October 9th, 2025.
If someone had told me that this date would change my life forever, I would have laughed. For me, October was nothing more than the start of autumn, the season of golden leaves, pumpkin drinks, and the promise of the upcoming holidays. I was seventeen, a girl born into comfort, raised in glass towers and shining avenues where wealth insulated me from everything unpleasant. My life was predictable, wrapped in luxuries most people only dream of: chauffeurs, private tutors, a schedule that was planned down to the minute.
And yet, here I was, spending my school break far away from the glittering city, in my family's ancestral villa on the outskirts of a quiet town. My parents called it "keeping tradition alive." To me, it was little more than boredom wrapped in old wood and stone.
The house itself was enormous, a sprawling European-style mansion built more than a century ago when my great-grandfather had first settled in this region. From the outside, it looked almost romantic—ivy crawling along stone walls, tall windows framed by heavy curtains, and a balcony that overlooked the river. But inside, it was a different story. The corridors were long and echoing, the rooms stuffed with antiques no one remembered how to use, and the cellar… the cellar always made me uneasy.
That night, the storm came.
I had been scrolling through my phone, half-bored, watching reels and texting friends back in the city. Outside, the rain battered the tall windows, drowning out the sound of traffic from the nearby highway. The lights flickered once, twice, and then went out entirely.
"Seriously?" I muttered, shaking my phone to make sure it still had battery. It did, but no signal. Great.
I sighed, grabbed the small flashlight from my desk drawer, and decided to look for candles. The power outages here weren't new—this town's infrastructure lagged decades behind the city—but they always made the villa feel… haunted.
I padded down the creaking stairs, the beam of my flashlight cutting through the shadows. The storm outside rumbled, and in the silence between thunderclaps, I could hear the rain trickling into the gutters, the old pipes groaning in protest.
The cellar door loomed at the end of the hall. I hesitated for a moment—partly because I hated the cellar, partly because I couldn't believe I was doing this instead of sitting comfortably in my high-rise penthouse. But I turned the handle and went down anyway.
The cellar smelled of dust and mildew. My flashlight swept over shelves of wine bottles, crates stacked on crates, and furniture covered with white sheets like forgotten ghosts. The air was damp, heavy, and cold against my skin.
That was when I saw it.
In the farthest corner, behind a stack of broken chairs, was a chest. It didn't belong with the rest of the clutter. Unlike the polished antiques upstairs, this was rough and strange—dark wood bound by iron clasps, its surface carved with unfamiliar symbols. My pulse quickened. It looked ancient, older than anything else in this house.
I pulled it out, coughing as a wave of dust swirled into the air. The clasps were rusted, but they yielded easily under my hands. Inside was nothing except a single book.
It was thick, bound in worn black leather, the edges frayed as if it had survived centuries of use. Symbols were pressed into the cover, spirals and lines that seemed to shift when I looked too closely. My flashlight flickered at the same moment, making me flinch.
I don't know why, but I took it. I carried it upstairs, back to my room, and placed it on the desk where my phone and laptop still sat dark and powerless.
For a long moment, I just stared at it. Everything about the book felt wrong. My world had always been digital, filled with notifications and screens. This—this relic—felt like it belonged to another time, another universe entirely.
Finally, I opened it.
The first page was yellowed, fragile. The words written upon it weren't in English, or any language I knew. And yet, as my eyes scanned the page, I understood them perfectly.
"This is the record of the end. Each page a prophecy, each line a mark upon the countdown of the world. She who holds this book shall bear witness, for the end is not a question of if, but when."
I froze. My skin prickled, my breath caught in my throat.
I flipped to the next page, my hands trembling. The writing grew darker, sharper. Symbols twisted around the text like vines. One passage stood out, its ink fresher than the rest:
"On the ninth day of October, in the year twenty twenty-five, when storm and silence bind together, the heir of the bloodline shall uncover this book. And with that moment, the countdown begins."
My flashlight dimmed, then steadied.
The storm outside howled. Lightning split the sky.
October 9th, 2025. Today. Right now.
I slammed the book shut, my pulse racing. It couldn't be real. There had to be some explanation. A prank, maybe? Some eccentric ancestor who thought it would be funny to write fake prophecies? But the words echoed in my head, alive, undeniable.
"The countdown begins."
I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the storm, saw the words on the page, felt the weight of something vast and terrible pressing down on me. My phone remained useless, as if even the outside world had gone silent.
Somewhere in the darkness beyond the storm, I swore I could hear it—the ticking of a clock I could not see.
And deep down, I knew: the moment I opened that book, the world had begun to change.
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