MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

That night, Vesper fell asleep with her hand pressed against the frost mark, feeling the phantom pulse beneath her fingers like a lifeline tethering her to something beyond the gray emptiness of her waking life.

The library appeared around her with its usual warmth, golden light pouring through stained glass windows. But something felt different tonight. The light seemed dimmer somehow, the shadows in the corners deeper and more pronounced. The air held a faint chill that had never been there before, as if winter were creeping in at the edges.

Eryx was not waiting by the reading table.

"Eryx?" Her voice echoed strangely in the vast space, bouncing off distant shelves.

"Here." He emerged from between the stacks, moving quickly, almost urgently. There was tension in his shoulders that she had never seen before, a tightness around his mouth that made him look older, more tired. "You should not have come tonight."

"What do you mean?" Confusion twisted in her chest. "You said you would be here. You promised."

"I am here." He stopped a few feet away, maintaining distance as if afraid to get closer. "But it is not safe, Vesper. Not anymore."

She looked around the library with new eyes, searching for whatever danger had him so on edge. Everything appeared normal at first glance. The beautiful stained glass windows glowed softly, the books stood in neat rows with their spines gilt and gleaming. But now that she was truly looking, she noticed small things wrong. A window frame that was slightly cracked, thin lines spider-webbing through the glass. Frost creeping along the edge of a bookshelf like crystalline fingers. A draft that definitely had not existed before, cold enough to raise goosebumps on her arms.

"What happened?" she asked, fear making her voice thin.

"You happened." His voice was not angry, just exhausted. So profoundly tired that it hurt to hear. "You took something with you when you woke up this morning. Not just a feeling or a memory. Something real and physical. And it opened a door that should have stayed closed."

"The warmth," Vesper said slowly, pieces clicking together with terrible clarity. "On my cheek. And the mark on my arm."

"You were not supposed to be able to carry anything back." He ran a hand through his dark hair, a gesture of pure frustration that made him seem suddenly, startlingly human. "The boundaries between our worlds are weakening, Vesper. Every time you take something from here into waking, it costs. The barrier grows thinner."

"I do not understand."

"You are not just visiting this place." He moved closer now, urgency overriding his earlier caution. "You are sustaining it. You created it, or called it into being, or something in between. And every time you take something back with you, every time you blur the line between dreaming and waking, the cost compounds. The barrier between your world and mine is wearing dangerously thin."

Vesper processed this, her mind racing through implications. The library, Eryx, all of it was real. But real in a way that was never supposed to touch her waking life, never supposed to leave marks on her skin or warmth on her face. Except now it was. The mark on her arm was undeniable proof.

"Show me," she said, making a decision.

"Show you what?"

"Proof. Something I can take back with me. Something that will prove beyond any doubt that this is not just elaborate delusion or stress-induced hallucination."

"Vesper, no." Eryx moved toward her now with purpose, hands raised in supplication. "That is exactly what you cannot do. If you take something else, if you weaken the barrier any further, there will be consequences neither of us can control."

"I need to know this is real." Her voice cracked on the last word, desperation bleeding through despite her best efforts to sound calm. "Please, Eryx. I need to know I am not losing my mind to loneliness and burnout. I need proof."

He looked at her for a long moment, something complicated and painful crossing his beautiful face. Conflict warred in those dark eyes—the desire to give her what she needed fighting against the knowledge of what it would cost. Then he turned and walked to a shelf with heavy steps, running his fingers along the spines until he found what he was looking for. A thin volume bound in midnight blue leather, silver text embossed on the cover that read: Restoration Magic: A Practical Guide.

"One page," he said, pulling the book down with reverent care. "That is all you can take. Even that might be too much, might tip us past the point of no return."

He opened the book carefully, found a page near the middle, and tore it free with a sound like tearing silk. The violence of it made her flinch. He held the page out to her, but when she reached for it, he pulled back.

"Promise me something first."

"What?"

"If this proves dangerous, if it hurts you or makes things worse instead of better, you will stop. You will let this place go, let me go, and find safety in your waking world." His voice was raw with emotion. "Promise me, Vesper."

She looked into his endless dark eyes and saw genuine fear there. Not for himself, but for her. For what this might cost her.

"I promise I will try," she said honestly, unable to give him more than that.

It was enough. He gave her the page with a hand that trembled slightly. The moment her fingers made contact with the paper, warmth traveled up her arm like lightning, a cord of light that tied her heart to his with devastating intimacy. The connection between them blazed bright and real and absolutely terrifying in its intensity.

Then the library began to dissolve, faster than usual, urgent and insistent.

Vesper woke with the page clutched in her fist, her heart racing.

For three perfect seconds, it was there. Real and solid and undeniable. The paper was thick and cream-colored, the text written in elegant script that seemed to shimmer in the dim light of her bedroom. She read the first line with desperate attention: To restore what has been broken, one must first understand the nature of the break.

Then the page began to dissolve.

Not crumbling to ash like burned paper, but melting like snow exposed to sudden heat. It turned to water in her hand, cold and impossible, dripping through her fingers and soaking into her sheets. The text remained visible for a moment longer, silver words floating in the water like some kind of magic, before they too faded into nothing.

The water pooled in her palm briefly before evaporating with unnatural speed, leaving her hand wet and freezing cold.

But the scent remained. Ozone and ancient ink, old paper and something indefinable that could only be called magic. It soaked into her pillowcase, into her skin, into the very air of her bedroom. Undeniable proof that what she had held was real, that the impossible was bleeding into her ordinary life with increasing frequency.

Vesper brought her wet hand to her face and breathed in the scent of impossible things, of dreams made solid, of barriers breaking down between worlds that were never meant to touch.

Outside her window, defying every law of physics and December weather, a book lay open on the fire escape. Its pages turned in windless air, the words on them glowing faintly silver in the darkness, an invitation or a warning or both.