“Honey, stop reading and come outside! Asteria and Richt are waiting for you!”

The familiar scent of worn parchment lingers in the air, hints of ink dancing with the earthy aroma of old wood and morning dust. Comforting is an understatement—it’s home.

I sigh, letting my gaze sweep the room. Our house in Greenfront Village is modest, but our collection of books is anything but. My mother always said knowledge is the most powerful kind of magic. I may have taken that a bit too literally.

I like books.

No—books have become a part of me. While the world around me brims with wonder—flying beasts, glowing glyphs, gods-touched fields—my life is still plagued by the dull rhythm of chores and schoolwork. So I escape into stories. Into worlds where heroes sling spells like second nature, where beasts with jagged fangs hunt in the dark, and where the impossible feels like truth.

It’s a world I never want to leave.

CRASH!

The front door slams open. My mother’s laugh rings through the house, singsong and light.

Oh gods. Not again.

You see, I have this... habit. I narrate things—my life, my surroundings—as though I’m the protagonist in some epic novel. A little quirk of mine. Helpful, I think, for an aspiring author. But the world doesn’t exactly freeze just because I want it to feel poetic.

Especially not Asteria.

“I swear to the gods above, Naucht,” she shouts, “if I catch you in that damn room with your head shoved between a book again, I’m going to smash your skull in two—maybe then you’ll be able to read twice as much.”

Actually, that doesn’t sound like such a bad deal.

“Ria, do not step foot in this room!” I warn. “Last time you came in here, you knocked over an entire bookshelf. Do you have any idea how long it takes to reorganize that type of thing?”

“First of all, stop calling me Ria. Second, don’t act like you did all the work. Your mom was the one who lifted the shelf and sorted everything. You sat there doing god knows what. If anyone deserves an apology, it’s her.”

Right on cue, my mother clears her throat.

Asteria squeaks like a kicked squirrel.

A pause.

Then a soft, awkward chuckle. “Sorry, Mrs. Morticia.”

Once again, I exhale.

At that moment, the quiet creaking of the door draws my attention back to the room.

“Hmm,” Richt murmurs as he steps inside, eyes scanning slowly. “This room looks... different from what I remember.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, watching him closely.

He closes the door softly behind him, pausing as his brows knit in thought. His mouth opens—then shuts again. A moment of quiet contemplation.

“I’m not quite sure,” he finally says. “Something just feels different.”

I follow his gaze and take in the room once more, letting my eyes drift over the familiar details like turning the pages of a beloved book.

Sunlight spills through the stained-glass window, pooling across the floor in soft hues of lavender and gold. The wooden panels beneath gleam as if varnished with morning light, each groove catching just enough shimmer to feel alive. The colors aren’t harsh—they paint the room with a subtle glow, casting long shadows like brushstrokes across an oil canvas.

Bookshelves line the walls in rhythmic patterns, tall ones brushing the ceiling, smaller ones tucked into alcoves and corners. They bow slightly under the weight of their contents—leather-bound tomes, cracked spines, and fraying bookmarks all pressed tightly together.

In the very center of the room stands the desk. No ordinary piece of furniture—it looks more like it’s grown there. The wood spirals up from the legs like climbing ivy, twisting into elegant vines that wrap around the edges and spiral along the legs. Delicate veins of gold are etched into the grain, catching the colored light and glowing like ancient script. The entire surface has a strange, sacred feel to it, as if even the air above it dares not stir too loudly.

Only a few objects rest there: a small inkwell, glistening like obsidian, and a single sheet of parchment—no longer blank.

“Ah! That’s what it is!” Richt exclaims suddenly, snapping his fingers. “The paper—it has writing on it. Usually it’s empty, right?”

I turn to him, startled but also excited.

“I tried my hand at storytelling,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Want to read it?”

BANG!

The door bursts open again, and Asteria stands in the doorway, her vermillion hair flaring behind her like wildfire, untamed and brilliant in the shafts of sunlight. Her skin, kissed golden by the sun, holds the soft sheen of someone who lives under open skies. And her eyes—gods, her eyes—they’re the kind of piercing that make you feel like an open book. Bright, alive, and always too sharp to miss anything.

She has that dangerous kind of beauty—the kind that doesn’t beg for attention, but seizes it. The kind you don’t want to write poems about because it feels cliché, yet you end up doing it anyway.

Her features are delicate, but her presence carries the weight of a challenge, like she dares the world to question her. Even now, just standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, she looks like she belongs on a battlefield—or the cover of one of the adventure novels I’m so fond of.

She’s sixteen, same as me, but she carries herself like she’s lived a dozen lives already—half rebel, half storm. Asteria isn’t just in the world—she bends it, shapes it, leaves it trembling in her wake.

And then there’s Richt.

If Asteria is the storm, Richt is the calm that follows. Where she moves like a whirlwind, he slips in like a breeze through an open window—easy, quiet, always just there. His long, wavy black hair frames his face in soft obsidian strands, like it made a secret pact with gravity never to resist too much.

