Starlight Souls ✦

00:12

A bright fire was lit up in front, in the middle of what looked like a forest at night. Inside the fire, some people dressed up in armour clothes were constantly throwing something. It took quite long for her to realise what it was that was being thrown into the fire—books. By now, hundreds of thousands of books had already been thrown into the fire. The fire was so massive, it could be seen from miles away. So many books had been thrown into the mouth of the fire, but the people in armour were constantly bringing even more books to throw. Almost as if the books contained something that was so valuable, the enemy of the person owning them could not leave behind any trace of what was written inside the books.

She saw five people being tied up together with the help of ropes, the same people who were yelling at the people in armour to stop burning those books. Their words, which were not clearly audible during the chaos of the events, made out a meaning that a person would only get after listening in closely:

Kill us if you have to, but the books shouldn't be burnt.

Take our lives, but spare those books.

Just kill us, but don't harm those books.

Their words made out the meaning that whatever was written inside those books was so important, that the information inside them was worth more than a person's life, and that they were ready to sacrifice their own lives in order to save those books.

But all of their efforts to save the books were met with ultimate failure. No matter how much they screamed and begged for the people in armour to leave the books away from the fire, their screams were met with the outcome of the people in armour not even bate an eye to them. At that point, the five people were almost maddened with crying, not for themselves but for the sake of those books that were being set on fire. They were thinking of a way to stop the people in armour from burning those books—a solution to save those books. But their hands were tied up, and when the hands were tied up, the brain also stopped working. The reason being that that is the time when we realise how useless our brains are without any actual physical potential. Even if they thought about some way to save those books, a solution to their biggest problem, there was only so much they could do with their hands that were tied together behind them and their feet tied together that no one person could move without the rest four people moving with him or her. They realised how helpless they were, that no matter what they did, their efforts would only result in failure, that they had no option but to suffer in silence, to watch all those books go up in flames, knowing that all that had been written inside them would never be revived again.

Sirelle woke up in the middle of the night with cold sweat all over her forehead and neck. When she wiped her cheek with her hand, she saw how she had been crying so hard. She looked at her pillow to see it being wet with both sweat and tears. She looked around herself and realised she was in her bedroom, at her parents's house, in Adorar. It was just a nightmare, but it didn't feel like one. Those voices, those images, everything just felt so real, Sirelle doubted it was a nightmare at all.

But there was no other explanation to what she had seen other than just calling it a nightmare.

Suddenly, she heard loud footsteps coming from outside of her room, as if someone were running in the hallways. The footsteps grew louder second by second before she saw her mother and father standing at the door of her bedroom, in their night clothes, holding a lamp in their hands. Both of them looked as worried as if they had seen a ghost.

'What happened?' Sirelle questioned, not knowing why her parents were in her room in the middle of the night, 'Why did you both come here?'

'We heard you screaming.' Her father replied, 'What's the matter, sweetheart?'

Sirelle was shocked to hear that she had been screaming just because of a nightmare, as that had never happened in her nineteen years of living. 'Oh, it was just a nightmare.'

'Are you sure?' Her father added, 'Because you have never screamed in the middle of the night because of your nightmare before.'

'I'm sure.' Sirelle continued, 'I swear it was just a scarier one. All the shock from what happened to Samantha, I'm sure it's because of that situation.'

Her parents nodded.

'I can sleep besides you if you want me to.' Her mother suggested, but Sirelle shook her head.

'Don't worry, I'll be fine.'

'Are you sure?'

Sirelle nodded her head as her parents went back to their room and saw her lying back down on her bed, the images from the nightmare still flashing before her eyes. She knew she wouldn't be getting any sleep that night.