The city smelled of old rain and burnt bread. At that hour, before the sun had any strength, the streets were a parade of shadows, silent cars, and flickering lampposts. Elías walked with wet shoes, loose laces, and hope wrapped in ink.
"Extra! Last night's storm!" he shouted, though hardly anyone stopped to buy anymore.
His voice bounced off gray buildings and nameless lampposts. No one answered. Only the sound of his footsteps, the patter of drizzle, and the crackle of damp newspapers under his arm. He sold little, but every coin mattered. His grandmother needed medicine. And gas. And bread. And the heater that no longer worked.
They lived in a narrow apartment, at the top of a stairway with no railing. Mrs. Amelia was all he had left. She could barely walk anymore, yet she still wove stories for him, tales of talking forests and crystal skies. Her body was tired, but her heart remained full of light.
That morning, on his way home with more leftover papers than coins, a sudden rain forced him to seek shelter. He ran through an unfamiliar alley, narrow and crooked, and then he saw it: an old shop, sunken between two buildings as if time had forgotten it.
A sign hung there, barely visible beneath the curtain of rain:
The Echo of Days
"When one door closes, another opens. Enter at your own risk."
Elías frowned. He had never seen that bookstore before, and he knew the area well.
He pushed the door open, no bell, no lights, no welcoming voice, just dust, tilted shelves, and books piled as if hurled by a storm. Yet the air didn't smell old, it smelled like a wet forest and freshly baked bread.
Something in that place… breathed.
The shelves curved in impossible ways shadows shifted when he wasn't looking, for a moment, Elías felt as if the entire bookstore was watching him.
At the back, on a worn table, lay a single object: a newspaper.
Unlike any he'd ever seen, the paper was thick like parchment, and the letters looked handwritten, no date, no title no price.
The words floated slowly, as if suspended in the air, and when he blinked… the text changed.
Elías reached out the moment his fingers touched it, a breeze swept through the room. A whisper escaped the pages:
"East wind… or from the Heart?"
There was no one else it had been the newspaper.
Trembling, he folded it carefully and took it with him, back home, back to his grandmother.
Mrs. Amelia was asleep, as always, sitting up with a blanket over her legs. Her breathing was soft, almost invisible. Elías sat beside her and opened the newspaper, letting his fingers brush the words that called to him.
"Morning broke over Lunareth with a sky of fire and golden clouds.
The Herald has not yet arrived. The balance is at risk."
The text shimmered the air shifted a sound,like the tearing of a giant page, ripped through the silence. The floor trembled gently the walls… blinked.
Elías tried to close the newspaper, but it was too late. The entire room dissolved into light. And then, as if torn from one story and flung into another, they were no longer at home.
They were standing, or rather, gently falling, onto a field of white flowers blooming in the wind's wake. A golden sky stretched above them. In the distance, a radiant forest whispered in a language Elías didn't yet understand.
Grandma Amelia opened her eyes, then… stood up. Without a cane. Without help. Without pain.
"My boy…" she whispered, tears in her eyes. "I can walk… I can breathe."
Elías stared, speechless. The newspaper in his hands crumbled into glowing ashes. A bird made of ink soared across the sky and far off, suspended among the clouds like an open promise… the entrance to the bookstore was still visible.
A door waiting to be opened once again.