(Celestra's POV)
The rain hadn't stopped for three days. It felt like the world was drowning itself slowly, and I was the only one foolish enough to walk straight into its lungs. My umbrella shook like it wanted to escape me, like even it knew better than to follow me here.
Marrowfield's gates closed behind me with a groan. Iron teeth. Hungry. I swear I felt the ground breathe as I stepped past them, like the university itself was waiting for me. People say places can't be alive, but I think that's just what they tell themselves to sleep at night. Some walls listen. Some doors swallow. Some stones remember.
And I—I had chosen to walk inside their memory.
The clocktower loomed over me, dragging its hands across the sky like it could peel time open. The bell rang, heavy and deliberate, and the sound stayed too long in my chest. Like it wasn't just ringing—it was speaking.
I kept walking because if I stopped, I might start answering it.
The library was my destination. The Atrium of Scholars. They carved the name into stone like a prayer, but when I pushed the door open and stepped in, it felt less like a prayer and more like a warning.
It smelled of dust, parchment, and something sharper. Metallic. Rust, maybe. Blood, maybe. Something that stains.
I told myself stories don't scare me, not really. The library that eats people alive. The shelves that move when no one is watching. The corridors that fold in on themselves like the spine of a creature. They say it's nonsense, but nonsense has teeth if you let it get close enough.
And then—him.
Across the room, near a pillar cracked with carvings I couldn't read, someone stood. A man. Tall, still, wrapped in shadows that didn't seem eager to let him go. He wasn't looking at a book. He wasn't writing. He wasn't moving at all.
I froze, because he wasn't supposed to be here. Or maybe I wasn't. My chest tightened. Something fluttered inside me, sharp and unwanted, like a moth beating itself against glass.
I looked away. Quickly. Pretended to be interested in the book I hadn't opened yet, the desk that wasn't really dry, the storm that wouldn't quit.
But I felt him anyway. His stillness. His presence.
My first night at Marrowfield, and already—already, the walls were listening. Already, I wasn't alone.
........
(Celestra's POV)
I told myself I wouldn't look back.
But lies don't taste good on the tongue.
My eyes betrayed me, flicking up like they had their own secret hunger. And he was still there. The stranger. Standing with his head tilted slightly, as if listening to something only he could hear. Or maybe listening to me.
The air between us stretched thin. The storm rattled the high glass windows, but in here it was so quiet I could hear my own pulse. I thought for a moment that I could even hear his, steady and deep, like it was meant to anchor mine.
And that frightened me. Because why would a stranger's heartbeat feel like something I needed?
I gripped the book in my hands harder than necessary. My knuckles whitened. Its leather cover was cracked, flaking at the edges, but warm—strangely warm, as if it had been waiting. I hadn't opened it yet. I didn't dare.
Instead, I whispered, barely moving my lips:
"Stop looking at me."
But the thing was… he wasn't. His eyes weren't on me. They weren't on anything I could see. His gaze was elsewhere, suspended in some invisible current. Yet I could feel him, the way you feel lightning before it strikes, the way you sense a hand hovering inches above your skin.
And still, I couldn't move.
I wondered if anyone else saw him. The handful of students scattered in the reading room were too far, too absorbed in their notes and papers. No one lifted their head. No one noticed the figure dressed in shadows that swallowed the light.
What if they couldn't see him?
The thought slithered down my spine.
No, no. Don't think like that, Celestra. You've done this before. Imagined things too hard, too vividly, until they start to blur into flesh and breath. That's what the doctors had said. That's what my father had said. That's what they all had said.
But he wasn't imagined. I knew he wasn't. The storm itself seemed to bend toward him, funneling its whispers into the atrium walls.
And then—then—he moved.
Just a step. Just a fraction. But the shadows peeled reluctantly from him as he shifted, and I saw the faint glint of his eyes. Not brown. Not black. Not blue. Something else. Something I didn't have a word for.
I forgot to breathe.
And in that silence, in the space between his step and my startled heartbeat, I felt it—the first thread of something dangerous and sweet and impossible. The kind of thread you don't cut. The kind that binds.
Love story. No.
Madness story. No.
Something in between.
I wanted to run.
But instead, I whispered again, louder this time:
"Who are you?"
And though he didn't move, didn't answer, didn't even blink, the sound of my own voice came back to me in a hundred broken echoes from the shelves, the pillars, the glass.
Who are you—who are you—who are you—
I thought I was asking him.
But maybe I wasn't.