Onyx Academy ©

RIVEN

Most people at Onyx Academy believe libraries are sanctuaries of wisdom and peace. I believe they're cemeteries for trees that knew too much and are now forced to whisper their secrets to idiots in robes. The Restricted Archive, in particular, smells like what I imagine a god's corpse would smell like: stale incense, ozone, and that ancient arrogance that only forbidden knowledge can emanate.

"Riv, seriously, this lock tastes like bureaucracy and resentment. Couldn't you have stolen a key like a normal person?"

That was Benny. Or, as I call him in my head so I don't forget, "Subject with the Hedgehair and Duck Voice." Benny has a Consumption Seal, which means his digestive system is basically an industrial shredder for written magic. Right now, he was pressed against the door of the Chamber of Forgotten Ink, chewing on a wax seal reinforced with level-seven spells as if it were a piece of cheap jerky.

"Chew and shut up, Benny," I whispered, watching the hallway.

The walls of Onyx Academy aren't made of stone; they're made of pressed parchments that pulse with a dull rhythm. If you stand still long enough, you can hear stories rewriting themselves in the foundations. It's irritating. Everything here is so... dramatic.

"Done," Benny swallowed with a sonic noise that probably woke up three bookshelves on the floor above. "Plum flavor with a hint of lingual paralysis. Effective, but lacking refinement."

The heavy cedar door creaked open with an asthmatic sigh. We went in. The air inside the archive was so dense you could almost feel the friction against your skin, as if we were swimming in invisible honey. My fingers tingled. That was my problem. My Tear Seal isn't something I control; it's an emotional antenna that picks up the static of fate and turns it into ocular moisture. A crappy superpower, if you ask me.

"Look for it, Benny. The Book of Last Days. Bound in red leather, probably vibrating with the energy of a thousand existential crises."

"Riv, there are like ten thousand red books here. It's like looking for a drop of blood in a slaughterhouse," Benny complained, but he was already sniffing the shelves.

I walked carefully, avoiding touching the spines of the books. If I touched the wrong book, I might see Librarian Mimsy's future, and honestly, I'd rather swallow a stapler than know what that woman does in her free time.

My memory is a blank canvas for faces. I could be talking to my own father, and if he changes his hat, he'd be a complete stranger to me. But words... words are scars. I remember every sentence from every book I've read. I remember the syntax of betrayal and the punctuation of pain. That's why I was here. I wanted the book that supposedly contains the ending of all stories. If destiny was written, I wanted the draft so I could set it on fire.

"I found it!" Benny whispered. He was pointing at a pedestal in the center of the room.

It wasn't vibrating. It was beating.

The Book of Last Days wasn't a large tome. It was the size of a personal journal, but the leather... God, the leather felt like warm skin. As I approached, the heat radiating from the pedestal hit my face, making the hair on my arms stand on end. It was an invitation and a threat wrapped in a single piece of ancient craftsmanship.

"Don't touch it directly," Benny warned, though his mouth was already full of a page from a nearby instruction manual. "The ink of the Last Days is... acidic."

"I'm a Vex, Benny. Cynicism runs through my veins. A little ink isn't going to..."

I reached out my hand. The moment my fingertips brushed the cover, the world tilted forty-five degrees to the left.

It wasn't a chill. It was a pure electric shock that traveled from my fingers, up my forearm, and settled directly in the center of my chest, right where I keep my meager reserve of empathy. The book wasn't cold; it burned with a fever that felt strangely familiar. The friction of the leather against my skin was almost erotic, a suffocating caress that demanded I open it.

My fingers trembled. The physiological betrayal was instant: my heart began hammering against my ribs like a caged animal that just saw the door open. Sweat soaked the back of my neck.

"Riv, are you okay? You're... you're glowing. And not the 'I have a good idea' kind, but the 'I'm going to explode and stain the walls' kind."

I couldn't respond. My fingers slid across the gold buckle. It opened with a click that sounded like a gunshot in the library's silence. The pages opened on their own, flipping at dizzying speed until they stopped on a blank page.

Or so I thought.