Richt doesn’t speak unless he has something worth saying. That stillness of his isn’t laziness—it’s discipline. You see it in how he moves—fluid, careful, unshaken. Like every motion is part of some silent choreography only he knows.

He makes silence feel like a language of its own.

Interrupting that stillness comes our resident storm.

“I want to read it!” Asteria exclaims—her passion palpable.

Quickly, Richt responds, “Ria, we both know reading isn’t… your strong suit. I’ll read it out loud.”

Exhaling, Asteria plops into the chair at the desk, waiting.

With a soft gurgle and clearing of the throat, Richt begins:

“There once was a hare, whose passion was to leap.

With legs like springs and a heart full of wind,

It danced above the fields and hills with glee.

But joy turned bitter when it saw others—fox, deer, crane—

Leaping just as high, if not higher.

Its pride wavered, and it gazed skyward.

“O please, I beg,” cried the hare to the heavens,

“Let me jump higher than all!”

The gods, amused, answered its plea:

“Then leap as high as dreams allow.”

Delighted, the hare soared.

Past branches and peaks, above birds and clouds,

Looking down at the world it once admired.

But soon, resentment grew.

Even at its highest, the gods remained above.

Untouchable. Unmoved.

So the hare leapt again—this time, toward the sky itself.

To reach the divine.

To surpass them all.

Yet it did not know:

Imagination has no end,

But the body has its bounds.

The hare rose.

And rose.

Until the mind faltered,

And the air thinned.

Then, it fell.

Not from grace,

But from the weight of its own wanting.

For the sky has no floor,

But the earth has bones to break.

And thus it learned:

One may leap as high as they dream,

But none may fall deeper

Than they are made to endure.”

When Richt finishes, silence grips the room by the throat.

Even Asteria doesn’t speak. She just stares at the parchment, brows furrowed, lips slightly parted—as if trying to decide whether the words belong in a storybook or an omen.

I swallow. I hadn’t meant for it to come out like that.

“I thought you said it was a story,” she finally says.

“I—I thought it was.”

“But it’s not,” Richt says quietly. “It’s a warning.”

That word hangs in the air like a thread suspended between us—fragile and taut.

I stare at the page in his hands. The letters are mine… but they aren’t. They followed no outline, no draft. They poured out of me like I’d opened a vein.

Asteria shifts. “Seriously, Naucht. Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I say—too quickly. “Just… tired.”

It’s not a lie. But it’s not the truth either.

Because the moment Richt finished reading, I felt something. Faint. Fleeting. Like a tug at the edge of my awareness. A pull, like thread unraveling beneath my skin. I rub my temples, chasing away the weight that presses against my mind like a migraine caught mid-whisper.

“You should show your mom,” Richt says, handing the parchment back.

“Absolutely not,” I mutter, tucking it under a book.

“She’s going to find out either way.”

“She doesn’t need more to worry about,” I say, forcing a smile. “Besides, it’s probably just… poetic nonsense. Too many books rattling around in my skull.”

Asteria gives me a look that could melt iron.

“I’m serious,” I add. “I feel fine. You all are reading far too much into this.”

The room is thick with unspoken doubt.

Then Richt speaks.

“Well, if Naucht says everything’s alright, it probably is. Nothing wrong with a little melodramatic poetry and whatnot.”

Outside, a soft knock echoes through the floorboards—then the creak of the library door. My mother’s voice floats through the house like wind through trees.

“Kids! You’re going to be late for school if you don’t come eat now!”

Saved by the call of academia. Divine intervention in the form of quills and training.

“Coming!” Asteria shouts, already halfway down the hall.

Richt lingers.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks softly, almost to himself.

“Of course,” I say—my voice flat, my eyes heavy.

“Just… be safe, Naucht. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”

Then he leaves.

I stand alone. The morning light has shifted—the lavender faded, replaced by pale gray. My desk looks untouched. As if none of it happened.

But it had.

I lift the parchment from beneath the book. My fingers tremble.

The ink is still wet and smudged.

Still dark.

I step out of the room and into the scent of warm bread and jasmine tea.

My mother stands at the stove, humming. Her silver-threaded hair pulled into a low braid, robe hem dusted with flour. She looks over her shoulder and smiles. For a moment, the strange feeling lifts.

But as I sit at the table beside Asteria and Richt, as plates pass and laughter returns, I can still feel the poem.

Gnawing at the edge of my thoughts.

Like it isn’t finished with me yet.

Whatever happened back in the study… I’ll deal with it later. Explain it. Name it. Lock it into something sensible. That’s what books taught me, right? That everything can be understood, eventually—given the right language.

But for now, I smile. Pretend. Eat breakfast like everything’s normal.

And above us, unseen by any of us at the table, the wind outside shifts. The clouds gather.

Far within my soul, unseen by everyone else, my world begins to stir.