POV: HELENA IVYRA.
After my conversation with Renata, the following days passed in a blur. It was curious how time could mold itself to someone's presence.
I never imagined that a silent constant could be so comforting, almost therapeutic.
She came every day, one day with fresh flowers, another with slightly burnt cookies that she insisted were "intentionally overcooked."
It was her gourmet touch. I smiled. And smiling had become possible again. A simple gesture, but one that now bloomed as if something inside me was thawing.
Little by little, breathing also stopped being an effort. The air returned to my lungs without hurting.
Time seemed to dance with less haste when she was near.
Every minute ceased to be a burden, every hour a little lighter, as if the weight of existence had been diluted in her presence.
And for the first time since everything, since the library, since the pain that fractured me inside, since the chaos that stained every thought.
I allowed myself to simply… rest. Not like someone giving up, but like someone gathering strength. Like someone recognizing the need for an intermission between one battle and another.
'Wow, what's gotten into me to be so poetic lately…'
During the mornings, I'd find myself staring at the ceiling, thinking of nothing. The emptiness, once oppressive, was now almost comforting.
In the afternoons, we'd talk about everything except magic, libraries, or destruction.
We talked about food, about strange clothes we saw in magazines, about recipes neither of us would ever try, about a distant future where everything hurt a little less.
At night, sometimes, I'd find myself wondering what had happened to that strange enchantment.
Since I still wasn't feeling fully recovered, I didn't even try to use my enchantments, but as soon as possible, I intended to test them to better understand what had happened.
Moreover… I have something to investigate.
A few days later, on a Sunday with an absurdly blue sky and clouds that looked hand-drawn, I woke up feeling my muscles ache with less intensity.
My body was still a post-conflict battlefield, tired, a bit rusty, but the rigidity was yielding, and mobility was gradually returning.
As if my soul was finally negotiating the terms of its return with my flesh.
"Today's the day," Renata said as she entered the room with her usual energy, the kind that seemed to defy the weight of the world.
She carried a light backpack, but full of meaning: my favorite coat, my house keys, and one of those green juices she swore worked miracles and that I pretended to like just to see her smile.
"What day?" I asked, still half-asleep, my voice muffled by the transition between dream and reality.
"The day to go home."
I felt a wonderful sensation realizing that I could finally return to my routine.
Hospitals are incredible places when we're in trouble, but staying in one for too long is as painful as being trapped. Even with this good feeling, I decided there was one last thing to do.
"I want to go to the library first," I announced, stretching to get up.
Renata looked at me for an instant. Her gaze softened, full of understanding.
She knew. Of course she knew. She always knew how to read between the lines.
"I thought you'd say that. I brought water, and we'll go slowly. You're not ready to run a marathon yet."
I gave her a mocking smile and replied: "You think? I could run the São Silvestre tomorrow."
"Uh-huh, I know…" she replied, rolling her eyes.
I finished getting ready. At one point, my mother came to the hospital, we settled all the medical details, and I picked up prescriptions for some pain medications I'd have to take for the next few days.
After that, Renata and I parted ways with Mom, who went home. Meanwhile, we headed downtown, to the library.
The walk there was punctuated by a dense, but not heavy, silence. I
It was a silence that protected me. That respect.
That said "I'm here" without words. I needed that space. Every step pulled too many thoughts, every corner brought back dormant memories.
The city continued its course, indifferent to my memories, but every shadow, every familiar storefront, every familiar sound, occurred as it would have days before.
When we approached the Square of Lights, I felt my heart sink with a weight that pulled me inward. The library… or what was left of it.
It was strange. Just a few days ago, that place was a sleeping giant. A monster made of old concrete, creaking wood, and corridors saturated with time and history.
Now, it was just rubble. An open wound in the middle of the city, exposed, raw, without bandage or shame.
"They're saying it was a gas explosion," Renata commented, not looking directly at me, as if fearing to find the reflection of my pain on my face.
"That an old duct burst. And in the accident, the fire broke out in the library."
"A lie," I whispered, more to myself than to her.
"I know."
The city needed a simple explanation. Something that would fit in the newspapers, that would sound like a common misfortune.
A technical error that unfortunately happened. But, there was more to it.
We stood there, still. The wind stirred the dust in the air, and there was something more there than the smell of soot and earth. It was a kind of silence that screamed.
A mourning without a wake, a farewell without words.
The absence of that building weighed more than any presence. The lack of windows, the roof, the columns… it was as if everything in that landscape had turned alien at that moment.
We advanced slowly towards the rubble.
Each step sank slightly into the fine dust covering the ground. The smell of sulfur was still strong, burning my nostrils and leaving a metallic taste in my mouth.
Broken concrete parts were scattered everywhere, like bones of a giant that had fallen in silence.
'Maybe Sunny felt this way in Ariel's Tomb, a terrifying thing…'
There were remnants of charred wood, partially burned pages, crumbling letters among the dust. It was like stepping on memories, and in a way, it was exactly that.
There was something sacred about that ruined place. That wasn't just destruction; it was the physical representation of an end. An end with weight. An end with intent.
The last ruin.
Everything there had been deliberately annihilated. Every wall, every shelf, every document.
That destruction had method, objectives. H wanted something. And someone put that file there with purpose. I still didn't know who, nor exactly why, but I would. I would find out.
"Let me go alone from here on," I asked Renata, gently resting my hand on her arm.
"Are you sure?" She frowned, worried. However, she didn't insist.
"I am. I need this."
She nodded, respecting my request. I leaned against the edge of a broken wall and began to walk.
Every step was a negotiation between the body's pain and the soul's will. My feet slid among fragments, slipping slightly on the fine dust.
Even so, I continued. I saw things I recognized. A corner where there used to be a shelf with Brazilian literature, now just a pile of burnt paper and blackened pieces of wood.
A piece of beam that had once been part of the foreign fiction section.
The side railing, now twisted and charred, was never fixed because everyone already knew how to avoid its defect. Small flaws that became identity.
The library was never perfect. But it was a place I loved. It was more than a building. It was a refuge.
A place where I grew up, where I dreamed, where I hid from the real world, and, in many ways, where I discovered myself.
Every corner of that space held a piece of me. A piece of the Helena I was, the one I tried to be, and even the one I might someday be again.
And now… now all that was ash.
The last fortress of my childhood had fallen.
I kept walking, ignoring the constant twinge in my legs. My eyes scanned the rubble like someone searching for ghosts, and I found one.
A ghost? No, a book that brought a ghostly sensation. In the left corner of what was once the reading room, between burnt beams and broken stones, I saw a dull gleam.
A color that stood out from the rest.
I knelt with effort, pushing the stones away with my dust-covered hands, until I could pull it out.
It was him. The Pen and the Arch.
The cover was dirty, scorched at the edges, but intact.
My heart ached. I almost cried after seeing it. This book was the last one I was reading before the incident.
I think it's a good way to have something to remind me of this event. I held the book against my chest.
That was the last complete thing left. Of the library. And, in a way, of Rose too. I would keep it. As a memory. As a promise.
"Did you find anything?" Renata asked, approaching slowly.
"I found a book, I think it's a good keepsake."
There was more to discover. I knew it. Someone orchestrated that destruction. There was a reason.
There were answers there, buried under the rubble and the convenient lie of the authorities. Not today, though.
Today, I needed to go home.
Go back to myself. The classes would start soon, as well as my routine, the commitments, the new beginnings. It wasn't time to open wounds. It was time to heal them.
And deep down, I knew: that's what Rose would want.