Draven:

  The silence stretched.

  The man didn’t flinch, didn’t startle. He only watched me, his presence filling the room as if he had always belonged there.

  Then, finally, he spoke.

  "You’re awake."

  His voice was steady, unhurried. As if he had been expecting me to wake at this exact moment.

  I gripped the edge of the doorframe, forcing my thoughts to settle. "Who are you?"

  A pause. Then—"Elias Rhyne."

  The name meant nothing to me. But he spoke it like it should.

  I stiffened. "What are you doing in my house?"

  Elias didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he studied me, his dark gaze unreadable. Then he glanced past me, toward the hallway. "I was just speaking with Alistair and Vera."

  Something about the way he said my parents’ names made my jaw tighten.

  "They didn’t mention a visitor."

  "They wouldn’t," Elias said simply. "Not yet."

  Something in his tone unsettled me. Not threatening, but knowing. Like he understood something I didn’t.

  I exhaled slowly. "Why are you here?"

  Elias tilted his head slightly, considering me. "Because you are."

  A flicker of something sharp pressed against my thoughts.

  "Go to the Great Library. Tonight."

  The words from before curled around my mind, heavy with meaning I didn’t understand.

  And somehow, I knew—

  Elias Rhyne wasn’t here by accident.

  Elias said nothing for a moment.

  Then, he took a slow step forward. Not threatening, not aggressive—just measured. Purposeful.

  "You’ve felt it, haven’t you?"

  I didn’t respond, but something in my expression must have given me away.

  He nodded, as if I had confirmed something for him. "Something’s been pressing against you. An unease you can’t name. Moments where the world feels… misaligned." His gaze sharpened. "It isn’t your imagination."

  The weight in my chest tightened. "What are you saying?"

  Elias studied me, then exhaled. "Evermere is balanced. Has been for centuries. And yet—your presence disturbs something in it."

  My pulse kicked up. "That doesn’t make sense."

  "It doesn’t have to," he said simply. "Not yet."

  Something about the certainty in his tone unsettled me more than the words themselves.

  I shook my head. "That’s ridiculous. I’ve lived here my whole life. If something was wrong with me, wouldn’t it have already happened?"

  "Perhaps," Elias admitted. "Or perhaps the shift has only just begun."

  A shadow of a thought curled at the edges of my mind, something I didn’t want to acknowledge.

  The vision.

  The fire. The crumbling bell tower. The feeling that I was watching Evermere collapse in real time.

  "You will only watch it burn."

  I swallowed hard, pushing the memory down. "If I were truly disturbing anything, there would be evidence. Something tangible. Something real."

  Elias watched me for a long moment.

  "Not everything breaks all at once, Draven."

  His voice was calm. Certain.

  "Sometimes, things erode."

  The weight of his words settled between us.

  Erode.

  Like something slow and unseen. Something already in motion.

  I clenched my jaw. "Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why."

  Elias exhaled, tilting his head slightly. "No, it doesn’t."

  I narrowed my eyes. "Then what use is this conversation?"

  He didn’t react to my frustration. If anything, there was something almost… patient in his expression. Like he understood what I was feeling.

  "You deserved to know," he said simply.

  I frowned, caught off guard by the sincerity in his voice. "Why?"

  For the first time since he had entered my home, Elias hesitated. Not in uncertainty—but in something else.

  Then, softer than before, he said, "Because you may not be able to stay here."

  The words hit harder than I expected.

  Something in my stomach twisted. "You think I’m a threat?"

  Elias’s gaze held mine. "I don’t know what you are yet. And neither do you."

  A cold silence stretched between us.

  Then, Elias straightened. "I have a duty to this city, Draven. I don’t have the luxury of ignoring something that could tip the balance." He turned toward the door, his voice quieter now. "That doesn’t mean I take pleasure in it."

  Something flickered in his expression, too brief to name. Not pity. Not regret.

  But something close.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  So I said nothing.

  Elias reached the door and rested his hand on the frame. He glanced over his shoulder one last time, his tone unreadable.

  "Be ready."

  Then, without another word, he stepped into the night, leaving me alone with the weight of what he had said.

  The door shut behind Elias, and the house fell into silence.

  I didn’t move at first. My pulse was still uneven, my thoughts tangled between what he had said and the voice that had spoken to me before.

  "Go to the Great Library. Tonight."

  I swallowed hard, forcing the thought down. I needed answers.

  Pushing away from the doorframe, I turned down the hall, my footsteps quiet against the wooden floor. My parents were still awake—I could hear the faint clinking of dishes in the kitchen, the occasional murmur of conversation.

