The river had always been part of Kael's childhood, a lazy, muddy stretch of water that wound through Oakhaven like an afterthought. He had waded in its shallows during summers, skipped stones across its calm surface, and once even fished out a rusted bicycle with his best friend. It was a familiar place—ordinary, unthreatening. Which made it all the more surreal when it turned predator.
The current clutched at his ankles like a living hand, cold and insistent. One misstep on the slick stones, and suddenly he was no longer standing but tumbling, dragged under by a force that had no right to be so strong. Water closed over his head, cutting him off from the world above.
Panic arrived immediately, sharp and merciless. He clawed at the liquid darkness, but the current spun him in dizzying spirals. His lungs screamed, a raw, burning ache that consumed thought. His arms flailed, useless against the pull. Sunlight fractured high above him—beautiful, distant, utterly indifferent. He tasted mud, grit, something metallic that clung to his tongue like rust.
I'm going to die here, his mind whispered, as if narrating his own obituary. Not in a heroic blaze, not in some dramatic accident—just another drowned boy in a forgotten river. He wondered how long it would take for anyone to find him.
Then came the flicker.
Not light, not sound—something older, deeper. A presence.
It pressed against his chest, solid and unyielding. His numb fingers, half-mad with desperation, closed around it. A book. Impossible, absurd—but there it was. No sodden pages, no swollen leather. Perfectly dry, perfectly whole. The cover swirled in shades of indigo so dark they seemed to absorb the surrounding water, like staring into a night sky with no stars. It radiated warmth, faint but undeniable, pulsing against his skin like a second heartbeat.
The current, moments ago a merciless executioner, shifted. No longer dragging him under, it guided him, almost tenderly, toward the fractured light above. He broke the surface with a violent gasp, air searing into his lungs. Coughing, choking, spitting up water, he clutched the book as though it were the only solid thing in the world.
Somehow, he dragged himself onto the muddy bank. He collapsed, trembling, his body convulsing with shivers. The book thudded against his ribs, humming faintly, the sound more felt than heard.
When his mother found him dripping on the porch minutes later, babbling about the thing he had pulled from the river, she saw nothing. His hands, to her eyes, were empty. He begged her to touch it, to take it, to just acknowledge it—but she only pressed blankets against his shivering body and whispered how lucky he was to be alive.
Lucky. That was not how it felt.
The hum never left him.
At first it was faint, a whisper at the edges of his hearing. Then it grew, steady as a pulse, constant as breath. He carried the book everywhere, tucked under his arm at school, hidden beneath his pillow at night. To everyone else, his arms held only air. His friends joked about his distracted eyes, his muttered conversations with no one. His teachers called his mother, worried about stress or illness.
But Kael knew what he held was real. He could feel the thrum of it against his bones, as if the book had sunk roots into his very marrow. Sometimes, when he let his mind drift, he thought he heard voices in the hum—fragments of words, syllables that dissolved before he could catch them.
One night, unable to sleep, he followed the pull.
The old attic had been abandoned for years, stuffed with relics no one bothered to touch. Dust lay thick on the boxes, motes dancing in the pale shaft of moonlight filtering through the grimy window. The air smelled of mothballs and mildew. Yet the hum grew louder here, urgent, magnetic.
It led him to a stack of moth-eaten blankets in the corner. Beneath them, a floorboard that didn't sit quite flush. His fingers trembled as he pried it loose.
Not darkness beneath. Not even emptiness. Something else.
A void. A shimmering absence, a place where space itself seemed to unravel.
His heart pounded. The book pulsed against his chest, urging him forward. He hesitated only a moment before sliding his fingers into the impossible gap. His hand tingled, numbness crawling up his wrist. Then the floor gave way.
He didn't fall down. He fell inward.
The air rushed from his lungs—not water this time, but something stranger. The scent of old paper and starlight filled his nose. Then he landed, softly, on a floor of black obsidian polished to a mirror sheen.
He lifted his head.
And saw infinity.
Shelves towered above him, vanishing into endless heights, into directions his mind couldn't name. Books lined every surface—millions, billions, perhaps more—each spine glowing faintly as though lit from within. Some were pristine, their titles gleaming. Others sagged, their pages crumbling into dust, their words leaking into the air like smoke.
It was beautiful. It was terrifying.
The hum within his chest harmonized with the vast silence, as if the place itself were welcoming him.
Kael had the sense that he was no longer in Oakhaven, nor anywhere the world would recognize.
This was somewhere else.
Somewhere stories came to die.