That night, sleep became a stranger.
Elira sat cross-legged on the creaky wooden floor of her apartment, the journal glowing faintly in her lap. Around her, candles flickered like watchful eyes. Rain tapped the windows, steady and constant, as if the world outside was trying to lull her into forgetting what she now knew.
But she couldn't forget.
Not anymore.
The journal no longer felt like an object. It pulsed softly, like a second heartbeat, and its pages seemed to breathe beneath her fingers. Words waited in the margins — some she recognized from earlier pages, others that hadn't been there before.
She traced one with her fingertip.
> He remembers the pain. But you remember the light.
She exhaled slowly. The ache behind her eyes had settled into something sharper: recognition.
A memory surfaced — uninvited, unwelcome, but real. A little girl in a vast old library. Shadows between shelves. A boy with ash-smudged cheeks handing her a paper flower folded from an old page of poetry. They'd hidden together beneath a table as the fire crept closer.
She touched the journal. "That was you, wasn't it?"
The journal glowed warmer, almost in reply.
Elira stood slowly and crossed the room. On a whim, she lit a second candle. Its flame flickered in the glass pane of the window, and for a moment, she saw two reflections: her own... and another behind her.
She spun.
No one was there.
The air held the faintest scent of burnt paper.
She returned to the journal. Its pages had turned themselves again, revealing a passage she hadn't read.
> You left, but not willingly. You forgot, but not by choice. Someone took the light from both of you, fearing what you would become if you remembered.
Elira's throat went dry. "Who?"
But no answer came.
She sank back to the floor. The memory played again, clearer this time: A hand reaching for hers. Smoke blinding her eyes. A voice shouting her name. And then... silence. A silence that had lasted for years.
Until now.
The journal's ink stirred again.
> They will come for him first. They always come for the one with fire in his blood.
A knock at her door made her jump.
She moved cautiously to answer it, her fingers hovering over the doorknob. When she opened it, no one stood there — just a package on the ground, wrapped in dark cloth and tied with twine.
No return address.
Inside: another journal. Older. Burnt around the edges. A different hand had written this one, sharper, rushed — as if penned in desperation.
She opened it.
> If you're reading this, it means he found you. Good. But you must understand — the fire that binds you both is older than your memories. It is not love. It is fate.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Ash.
He had secrets he hadn't told her yet. She knew it now. And worse — someone else knew she had remembered.
The room dimmed as a cloud passed over the moon.
Elira's breath came shallow. The world she thought she knew had been cracked open. She wasn't just a bookseller anymore. She was part of a story written long ago — a story someone had tried to burn out of existence.
But stories have a way of surviving the fire.
And now, hers was just beginning again.