Ari stepped out of the house, still weighed down by the strange whisper she had heard in the "Shadow Room." Her heart pounded irregularly, and her mind spiraled with questions she couldn't answer. Was what she saw real? Was her name truly etched into a living book? Or was it all a hallucination born from dust, solitude, and childhood memories?
"But I didn't imagine the heat," she muttered to herself, walking briskly down the cobblestone path leading to the village center.
Only one person came to mind—someone who wouldn't laugh if she told him what had happened: Ethan Carter.
She entered the old library, the one her grandmother used to call "the graveyard of books." The crumbling wooden walls exhaled the scent of aged paper and forgotten rain. Sunlight filtered shyly through dusty windows, drawing pale beams of light across the cracked wooden floor.
Ethan was in his usual corner, hunched over an ancient manuscript that seemed on the brink of disintegration. His dark hair was tousled, and his glasses slid down his nose, but he made no effort to fix them. He looked like he belonged to the room—a relic among relics.
"Ethan," she said, her voice low but edged with tension.
He looked up, his mind taking a moment to register her presence.
"Ari? I didn't expect to see you today."
"Neither did I." She sat across from him, clasping her hands tightly as if something might escape her grasp.
She paused, then said the words she feared: "I found the book."
Ethan didn't need to ask, "Which book?"
His eyes darkened.
"In the Shadow Room?" he asked, his voice lower than usual.
She nodded.
He sighed and closed the manuscript in front of him. He walked toward one of the back shelves, pulled out a thick volume bound in dark green leather, and opened it to a specific page as if he'd memorized it.
"There's a passage recorded a hundred and fifty years ago about a book believed to carry energy linked to... bound entities. A rare text written in a hybrid of Latin and Aramaic. It mentions a room that binds not the body, but the soul. The book only opens when a worthy soul finds its way to it."
"And it found me."
Ethan swallowed hard.
"What did it look like?"
"Like it was breathing... pulsing. And when I touched it, I felt a strange heat seep into me. Then it opened on its own, revealing a page that read: 'Open me... and you will see the world as you've never seen it before.'"
He went silent for a moment, then said, his voice trembling:
"That's the First Summoning Text. Anyone who reads it becomes bound."
"Bound to what?"
"To something beyond this world."
Ari stared at him, seeing someone different than the friend she thought she knew.
"Ethan... how do you know all this?"
He hesitated, then spoke with quiet honesty:
"During my time studying at Northbridge, I volunteered at an abandoned monastery in northern Scotland. There, I found uncatalogued manuscripts speaking of hidden doors and books that should never be opened. I thought I was just studying strange history—until I tried to open one."
He paused, then added:
"What I saw wasn't just text. Since then, I've read these writings not as a scholar, but as someone who fears what they carry."
Ari felt a chill run through her, but she didn't back away.
"Now I understand why you didn't laugh when I told you."
"Because I know this isn't fiction. And because I know the book... chose you."