DARK CAMPUS

Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14: The Library's Secret

I needed answers — the kind he wouldn't give me. Deep in the restricted section of the library —

where students were forbidden to go, where the air smelled older and heavier, where dust

motes danced in shafts of gray light filtering through high windows — I found what I was looking

for. A massive, leather-bound book chained to a shelf, its cover etched with symbols that

seemed to shift when I looked directly at them. Its title: The Chronicle of Sacrifices. The chain

was rusted and ancient, but it crumbled to dust beneath my fingers the moment I touched it, as

if it had been waiting for me all along.

What I read shattered everything I believed. I wasn't unique. I wasn't special. Every hundred

years, a girl with my name, my face, was brought here. And every single one of them... died.

Some faded away quietly. Some were lost to the shadows. None survived the ritual in the way

that I had. I wasn't a breakthrough. I was simply the latest anomaly in a cycle that had repeated

for millennia. He hadn't broken the pattern — he was merely observing a variation of it.

Footsteps approached, slow and deliberate. I didn't slam the book shut this time. I just sat there,

numb, my vision blurring through tears, my fingers trembling on the yellowed pages as the words blurred together. I felt his presence before I saw him — the air grew cooler, the shadows

lengthening.

"Is it true?" my voice cracked, barely audible. "Have you watched me die over and over again? Is

this just another cycle to you?"

A tear — a single, shimmering tear that caught the dim light — rolled down his cheek. It looked

like liquid gold. "I would never hurt you, Iyanna. I have fought my own nature every single day

since I met you. I have rewritten prophecy in ways that even I do not fully understand. I will fight

eternity itself before I let that happen to you. I promise you. But you must believe me when I

say... I am learning what it means to be human through you. Some things... I am still figuring out

myself."

"And if I become like them?" I whispered, my palms stinging where the silver lines pulsed

beneath my skin. "What happens then?"

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my face, his touch infinitely gentle. "Then I will

find a way to bring you back. Even if it means tearing this world apart to do it."