📖 Dark Academia Short Stories 📖

The Book of Curses

A/N: HELLO YES I'M STILL ALIVE
apologies for not posting as much, I haven't gotten that much time to write with all of my plans and schoolwork. However, I wanted to share the story I wrote for a short story contest I signed up for! Also, ya favorite ship is back.
EDWARD AND MIKAAAAA
I kinda made Edward a bit more of a flirt and Mika a bit more upbeat for the purpose of the judge not knowing my characters entirely plus I wanted to try it out lmao
I hope you enjoy!

(⚠ TW ⚠: bugs)

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          I turned the rusty doorknob on the door and opened it, laying my gaze upon the library before me. As I stepped in, I observed the tall bookshelves, the old books they held gathering dust from centuries of never being touched. Several intricate chandeliers dangled from the wooden ceiling, glimmering and spraying rays of golden light upon the long room. Desks with wrinkled papers, ink bottles, candles, and antique chairs were stranded around. 

          I caught sight of my friend, Edward, sitting in one of the chairs at the end of the room, gazing up at the bookshelf next to him. He had invited me to come here to show me something he had found. I didn’t believe him at first, but he told me he had seen something heavily rumored to be a book of magic. The Book of Curses. It allowed the user to wield powers unknown to man and caused immense damage, destruction, and chaos. For all we had known at the time, we thought was just a harmless spellbook. 

          I walked into the library and headed toward him. He looked over at me with that mischievously happy smile of his and stood up. “Hey, Edward,” I said as I stopped in front of him. “Hellooooo, Mika!” he said, grinning wider. “So where is this supposed book?” He flicked his hand towards the bookshelf he was gazing at before. “Right behind here!” I stared at the bookshelf. “Behind a bookshelf? There’s just a wall there, isn’t there?” He chuckled. “This is no ordinary wall,” he replied, resting his hand upon one of the books and pulling it outwards slightly. The book stopped and made a mechanical “clunk” sound. He gripped the book and pushed it inwards, causing the bookshelf to open like a door into a small, dim-lit room.

          He took a bow and addressed his hand towards the room. “Ladies first,” he said, looking up at me. Becoming a bit flustered, I strayed my eyes away and into the room as I walked in. The walls looked quite older than the walls of the library, with old wallpaper peeling off of the walls and dents and cracks everywhere. The old and unstable floorboards creaked as I stepped on them. A small hanging light hung from the ceiling, barely illuminating the room. Underneath the light stood an old pedestal holding a book with a black cover with strange, foreign designs and wrinkled, aged papers sticking out of it. I stared at the cover’s patterns and shapes. They were so odd…yet familiar. It felt like the book was calling out for me to open it.

          “So, this is the book?” I asked Edward who had stepped into the room and stood beside me. “Yep! I haven’t touched it, however. I’d like for you to do the honors,” he replied. I looked back at the book. Reaching out towards it, I lay my hand upon the cover for a second before opening it. I opened to a random page and saw writings about how to manifest and control magic. The handwriting was hard to make out, but I could read it if I tried. “Oh my goodness…this is the real thing! We have to try something from this!” Edward exclaimed. “Sounds like fun!” I replied happily. (A/N: oh honey no lmao)

          I snatched the book off of the pedestal, ran out of the room, and up to one of the desks. I pulled up a chair and sat down while Edward stood on the other side of the table. I placed the book on the desk and started flipping through the pages. “What are you gonna cast, Mika?” I stopped on a page that caught my eye. “‘How to make an object levitate.’ I’ll try this one!” I replied. 

          I closed the book and grabbed a nearby ink bottle with a quill sticking out of it off of the desk and placed it in front of me. I opened the book again to the page I had thought was for the levitation spell. I skipped most of the reading since it was almost indecipherable. “‘To complete the spell, you must draw out the symbol shown below, place the drawing underneath the item, and the spell shall commence,’” I read aloud. I looked at the drawing which was composed of geometric, flowing shapes. It felt so familiar but I couldn’t remember where I had seen it before. Edward handed me a blank piece of paper he had grabbed from a desk behind him and gave it to me. Taking the quill out of the ink bottle, I sketched out the drawing with as much precision as I could muster. As I finished the drawing, I returned the quill to its bottle and placed the drawing underneath.

          We both stared at the bottle for a moment in silence. “Is…it…gonna do anything?” Edward asked, breaking the silence. “I’m not sure--” I was cut off by the sound of the bottle rattling on the table. It clinked around for a few more seconds, then stopped. “What was that?” I asked aloud, “That didn’t work--” I was cut off again by the high-pitched screeches of creatures I couldn’t see. A small, winged black bug emerged from the bottle, standing on the rim of the bottle. Edward leaned in closer to see the small creature. “What is it?” He asked.  
A split second later, thousand more of the bugs spilled out of the bottle and flew up into the air in a swarm. I shrieked, shooting up out of my chair and stumbling backward. “MIKA, I THINK YOU USED THE WRONG SPELL!” I could barely hear Edward over the blaring screeches of the bugs. They started to swarm around me, enclosing me in a hurricane of bugs. “MIKA!” I heard Edward yell from outside of the swarm. I slowly sat down on the floor and hugged my knees, accepting my fate as some of the bugs started to attack me with painful bites, making me slowly lose consciousness by the second. “This is it,” I told myself in my head, “This is how I die.” I squeezed my eyes shut and let myself go.

          Suddenly, I heard the sound of rapid, pounding footsteps coming toward me. “GET! AWAY! FROM! MY! FRIEND!” (A/N: bro you lyinnn she yo gurl) I heard Edward scream. I stood up, completely startled and I regained my consciousness fully. An opening was ripped into the hurricane of bugs and I caught sight of Edward spraying the bugs with a fire extinguisher. The bugs shrieked in pain and started to disappear, flying back into the ink bottle. Once the swarm had disappeared completely and they had piled into the bottle, he grabbed the bottle, smashed it on the floor, splattering ink everwhere. He turned around and hugged me, almost knocking me off of my balance. “I’m so glad you’re safe...Let’s never use magic again,” he whispered. “Never again,” I whispered back.

A/N: I wanted to add a twinge more romance to it so I miiiiight add some ya never know