  They must have known Elias had left.

  They had been speaking with him before I woke.

  I stepped into the doorway, and both of them turned. My mother’s hands stilled over a cloth she had been using to wipe the counter. My father leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable.

  Neither of them spoke first.

  So I did.

  "Who was he?"

  A pause. Then my father exhaled. "Elias Rhyne."

  "I know that much," I said, my voice tight. "What did he want?"

  My mother exchanged a glance with my father. Not one of secrecy, but of uncertainty.

  Finally, she said, "He had questions about you."

  I tensed. "What kind of questions?"

  She hesitated. "Nothing specific. He just… wanted to know if you had ever shown signs of—" She stopped herself, pressing her lips together.

  I straightened. "Of what?"

  Another glance between them.

  My father sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "He didn’t say exactly. Only that something about you was… unusual."

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The words sat heavy in my chest. "And you didn’t tell him anything?"

  "There was nothing to tell," my mother said firmly. "You’re our son. You’ve never been anything but our son."

  The certainty in her voice should have settled me.

  It didn’t.

  Because Elias had been certain, too.

  And I had seen the way my parents had spoken about me earlier—how they had always known something was different.

  But even now, even with everything laid out before them, they had no answers.

  And that terrified me more than anything.

  I swallowed, steadying my voice. “Then tell me this.”

  My mother’s hands tensed around the cloth she had been holding. My father’s gaze flickered, wary.

  “If you don’t know what is different about me,” I continued, “then why do you suspect something? You’ve thought this for years. You admitted as much earlier.”

  Neither of them answered right away.

  The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Then, finally, my father sighed, his voice quieter than before.

  “It was never just one thing.”

  I frowned. “What does that mean?”

  My mother set down the cloth and folded her arms, as if bracing herself. “You were always… off.”

  The word sent something sharp through me. “Off?”

  She shook her head quickly. “Not in a bad way. Just—not like other children.”

  My father nodded, rubbing his jaw. “You never cried as a baby. Not once. Not even when you should have.” His voice was thoughtful, distant, as if pulling the memory from deep within. “You didn’t startle easily. Loud noises, dark rooms—things that scare most children? You never reacted the way you should have.”

  I stiffened, my fingers curling at my sides.

  “That’s not enough to—”

  My mother cut in. “You would disappear.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Not literally. But we’d turn our backs for a moment, and suddenly, you’d be somewhere else. Somewhere you shouldn’t have been able to get to so quickly.”

  A cold weight settled in my chest.

  “You never got lost,” my father added. “Even when you should have. Even when we wanted you to—when we tried to test it, just to see.” He met my gaze. “You always knew exactly where you were going.”

  Something in my ribs tightened.

  I had no memory of this.

  But deep down, I believed them.

  Because it wasn’t so different from what I had felt earlier—when I blinked and suddenly found myself at home, as if I had teleported.

  My breath came slower now. Measured.

  None of this made sense.

  But maybe—maybe it was never supposed to.

  Selene:

  The candle on my desk flickered, casting restless shadows along the pages of my open journal.

  The words I had written blurred together, but I hardly noticed. My quill hovered just above the parchment, ink gathering at the tip, waiting for a thought that wouldn’t come.

  I should have been writing about the day—about the things we had studied, the places we had gone, the fact that Alaric had somehow convinced a baker to give him extra bread again.

  But my mind wouldn’t drift away from him.

  From what I had seen.

  Draven collapsing in the garden had been enough to rattle me. But for a second—just a second—before he fell, something happened.

  Something I couldn’t explain.

  His figure had flickered.

  Not in the way a candle wavers when caught in a breeze. Not in the way eyes play tricks after staring too long at the sun.

  It was deeper than that.

  Like the space around him had warped. Like the light itself had hesitated, unsure of whether to keep him there or erase him entirely.

  And then, just as fast, it was gone.

  He had hit the ground, unconscious.

  Alaric hadn’t noticed—at least, he hadn’t said anything—but I had.

  And no matter how I tried to rationalize it, no matter how many ways I replayed the moment in my head, there was only one conclusion I kept coming back to.

  Draven wasn’t just having visions.

  Something was wrong with him.

  Something that didn’t belong in Evermere.

  I tightened my grip on the quill.

  Outside, the city bells tolled, marking the approach of night. The candle on my desk wavered again, its glow fragile, unsteady.

  I swallowed hard.

  And I kept writing.

  Draven:

  The city had rules.