Slowly, ink began to bloom from the paper as if the page were bleeding. Lines formed, curves, shadows. And then, she appeared.

She wasn't a blurry smudge like the rest of the world. For the first time in my nineteen years, I saw a face with a clarity that scared me. She had hair like a disaster of dark threads and eyes that seemed to contain all the light I lacked. And she was smiling. It wasn't a posed smile; it was the kind that tells you the world is a private joke and she's the only one who gets the punchline.

Zelara Voss.

I didn't know her name at that moment, but the book wrote it beneath her image in elegant, cruel calligraphy.

And beneath it, a date: November 28.

A knot formed in my throat. My Tear Seal activated with the force of a hurricane. It wasn't a sad little movie tear; it was a hot, bitter torrent that blurred my vision. The pain in my chest expanded. It was the vision of her death. I didn't know how, but I knew that smile would go out on that date.

"What... what is that?" Benny leaned in, forgetting to chew. "Is that a girl? Riv, are you crying over a girl you don't even know? That's a new record for pathetic, even for you."

"It's not that..." my voice came out as a croak. A heavy tear, charged with the magic of my seal, fell directly onto Zelara's name.

The ink reacted. The paper hissed. The stain from my tear began to spread, darkening the date, rewriting it.

"Well, well, well! If it isn't a little fountain of self-pity." A shrill voice, dry as old parchment, filled the room.

I slammed the book shut, but the voice came from inside. The gold buckle moved. Two ink eyes appeared on the cover, blinking with annoyance. A mouth formed on the book's spine, curving into an expression of absolute disdain.

"Could you stop using me as a handkerchief, you piece of an idiot? I just had a wax treatment on my covers, and your bodily fluids are incredibly salty. You're going to give me heartburn."

Benny jumped back, dropping a piece of chewed paper.

"The book talks! And it has a worse temper than you, Riv!"

"Worse temper?" the book—Folio—snorted (which is impressive for an object without lungs). "I've been locked in here for three centuries putting up with the smell of mildew and Librarian Mimsy's flatulence. I have every right in the world to be an asshole. Now, put me down. Your hands are sweaty and you have the emotional stability of a flan in an earthquake."

"You... you're the Book of Last Days," I said, trying to dry my eyes with my sleeve.

"And you're a disaster on legs. Congratulations, we've cleared up the obvious," Folio rolled its ink eyes. "Do you know what you just did, 'Crybaby'? You dripped your seal onto an active prophecy. You've linked your sadness to that girl's life."

I looked at my hands. The book's heat was now a dull burn.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you just became the author of her ending," Folio said in a voice that, for the first time, wasn't sarcastic, but deadly serious. "And judging by the amount of water you leak from your eyes, it's going to be a very, very wet and tragic ending."

A chill that had nothing magical and everything genuinely terrifying ran down my spine. I looked toward the door, expecting to see guards, but all I saw was the emptiness of the hallway. My pulse was still racing. I couldn't forget her face. Zelara Voss's smile was burned into my retina, a sharp face in a world of shadows.

"I have to find her," I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

"Oh, sure, go find her," Folio mocked, regaining its acidic tone. "'Hi, you don't know me, I'm the guy who can't remember his friends' faces but just guaranteed your death because I cry like a muffin.' I'm sure she'll fall at your feet. It's the most romantic plan I've heard in three hundred years. And I've read 'Pride and Prejudice' fourteen times."

"Shut up, book," Benny grunted, though he looked impressed. "Riv, we have to go. If they catch us with a talking book that insults people, they'll expel us before you can say 'bibliocide.'"

I shoved Folio into my backpack. The book didn't stop complaining.

"Hey! In here it smells like dirty socks and juvenile desperation! At least put me next to something with a little literature! That squashed sandwich doesn't count as fiction!"

We ran out of the Archive, my feet pounding against the parchment floor that now seemed to pulse with terrifying urgency. Destiny wasn't a straight line. It was a blank page I'd just stained. And as we crossed Onyx Academy's courtyard under the ink moon, I could only think of one thing.

Zelara Voss. November 28.

Exactly three months remained. And I had just started the clock.