The Dream in the Archives

Aria didn’t remember falling asleep. One moment she was sitting on the old wooden bench beside the fireplace in the library, trying to steady her breathing. Next, the world shifted.

She was standing in a long hallway again but it wasn’t the one outside the library. This one was darker. Colder. The walls were made of stone, wet with dripping water, and the ceiling arched far too high to see. There were no candles here. No light at all, except for the faint blue glow coming from the floor.

Books were everywhere.

Piles of them lined the path, shattered like fallen leaves. Some were torn, their pages missing. Others were burned at the corners, still smoking softly. It felt like she had walked into the ruins of someone’s mind.

Then she saw it.

At the end of the corridor stood a door, tall and black, with no handle. A strange white mark was painted across it an open eye.

As Aria stepped closer, the ground beneath her feet began to hum.

It wasn’t sound. It was a memory.

Whispers swirled around her, coming from the books. They weren’t in English. Not at first. But the more she listened, the more they began to make sense.

...“She shouldn’t be here.”...

...“It’s too soon.”...

...“The Library remembers everything…”...

Aria reached for one of the open books on the ground. The words inside moved across the page like living ink. They formed a sentence.

...“The girl returns when the Library begins to forget.”...

“What does that mean?” she asked out loud, but her voice echoed strangely, like it wasn’t really hers.

Suddenly, the black door creaked open just a crack.

A cold wind rushed out, carrying the smell of ash and snow. She saw nothing inside. Just black. Deep, endless black.

But she felt something.

Something watching her from the other side.

A single whisper slipped into her ear, clear and sharp as glass.

...“Don’t trust the ones who know your name.”...

She gasped and woke up.

Her hands were shaking. The fireplace beside her had long gone cold, and the sky outside the library’s glass ceiling was starting to turn pale with dawn.

It had been a dream. Just a dream.

But when she looked down, something was clutched tightly in her hand.

A torn page. Yellowed and brittle.

She didn’t remember grabbing it.

There was only one sentence written on it, in the same black ink as her invitation letter:

...The door has already opened....

She sat there for a long time, staring at it.

Elowen Hall was hiding something.

And somehow, the Ivory Library was at the center of it.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

But deep down, Aria was starting to realize

She hadn’t been chosen by mistake.