  Rules that people rarely broke, because Evermere was structured, predictable. You didn’t sneak into places you weren’t meant to be. You didn’t wander the streets after curfew without a sanctioned reason.

  And you certainly didn’t enter the Great Library at night.

  But I wasn’t most people.

  I leaned against my window frame, watching as the last remnants of light bled from the sky. The streets below had begun their slow shift into curfew hours—lanterns dimming, patrol routes changing.

  The guards wouldn’t be watching the library. Not closely.

  They didn’t need to.

  The library was locked at night with a warded seal—one that should have been unbreakable.

  But “unbreakable” was just another way of saying “no one has bothered to break it yet.”

  I had spent years studying the city’s structure, its movements. I knew that the patrols changed rotation every third bell. That the eastern alleyways provided the best cover from lantern light. That the lowest level of the library had a secondary service entrance, one used so infrequently that most of the city had forgotten it existed.

  It would still be locked. But unlike the front entrance, it wasn’t reinforced with a seal. Just an old, rusted mechanism—one that could be picked with enough time and precision.

  I turned away from the window, grabbed my cloak, and moved soundlessly through the house. My parents were asleep. The floorboards had weak spots—ones I had memorized long ago. I avoided them without thinking, my steps light as I slipped into the night.

  The streets were silent. The cold air pressed against my skin, but I welcomed it, letting the quiet sharpen my focus.

  I didn’t run. Didn’t rush.

  Getting caught was rarely about being somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. It was about moving like you didn’t belong.

  I belonged everywhere.

  Even places I shouldn’t.

  The library loomed ahead, its towering silhouette carved against the moonlit sky.

  I breathed in slowly.

  And I made my move.

  The trick wasn’t just getting inside.

  It was getting inside without leaving a trace.

  The Great Library wasn’t patrolled the way the noble districts were—guards only passed by the front entrance at set intervals, too predictable to be a real problem. But that didn’t mean I could be reckless.

  I stuck to the edges of the streets, keeping to the longest shadows, my cloak pulled just loose enough to obscure my form. Any sudden movement would catch attention. Instead, I moved at an unhurried pace, like someone with a purpose, someone who belonged.

  Evermere functioned on the assumption that everyone followed the rules. That assumption had always been its greatest weakness.

  Reaching the library was the easy part.

  Getting inside was the challenge.

  The front entrance was out of the question. The seal on the doors wasn’t just locked—it was warded to alert the night scholars if tampered with.

  But the side entrance?

  That was different.

  The eastern wing of the library had been expanded decades ago, built over what had once been a separate archival chamber. The old service entrance remained, tucked behind the structure, long forgotten by anyone who hadn’t spent their life memorizing Evermere’s architecture.

  I reached it in minutes.

  The door was as I had expected—wood swollen from time, the iron lock rusted but still intact. I knelt, pulling a thin tool from my belt, and pressed the tip into the lock’s mechanisms.

  A simple mechanism.

  A poor design.

  Two rotations. A lift of the pin. A soft click.

  The door gave way.

  I stepped inside, closing it behind me without a sound.

  The scent of parchment and cold stone pressed against me, heavy in the dark. Shelves towered above, stretching deep into the quiet halls.

  The Great Library had always felt vast during the day.

  At night, it felt endless.

  I exhaled.

  Now came the real question—

  Why was I here?

  The library was silent.

  Not just the ordinary kind of silence—the absence of voices, the stillness of an undisturbed place—but something deeper. A silence that pressed against the walls, heavy and expectant.

  I moved carefully between the shelves, my footsteps barely making a sound against the worn stone floor. The moonlight filtering through the high windows gave just enough illumination to navigate, casting long, stretching shadows.

  Somewhere in the distance, a faint creak echoed. Just the old wood settling.

  Or so I told myself.

  I had been here at night before—never like this, but in sanctioned hours, when the scholars stayed late to finish their research. But now, with no torches lit, no quiet murmurs of study, the place felt different.

  Older.

  Something about it unsettled me, but I pushed the thought aside. I wasn’t here to spook myself with shadows.

  I moved deeper, running my fingers along the spines of books as I passed. Some I recognized—histories of Evermere, texts on ancient philosophy—but others were unfamiliar, their titles faded with time.

  Then, a word caught my eye.

  I hesitated.

  One of the older tomes sat slightly apart from the rest, its spine cracked, lettering barely visible in the dim light. But I could still make out two words:

  Thrice Tolled.

  A flicker of something cold curled in my chest.

