From the moment she was born, Nariman was unlike any other child. She rarely cried, and laughter came to her only reluctantly. Her face always bore a quiet, enigmatic serenity, as if she belonged to another realm. Even in her cradle, those who held her sensed a strange weight behind her eyes—an unnamable, inexplicable presence that defied childhood.
As the early years passed, that difference became ever more pronounced. When her mother tried to let her play with the neighbors' children, Nariman would stand quietly aside, observing them without joining their laughter or their chases. She would content herself with pressing her tiny fingers against her mother's dress, as if clinging to the last thread of safety. If someone called her, she would shake her head gently and take two steps back, or hide behind her younger brother without uttering a word. To the other children, she seemed peculiar, yet her parents saw only a "child who was far too quiet." They never suspected that behind that calm lay a secret that tormented her.
At first, she tried to convince herself that she was imagining things, that it was all just games conjured by her childish mind. She would squeeze her eyes shut, then open them to check—but the creatures did not disappear; they waited for her with a terrifying patience. Whenever she tried to scream, the sound got stuck in her throat, leaving only quick, ragged breaths.
She didn't tell her parents what she saw. She didn't even dare confide in her siblings. Naturally reserved, she feared they might think she was lying or letting her imagination run wild. So she carried her secret in silence, retreating further into herself. By day, she appeared to be an ordinary, quiet child, but the night robbed her of her peace.
Fear was the only thing that betrayed her. Every night, she would quietly crawl into the beds of her younger siblings, clinging to them as if they were her last fortress. Sometimes they squirmed from the cramped space or shook her hands away, yet she would clutch them again. Only in their presence could she close her eyes, even for an hour, though she knew that the snakes, shadows, and insects would not vanish. She saw them even as she nestled among her siblings, standing at the corners of the room, watching her in silence, as if waiting for the perfect moment to come closer.
Her parents noticed nothing except her exaggerated fear of sleeping alone. They thought she was merely a child attached to her siblings, perhaps needing some time to grow accustomed to independence. It never occurred to them that their little girl was not facing just "darkness," but another world that no one else could see.
And so the years of her childhood passed—silence weighing heavily on her chest, fear lurking in every corner. Nothing changed… until she turned twelve.
When Nariman turned twelve, it seemed as if years of shadows had quietly receded. The snakes no longer coiled around the edges of her bed, nor did the black insects crawl beneath the floorboards. The night had lost the weight that once pressed on her chest; she could now sleep without crawling into her siblings' beds in search of safety.
Her parents gave the matter no more than a reassuring smile; they neither grasped the details nor linked this calm to another world that had once haunted their little girl. To them, everything seemed normal: a daughter growing up, passing through a phase, learning independence. But Nariman found in this newfound space a breath she had never known before; the fear had not vanished entirely, yet it felt more like an old scar—one that did not ache all the time.
Her days began to sway between a familiar silence and a faint curiosity. She did not suddenly open up, but she felt a small relief in being alone without her mind swallowed by hallucinations. She watched people from afar, listened to their laughter, then returned to her corner—seeking neither company nor attention.
Yet with this temporary calm, a vague feeling grew within her—that what she had seen was only postponed, inevitably bound to return. She watched her inner shadows the way a patient watches a scar on the verge of awakening. And as she tried to arrange her thoughts, she did not know that today's stillness would soon give way to another voice, deeper and more profound—a voice that would awaken something that had lain dormant all these years.
Her father's library was like a map of the small world within their home: shelves crowded with worn books, dust slipping between the pages, the scent of old paper, and words that stirred an inexplicable sense of comfort in her mind. Her father was not always a devoted reader, yet he kept rare books about distant histories, maps, small volumes, and a few notebooks wrapped in layers of dust.
On a clear winter morning, her father asked for her help—not for anything important, only to dust and arrange a few shelves. It was an ordinary household chore, yet she chose to go to the library with a faint sense of eagerness: the air there was calm, and the sunlight streamed through the window, turning the dust into tiny specks fluttering like little stars. She sat on a small wooden ladder, took a dry cloth in hand, and began wiping the edges of the books, reading passing titles with a detached spirit, touching a cover here and there, returning a volume to its corner.
Between the old pages her fingers brushed, fragments of memories surfaced: a faded image of a childhood night, the laughter of a younger sister, a line her father had written in the margin of an old notebook. Everything in the library carried a reassuring silence, and her body was so at ease that, for a moment, she forgot there had ever been a shadow stalking her in the dark.
Before she could lift her head to move on to another shelf, she felt a faint breeze that hadn't come from the window. It was gentle, yet not natural—as if the air itself had inhaled and then clenched around the library's chest. She paid it little mind; the house of books had always held what no other room in the house did: lingering breezes from another time.
As Nariman was cleaning one of the higher shelves in her father's library, she paused to wipe the dust from an old book covered in a thick layer. There was nothing unusual about it—yet the moment her hand touched the cover, something in the room changed. The light streaming through the window dimmed at once, and the air grew heavier, as if pressing against her breath.
She lifted her eyes—and froze. At the edges of the library, shadows began to take shape, as though drawn out from between the shelves, stretching into elongated human forms whose limbs twisted slowly. They were no fleeting illusions, but a dense presence, drawing closer with every second, as if they had been hiding there all along, waiting for the moment to emerge.
Nariman gasped sharply, let out a piercing scream, and stumbled backward until she fell to the ground, crawling frantically toward the corner. Her gaze was locked on those entities, her eyes widened so far it seemed they might burst from terror.
Her parents rushed inside, running toward her and pulling her into their arms, calling her name with desperate concern. She saw their faces clearly, heard their voices so close, yet she could not focus on them; her eyes remained fixed on the shadows, her body trembling as though her very veins were coming apart.
To her, her parents' presence was utterly powerless against what surrounded her.
Her breaths began to come in ragged gasps, her chest heaving wildly, the air growing heavy in her lungs as if refusing to enter. She tried to scream again, but her voice broke in her throat, and tears streamed down her face unconsciously. With each passing second, the shadows drew closer, multiplying at the edges of the room until they completely engulfed her vision.
Then suddenly, everything went dark. Her head fell back, and her body went limp in her parents' arms. She closed her eyes and sank into a profound silence, leaving behind the echo of her final scream to fill the house.
When she opened her eyes after several minutes, she found herself lying in the same corner, her parents beside her, their arms trembling around her, while her siblings stood behind them, staring at her with pale faces. Their gazes were a mixture of fear and astonishment, as if seeing her for the very first time.
Her mother reached out, feeling her forehead, while her father gripped her hand tightly, as if afraid she might slip away again. Her siblings stood silently, their wide eyes shifting between her and the shadows they could not see. All they saw was their elder sister—exhausted, drowned in tears.