Chapter 1
kook
*They say stories are escapes—safe worlds you can fold yourself into, like a blanket against the storm. For me, they were the only place I could breathe.*
kook
I wasn’t anyone special. Not the kind of boy people wrote stories about.
kook
I worked at a bookstore by day, sorted used paperbacks by night, and filled every empty hour with stories that made my heart hurt in beautiful ways.
kook
I liked broken characters. I liked tragic endings. I liked villains who loved too much.
kook
So when I found that book—untitled, crimson-leathered, humming with something I couldn’t name—I knew I was in trouble.
kook
It came in a cardboard box full of forgotten things: old fantasy, water-damaged romances, a half-burned horror paperback.
kook
And at the bottom, this book—pristine, though it had no publisher, no author, no barcode.
kook
I took it home. I opened it.
kook
The first line was enough to steal my breath:
"In the land of Elarion, night never truly ends..."
kook
I devoured it in a single night. Then again.
kook
Then again. The world it described was cruel, and dark, and rich with sorrow.
kook
But it was alive—its pain pulsed with a strange beauty. I wanted to stay there, even if it killed me.
kook
The Moon King was the villain of the tale—but to me, he was more. A lonely god.
kook
A man forged from heartbreak and obsession.
kook
He didn’t love gently. He loved like ruin. And I pitied him, even as he cursed the world.
kook
And then there was Serenya.
kook
I admired her but never connected. Kael was a tragic hero—but he didn’t move me the way the King did.
kook
I don’t like happy ending books.
kook
Serenya became the curse.
kook
But even then, I felt like the story wasn’t finished.
kook
Like there was something missing. Or someone.
kook
It sounds insane, I know. But the more I read it, the more I felt it—like the book knew me.
kook
Like it was waiting for something.
kook
It was a casual day. I came home tired, the kind of tired that soaks into your bones, but despite the exhaustion, something itched under my skin.
kook
I needed to read it again. The weather outside only deepened the mood—the sky was grey, wind rustling like whispers through the trees, the smell of rain already hanging in the air.
kook
It was the perfect night for that book. The one that matched the ache I couldn't name.
kook
And then came the night it bled.
Rain hammered the windows.
My room was lit only by my reading lamp.
I flipped open the book for the hundredth time, and that’s when I saw it—the ink was wet.
The words shifted beneath my fingers.
Crimson seeped from the parchment, curling around my hands like smoke. I tried to drop it, but it clung to me—alive, sentient, hungry.
kook
What the hells happening
I thought I was dreaming. Or going mad.
But then the sigil on the cover began to glow.
And the wind outside howled like something ancient and wrong. And I heard it—faint, as if from another world:
That wasn’t my name. But it echoed in my bones.
kook
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I didn’t fall. I was taken.
And just before the darkness swallowed me whole, I heard a voice I had only read on paper, now warm in my ear:
？？？
“You were never just a reader.”
Comments