The room had quieted, the air still and heavy as midnight sank deeper into the woodwork. The Silent One had eventually drifted off to sleep, curled under his blanket with one arm over his eyes, breathing slow and even.
Our protagonist remained sitting on the edge of the bed, heart still unsettled. He couldn't sleep. Not after everything he had remembered. Not with that flood of emotion still dampening the edges of his thoughts.
They had spoken briefly—just a small exchange.
The Silent One had looked up at the ceiling and whispered,
"Did you know this place is older than three centuries? The academy building, I mean. Used to be a manor, then a military dorm, and then… well, now this."
He'd laughed softly. "Feels like it remembers more than we do."
The boy had nodded, but his mind was already drifting, pulled toward the unknown. Something about the academy didn't feel quite right anymore. Not just old—but watchful. Every hallway, every door seemed to hold its breath.
So when the Silent One turned away and went still beneath the sheets, our boy rose.
The corridor outside creaked beneath his steps, the floorboards shifting with that familiar uneven rhythm only century-old buildings had. The light bulbs overhead were dull and yellowed, buzzing softly. A forgotten elegance clung to the place—faded carpets, wood-paneled walls, curved banisters—all whispering stories no one remembered.
He wandered.
He was searching—not just for more of those strange cracks—but for answers. Anything.
Eventually, his feet led him somewhere familiar. A place he hadn't yet visited in this memory-world but which tugged at him with forgotten gravity.
The library.
It stood quietly at the far edge of the east wing, its doors tall and arched, carved with intricate wooden patterns. Inside, the shelves reached high, the books old, many with spines that had peeled or faded to bare leather. There was a certain majesty to it—like a relic trying to stay alive.
Dust hung like fog in the still air.
And then he remembered.
The diary. Hidden. Belonging to a senior who had died under mysterious circumstances a few years back.
He didn't know the boy's name—not yet—but he remembered the nickname people whispered: The Cartographer. A boy obsessed with secrets and tunnels, who once said he knew more about the academy than the headmaster himself.
Our protagonist moved through the rows, guided more by instinct than memory, until his fingers brushed against the edge of a loose panel behind the philosophy section.
There it was. A leather-bound notebook with frayed edges and the initials carved in small, neat print.
He opened it.
Pages of ink. Diagrams. Entire floor plans, secret staircases, false doors, unused tunnels, and strange rooms that weren't supposed to exist.
Even the attic paths and towers.
There were notes scribbled hastily in the margins.
> "They say the faculty don't know what's above the west wing. I think it's deliberate."
"There are some doors that only appear at night."
"Top tower isn't real anymore. They sealed it. I think it saw something."
Our boy's eyes widened. He knew what he had to do.
He pulled out a blank notebook from the librarian's desk drawer and began copying. Page by page. Line by line. A full replica. He worked quickly, hands aching by the time he finished. When he looked at the clock on the library wall, it was nearly dawn.
Thirty minutes until sunrise.
He stood. This might be his only chance.
Clutching the replica, he followed the diary's guidance through hidden side stairs, ducked under roped-off hallways, climbed narrow wooden ladders. The building creaked and groaned as if protesting his trespass. But finally, he emerged onto the uppermost floor and pushed open a rusted hatch-door.
Wind greeted him. Cold. Sharp.
He stepped onto the roof.
It was quiet up here. The early morning mist swirled around the spires and the sharp gables of the academy. The whole building looked different from above—less safe, more skeletal, as if the bones of it were showing.
He followed the pathway to one of the small, narrow towers.
Technically off-limits. Reserved only for staff and senior prefects. But now he had a map. He knew where the rusted latch was, how to climb without being heard.
He entered the tower and looked around.
Stone walls. Dust. No windows. Just a narrow corridor leading deeper.
But only for a few steps.
Bricks.
An entire wall of them, hastily laid. Sloppy. Uneven. As though someone had blocked the interior off in a hurry. Bits of old scaffolding and stone crumbled near the corners, and vines had started growing down from cracks in the ceiling.
There was no way further.
Just a dead end.
He placed his hand against the brick wall. Cold. Rough.
Someone had sealed this tower intentionally.
Not with warnings or locks.
But with silence.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the piece of bread—the one the Silent One had quietly handed him earlier. He hadn't eaten it. Maybe out of guilt. Maybe out of instinct.
He stared at it for a moment.
Then, with no real reason, he placed it gently on the dusty ledge beside the blocked passage.
Maybe as a kind of offering. Or maybe just as a reminder that someone had been here. That he had been here.
As the first sliver of sunlight broke over the horizon behind the academy, he turned and walked back down the stairs, the replica diary tucked beneath his arm, the silence behind him somehow heavier than before.