we cannot." Her father always reminds her with those words.
Then came the politics. The High Council the governing body over all four kingdoms had issued an ultimatum. The Southern Kingdom had been banned from the Academy for years after the war. Now they were being forced back in. Send five candidates to compete, the Council said or lose sovereignty entirely.
Five students to carry the weight of a broken kingdom.
Iyar frowned. "That's brutal."
But her heart did something stupid, it kicked. Because that was also a chance.
A stage. Rayi could go to this Academy and prove everyone wrong.
Iyar continued to read, she didn't even notice her father being back from work, who is now seated in the living room with his face clued to his phone, without a care in the world
The book described the Qualifying Test, and Iyar skimmed it with relief. It sounded academic. Evaluations, mental, physical, strategic. A standard entrance exam stuff. Rayi barely passed, which made Iyar wince sympathetically, but she made the cut. She was in.
And the Academy itself was described in these lush, reverent paragraphs. A prestigious institution where the elite of all four kingdoms gathered to learn and grow. The next generation of leaders, training side by side. A place of magic and alliance and possibility
"Lucky girl," Iyar whispered to her empty bedroom, completely sincere.
She meant it with her whole chest. Rayi got to leave. She got to walk away from the cold father and the pitying servants and the kingdom that treated her like a defective product. She got to go somewhere new. Somewhere with purpose. Somewhere she could become someone worth being.
It sounded like everything Iyar had ever wanted, dipped in gold and magic.
"I'd kill for that,"
she thought, then caught herself. "Figure of speech. Probably." She laughs it off
That night, the book kept giving. The King handed Rayi her mother's necklace, a blue gem, silver chain, described with a tenderness that felt personal. Her little sister Lara beamed, she was tiny and sweet and painfully oblivious to the politics, just thrilled her big sister was going on an adventure.
The King stood stoic, said nothing meaningful, because of course he had nothing to say. Fathers in books were just as emotionally bankrupt as mothers in real life.
Rayi went to bed. The necklace rested on her collarbone. Tomorrow, she'd leave for the Academy.
Iyar turned the page.
Blank.
She blinked. Turned the next.
Blank.
"no no this can't be happening"
She flipped through the rest of twenty, thirty pages all of them white and empty, blank, like the story had stood up and walked away mid-sentence.
"You're kidding me," she said to no one.
The disappointment wasn't just disappointment. It was craving. She needed to know what happened at that Academy. She needed the montage, the friendships, what happens next, What the Academy looks like, who were the other four candidates.
And of course, how the story ends.
She pressed the book to her chest. The leather hummed.
"I wish I were her," she whispered. "I wish I could live a life that mattered."
She fell asleep holding on, wondering how she'll go through lifeless days again without the book.
Something listened.