The sun had already set and the moon was up. Almost all of the students were in their dormitories, and half of them were already asleep. It was almost midnight, but the lights of the library were still on. The bright moonlight's shine entered through the window, which was the only one that didn't have curtains drawn over it. It was almost all dark, but for the golden glow of a few of the lamps emitting the light, that made the library look the cosiest it had ever been—quite the perfect time to study with your friends. But that wasn't the intention Candace was in the library with at that time.
She walked from island to island, observing every book she came across that she could have found helpful, but none of the fit the need that she had. The type of book she was in search of wasn't quite the type the library had many of, given how much she was struggling to get a look at it.
A disappointed noise left her mouth as she turned to the isle right behind her, searching every corner of the shelf to find the book she was looking for. At last, when she was about to give up and leave, her eyes fell on something at the corner of the shelf, as if it was meant to be hidden from the people coming to that corner of the library. The shelf she was looking at was already at the corner of the room, on the isle that came at the last of all the other isles, the book present at the most bottom-left side of the shelf. Whoever had been the one to try and hide it most likely did an almost perfect job at hiding it, as Candace almost didn't see the book. Perhaps it was in her fate to come across that book.
As she held it, she felt dust particles against the skin of her finger, and then as she took it out, she saw the dust particles that had been sitting on the book for god-knew-how-long and had finally gotten a chance to leave the surface. Candace coughed and waved the dust away from her face with her hand. Then, once she stopped coughing, she looked at the cover of the book. A frown knitted into her eyebrows as she made an attempt to read out the words that were etched into the cover of the book, which were almost unreadable, leaving only a few faint letters. But the letters weren't enough to make out a title. Who knew how old the book was, when it was written, or how long it had been sitting at that corner of the library for? Perhaps it had never been touched by someone other than Candace for centuries. There was a possibility of that being true; the Mirae University was one of the oldest universities in the world, having been there since ancient times, and the Mirae Town was even older than that, thousands of years old.
In a second attempt to know about the title of the book and what it was about, Candace flipped the cover of the book, coming onto its first page, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Starlit Legacies: The Evolution of Astronomical Thought
It was just the kind of book she was looking for. A sense of satisfaction filled her heart, some even showing up on her face in the form of a small smile. Getting up from her crouch-down position, she was about to leave but stopped in her steps when she realised that some pages had fallen from the book. In haste to pick them up, she bent down, reaching for the paper that was lying on the ground after falling out of the book.
As she picked it up, she saw some type of foreign language written over it, forming what looked like a sentence. It was a language she didn't speak, a script she didn't recognise. Candace was somewhat surprised that she wasn't able to even recognise the script it was written in, even after her father made her memorise so many languages and trained her well enough to at least recognise every script there was if she couldn't learn the language.
[INSERT PAPER]
Even though she didn't speak the language, the words—that felt familiar—painted a meaning in her head.
When the death of magic is in its last stage, the fallen heroes will rise and save the world from doomsday.
The space between Candace's brows knitted together to form a frown as she stared at the piece of paper she held in her hands; those were now starting to shake. She was sure that she had never seen the script anywhere else before and even more shocked that even after she didn't recognise the script, she understood the meaning. There were several questions running through her head:
What is this language, and what script is it written in?
Have I seen this language somewhere before?
Did I learn it as a kid and forget it up until now?
Could it be that the letters are shaped similarly to the letters of a language I know?
Why is this strange piece of paper inside this book?
What even is this book?
But the most prominent one of those questions was:
How do I know what these words mean?
She flipped the page but saw nothing written on its backside. The page was old with a yellow tint on it and the borders rotting away from time. If not much, it had to be at least a century old. In most places, finding a century-old paper was not a small deal, but the town that she lived in was Mirae Town. The town that gave the world so many great scholars, philosophers, mathematicians, writers, and astronomers. Finding such a thing in Mirae Town was such a small thing as having people there; it was known for its historical importance.
Candace sighed; there was nothing that she could do to find out about the script except for looking it up in books concerned with languages and the scripts they were written in. Out of the corner of her eye, Candace saw a strange figure brush past the window of the library. In a henzy, she put the piece of paper in her bag, took the book, and left for her dormitory.
YOU ARE READING
Starlight Souls ✦
Fantasy❝𝑴𝒂𝒈𝒊𝒄 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒆𝒙𝒊𝒔𝒕❞ (✦): When growing up also means growing out of your comfort zone and step inside the real world, it also means to deal with your worst fears. Five astronomy students, a mysterious book, and a town full of...
