The next two days crawled by with unbearable weight. Kaylin tried to bury herself in the routines of the city, in the noise of cars and chatter of classmates, but every sound seemed muffled, distant. The book's words echoed louder than the world outside.
By the second night, she could barely keep her eyes on her homework. Her laptop screen reflected a pale, tired girl with eyes that no longer looked her age. She closed it with a frustrated sigh, but the book—sitting at the corner of her desk—drew her gaze back again and again.
Finally, she gave in. She opened it.
This time the page was already filled before her fingers touched it.
> "Two nights remain. The veil thins. Listen to the silence, for it speaks louder than sound."
Kaylin pressed her lips together. She didn't know whether she was more terrified or fascinated. She copied the text into her notebook again, as if recording it might somehow keep her in control. But deep inside, she knew she was only documenting her own descent into something she could not escape.
On the third night, the city felt wrong.
It wasn't just her. Social media buzzed with posts, tweets, and blurry photos. "Strange glow over the skyline." "Anybody else hearing that low hum?" "Something's happening—look up."
Kaylin's phone vibrated nonstop with notifications. Her friends were excited, some were scared. But she felt no excitement—only dread. She stepped onto the balcony of her room, her silk pajamas fluttering in the warm breeze.
The sky looked ordinary at first. Then the stars shifted.
It was not movement she could explain—no comet streak, no falling satellite. Instead, the stars themselves seemed to bend, arranging into a line, a formation that pulsed with unnatural rhythm. And then came the light. A pale green shimmer rippled across the sky like water disturbed by an unseen hand.
The city below gasped as one. Car horns died down. Voices trailed off. The world held its breath.
And then, as suddenly as it appeared, the shimmer broke apart. The sky returned to black, the stars scattering back to their places.
But in Kaylin's room, the book had opened by itself. Its pages fluttered madly, the sound like wings beating against the air. Ink burst across the parchment in violent strokes, forming words both alien and chillingly familiar.
> "ᚠᛁᚱᛋᛏ ᛋᛖᚨᛚ ᛒᚱᛟᚲᚴᛖᚾ.
The First Seal Broken. The skies bear witness.
What falls next cannot be undone."
Kaylin staggered backward, nearly tripping over her chair. She clutched her chest, trying to breathe.
At that exact moment, her phone buzzed again. It was Celine.
"Kaylin! Did you see that?! The news says scientists are baffled. They don't know what it was—some say aurora, but… aurora doesn't happen here. This isn't normal."
Kaylin stared at the glowing screen, then at the book, then back at the phone. The world had seen it. It wasn't just her nightmare bleeding into reality—it was real. The book had warned her, and it had come true.
Tears welled in her eyes, unbidden. Not from sadness, not from relief, but from the terrible certainty now pounding in her heart: the book was no mere relic. It was prophecy in motion.
She didn't sleep at all that night. She sat in the corner of her room, knees pulled to her chest, staring at the book as if it were a venomous creature ready to strike.
But the book was calm again. The ink had stopped moving. The pages lay flat, still. Only the faint glow of her desk lamp illuminated the dark curves of its script.
When dawn finally broke, she rose with stiff limbs, her eyes swollen from sleeplessness. She told herself she would lock the book away, bury it under heavy boxes, perhaps even burn it. But as soon as she thought it, her chest tightened, as though the idea itself offended the book.
She reached for it with trembling fingers, and her eyes widened at the final line now inscribed across the very last page:
"This is only the beginning."
Kaylin's hand went cold.
For a long moment, she could only stand there, the words seared into her vision. Then she closed the book softly, almost reverently, and whispered into the empty room:
"…What do you want from me?"
The silence that answered was heavy, almost sentient.
And somewhere in the depths of the house, though she could not be sure if it was real, she thought she heard a faint sound—like pages turning themselves.
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End of Chapter 4
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