The fire stole Lira’s voice.
Smoke curled down her throat, wrapped around her words, and snuffed them out. When the flames faded, silence settled in their place.
Now, she toiled in the ashen archives of Hollowspire Library, where books pulsed like living hearts and the air smelled of ink and forgotten things. She mended pages with careful hands, cataloged volumes that whispered in the dark, and ignored the way the shelves watched her.
Until the night she found the book.
Its spine, bound in something too soft to be leather, bore no title—until she touched it.
Your Name.
The moment her fingers brushed its cover, the pages shuddered open, blank at first. Then, like ink bleeding from a wound, words spilled across the parchment.
A memory. Her memory. One she had buried beneath years of silence.
The fire.
Not an accident. Not a cruel twist of fate.
A scream. Her brother’s scream.
Lira staggered back, the book tumbling to the floor. The library groaned. The shelves shifted. The books—hundreds of them—began whispering in a single, deafening chorus:
Confess. Or be consumed.
She pressed her hands over her ears, but the words clawed their way in.
A figure loomed in the flickering candlelight. A patron—no, a ghost. His presence wavered, ink and shadow dripping from his form like a story unraveling.
He raised his hands, signing in slow, deliberate motions.
Silence is a prison you built.
Lira’s breath came in sharp gasps. She wanted to speak. To scream. But the fire had stolen her voice—hadn’t it?
The rot spread across the floor, curling around her feet, creeping toward the bookshelves like veins of decay. The library was dying.
No. She was dying.
Lira grabbed the book. The pages trembled in her grip, urging her to read, to confess. But she wouldn’t let the library own her story. Not this time.
With a shaking hand, she tore the pages free.
She struck a match.
The fire roared back to life, swallowing the book in golden tongues. And with it, something inside her broke open.
Her voice—trapped for so long—burst free in a single, shattering cry.
The cursed library burned. The shelves wailed. The ghost smiled.
And as the flames consumed Hollowspire, Lira finally spoke her brother’s name—not in guilt, but in remembrance.