Page 10 of A Dusk Of Stars

What the hell just happened to me? I push myself up, my knees shaking as I do.

The book is still lying on the pillar before me, looking innocent as hell, whileI’mhere still fighting for air, feeling raw and disoriented like I haven’t felt in ages.

I run my hands down my face, trying to force myself to calm down.

Then this creepy clock sounds from somewhere behind me, making my heart stop.

I lower my hands — slowly because I’m dreading what I’ll see, I glance at my watch and just like that, all hope deserts me.

It’s eight o’clock, the Opening Ceremony is starting and I haven’t signed my name in the Book of Librarians.

Desolate, I force my legs to obey and start leading me out of the Lexarcanum. You have until tomorrow, I remind myself.

It doesn’t make it any better. I stop by the Book of Librarians, knowing I wouldn’t be able to make it work for me even if I had a whole week.

Out of sheer desperation, I pick the pen up again and I press the tip onto the paper.

There’s no jolt of electricity this time. Just the gliding of the ink-soaked tip across the yellowed paper.

My eyebrows raised, I finish signing my first name, put the pen down and take a step back.

How did I just manage to do that?

For a second, I just keep standing there, my mind buzzing as I try to figure out what the fuck is going on with me.

Even if it weren’t for feeling raw and disoriented… There’ssomethingwrong.

I decide I shouldn’t be pushing my luck any further and I force myself to snap out of it. It’ll pass. Something weird happened here and it’ll take me a couple of minutes to go back to feeling normal.

So I take a deep breath, put the pen back and rush out of the Restricted Section, heading straight for the Opening Ceremony.

Chapter 4

It surprises me, that none of it stops even after I put some distance between myself and the Restricted Section. Still disoriented, I stop moving as soon as I enter the solitary winding staircase leading from the Library down to the Dining Hall. I’m already late for the Opening Ceremony, but the images and the feelings just won’t stop attacking me, and it’s so dark and comforting here and I can’t show my face around people while I’m still like this.

So I take a seat on the top step and cradle my face in the palms of my hands.Whydo I feel like I’m on the verge of crying? I haven’t cried since I was ten years old.

The images I saw back there and the feelings they evoke are relentless and powerful. Then there’s another one, one from my own childhood that threatens to surface.

The room, the details of it mercilessly starting to come into focus — the cold light shining from the lavish chandelier, theshadows in the corners around the carved bookshelves, the clumsy notches on the granite windowsill.

Desperate to shake the images off, I grab onto the first question that arises. Why is it resurfacingnow, when it’s been a literal decade since I’ve last thought of it?

It’s all because of the Lexarcanum book, that much is clear.

It’s so intriguing, but it’s also making me wonder… Was it some kind of magic or was it just me being messed up?

I look up and out the window, the light slanting through only somewhat breaking the darkness. Out there, I can see the shadowy castle grounds with the Dame Gothel statue rising from the overgrown garden like an apparition, but I know what I see isn’t real.

That is, I can be sure only because Iknowthe windows in the castle itself are enchanted to show the world above ground. If Ididn’tknow that, the masterfulness of the illusion would trick me into believing I was seeing the real thing.

That’s magic — real-life, actual magic.

Then there’s that thing I sometimes do. I see something interesting and my mind floods with images of ages past or places across the world, my imagination — or the desire for the thing to be something more than it is — making them so vivid and powerful, it’s almost like they’re real.

Is that what happened to me back there, I wonder as I keep staring out the window. Was it just a flight of fancy, no magic involved whatsoever?

My frown only grows deeper when another, more important question pops into my head.

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