  The phrase stirred something at the back of my mind, something half-forgotten—whispers of old warnings, childhood superstitions.

  The bell tolling thrice.

  The sign of something wrong.

  I reached for the book, but the moment my fingers brushed the leather binding, a gust of wind rattled the high windows.

  I froze.

  The air had shifted.

  Like something unseen had stirred awake.

  I exhaled slowly, forcing my pulse to steady. It was just the wind. Nothing more.

  Still, I hesitated before pulling the book from the shelf.

  Then—

  A whisper.

  Too soft to catch the words. Too distant to tell if it had been real at all.

  My fingers tightened around the book’s cover.

  I didn’t know what any of this meant.

  But for the first time since I stepped inside the library, I had the distinct feeling—

  I wasn’t supposed to be here.

  The book in my hands felt heavier than it should have.

  The moment I pulled it from the shelf, the air in the library shifted—a slow, creeping wrongness that slithered beneath my skin. The silence deepened, pressing against my ears, thick enough to drown out the sound of my own breath.

  Then—

  A whisper.

  Not distant this time.

  Right behind me.

  I turned sharply—

  And the world warped.

  The library fell away, or maybe it collapsed inward, the shelves twisting and stretching like something alive. The walls darkened, the books turned brittle and crumbling, and the air—

  The air reeked of rot.

  Shadows flickered in the periphery of my vision, shifting, writhing. I staggered back, my pulse hammering as shapes began to emerge from the dark—tall, contorted figures, limbs too long, skin stretched too thin over jutting bones. Their faces were hollow, their mouths yawning wide, too wide, lined with jagged teeth that dripped with something black and glistening.

  And their eyes.

  No light. No reflection. Just pits of emptiness, locked onto me with the hunger of something that had waited far too long to feed.

  A dry clicking sound filled the space—no, not just clicking. Chattering. Like teeth grinding together in anticipation.

  My throat clenched. My body screamed to move, to run, but I couldn’t.

  I wasn’t sure if I was breathing.

  The closest one stepped forward, its bony fingers twitching, its mouth splitting open as if to speak—

  "Draven."

  The voice was not its own.

  It was something else, something deeper, something inside my head.

  "You are not supposed to be here."

  A sharp pain lanced through my skull. I staggered, gripping my head, the pressure mounting, building—

  Then—

  I blinked.

  The library snapped back into focus.

  The shadows were gone. The bookshelves were still. The air smelled only of parchment and old wood.

  But my hands were shaking.

  And somewhere, deep in the pit of my stomach—

  I knew what I had seen wasn’t just in my mind.

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  I wasn’t alone.

  The silence pressed too heavily against my ears, thick and expectant. My breath came too fast, my heartbeat thundering beneath my ribs. The hallucination was gone, but the feeling it left behind wasn’t.

  Then—

  A rasping inhale.

  Too close.

  The air turned sour, thick with the scent of damp rot and something spoiled.

  "You smell ripe."

  The voice was not human.

  Slowly—too slowly—I turned my head.

  The shadows between the shelves deepened. Stretched. And then, it stepped forward.

  Not a hallucination this time.

  Not a trick of the light.

  It was real.

  Its skin was sickly pale, stretched thin over an emaciated frame, ribs jutting beneath a layer of something slick and glistening. Its mouth, jagged and wrong, curled into something that might have been a smile.

  A long, clawed hand twitched.

  It inhaled again, slow and deliberate, as if savoring something in the air.

  Something coming from me.

  A cold realization clawed up my spine.

  It wasn’t just looking at me.

  It was hunting me.

  My body moved before my mind caught up.

  I bolted.

  The library blurred around me as I ran, the heavy thud of my footsteps swallowed by the empty halls. Behind me, a wet, scraping sound echoed—a noise that didn’t belong to any living thing.

  I didn’t look back.

  The service door was ahead. I reached for it, fingers fumbling against the handle—

  A whisper skated along my ear.

  "Run, little thing."

  I wrenched the door open and threw myself into the night.

  The cold air slammed into me, shocking against my burning skin. I stumbled, nearly losing my footing, but I didn’t stop. I ran until my lungs burned, until the lights of Evermere’s streets flickered in the distance—

  Then—

  Nothing.

  No sound. No heavy footsteps behind me.

  I turned, breath ragged.

  The library stood silent.

  The door gaped open behind me, but the creature—

  It hadn’t followed.

  I swallowed, my pulse hammering.

  It could have.

  It should have.

  But something had stopped it.

  And that terrified me more than anything.