Dust on the Spine

Rain had fallen the night before, but by morning, the sky over Aetherholt was pale and dry, as if it had never known water at all. The clouds had peeled away in the night, leaving behind a bone-white ceiling and a silence that felt intentional. Mist clung to the crooked streets like an old shawl, curling around rusted gutters and broken chimneys like smoke from a long-dead fire. From a distance, Aetherholt always looked abandoned. Too quiet. Too still. Like a place that remembered something terrible and refused to speak of it.

Ezren sat alone at the back of an old tram bus, legs pulled slightly in, as if even his silhouette wanted to disappear into the gloom.

He didn't mind the silence. Silence had shape, texture it didn't lie to you the way voices could. He liked that the streetcars groaned more than they spoke, their gears shrieking like reluctant memories. The worn blue seats were stiff with age, the cushion underneath long since collapsed. Fog streaked the windows, erasing the outside world into shadow and smudge. He liked that too. Not seeing where he was going was somehow easier than admitting he didn't know.

But more than anything, Ezren liked the smell the scent of old wood soaked in decades of steam and oil, of rusted iron and flaked varnish. And beneath it, always, that strange static tang. Sharp. Metallic. The kind of smell that lingered after lightning or bad news.

Lately, that smell had been everywhere.

He reached into his jacket pocket and tapped the side of the notebook that lay hidden there. Still there. The same chill leather against his knuckles. It belonged to him he was sure of that but some days, it felt more like it was holding onto him.

He hadn't written a single word in it. Not one. Yet sometimes, when he carried it, it felt heavier than it should. Dense. Weighted with silence, or memory, or something worse.

The tram shrieked and hissed as it slowed to a halt. The windows trembled. The doors yawned open with a sigh.

Ezren stood, adjusting the strap of the satchel on his shoulder. The notebook didn't shift in his pocket. It never shifted. It was as if something inside wanted to stay put. Or was waiting.

"Next stop," mumbled the conductor, without looking. His voice was ragged, like paper tearing under wet fingers. It sounded less like an announcement, more like a warning.

Ezren stepped off the tram.

The neighborhood of Dustwell greeted him with its usual chill indifference. Aetherholt's most forgotten quarter named, perhaps, for what it left behind. Stone-brick buildings slouched against each other like old drunks. Window shutters hung at crooked angles, some missing entirely, as if the buildings had tired of seeing the world and shut their eyes for good.

A newspaper lay half-submerged in a puddle. Its headline smeared into a gray smear that almost looked like a map. Ezren glanced at it but didn't stop. Somewhere behind the wrought iron gates of the orphanage, the cracked bell tower chimed twice. Late morning.

He tightened his coat and kept walking, hands buried deep in his pockets.

He passed a cluster of shuttered cafés, their signs faded into unreadable swirls, doors plastered with flyers that had long since surrendered to rain and time. Between them sat a narrow bookstore, so quiet and narrow that Ezren might have passed it entirely had he not felt it before he saw it.

The sign above the door had no name just faint traces of what might once have been gold leaf. Now it was nothing more than wood and shadow.

It didn't even have a display window. Just a green door, chipped at the edges like bitten fingernails, and a single pane of warped glass.

A glass eye.

It didn't reflect him. Only shadow.

Ezren stopped.

Not because he needed a book. Not because he had a reason.

But because the door was open.

Only slightly. Just a breath's width.

And fog leaked from the threshold like the shop itself was exhaling.

He hesitated.

His fingers brushed the notebook in his coat. It was warmer now. Or maybe his hand had grown cold.

He pushed the door open with two fingers. A bell above the frame chimed softly no, not chimed. Echoed. Like the sound had already happened and was just returning.

The shop was dark.

Not abandoned. Unused.

Dust danced in the shafts of light that crept through the blinds, moving like things that had never learned to fall properly. The air smelled of mold, parchment, and a slow, stale magic.

Shelves flanked both sides of the narrow corridor, towering high and leaning in close enough to feel claustrophobic. Books had been shoved in every direction. Not shelved. Shoved. As though they were being contained.

There was no counter. No clerk. No voice saying welcome.

He shouldn't have stayed.

But he did.

Ezren wandered slowly, fingers trailing across spines as he passed. Most books had no titles. Some had several, stacked in mismatched fonts, some in languages he couldn't read. One book buzzed faintly under his hand, like it was whispering in its sleep. Another shuddered as if touched by static. He pulled away quickly.

He didn't know what he was looking for.

Only that something was looking back.

He stopped when he saw it.

Tucked in a narrow cubby between a leather-bound atlas and a collection of fairy tales was a book that looked wrong. Or maybe too right.

Its leather cover was cracked but embroidered in silver thread. The symbol on the spine was strange an eye, pierced clean through by a sewing needle, thread coiled like a noose. There was no author's name. No title. Just a thin black ribbon poking from between its pages.

Like a tongue.

He reached for it.

And the air shifted.

Every shelf around him seemed to lean just slightly, just enough to notice. Dust stopped falling. A pressure built in the air behind his eyes.

And then, not a sound, but a thought not his unfolded gently in the hollow of his skull:

> "Don't open it unless you're ready to forget what you love."

Ezren froze.

The voice hadn't come from behind him. It hadn't come from anywhere.

But he knew it. Not from life. From before.

He pulled his hand back slowly, as though any sudden movement might wake something ancient.

He left the book where it was.

Outside, the mist had begun to fade. But the light was no stronger. The sky remained colorless, pale as bone.

Ezren stood at the edge of the tram tracks again, jacket wrapped tightly around him. The next car hadn't arrived yet. The street was silent but aware, like it was watching him reconsider something he hadn't realized he'd chosen.

He stared down the line.

He couldn't explain what had just happened. Not to himself. Not to the wind that had begun to stir around his boots. Not even to the notebook still nestled in his coat.

But something in that bookstore had felt… familiar.

Not the place.

The decision.

The kind you don't make. The kind that's already been made for you, and you're just now remembering you agreed to it.

That night, Ezren didn't sleep.

Not because he was afraid. Fear was clean. Contained. This was something messier.

He didn't sleep because a memory had returned. One he hadn't thought about in years.

A man, standing in the rain, coat soaked through, face unreadable.

And the words he had said. Words that wrapped around Ezren's ribs like chains and had never quite let go:

> "You're going to die.

> You can't stop it.

> But you have to try."

Ezren sat upright in bed, sweat chilling on his skin.

And there, on the table beside him, lay the notebook.

Closed.

But not silent.

He reached for it with trembling fingers. Opened it.

The page was no longer blank.

The first line still stood, bold and certain:

> "You walked into the story today."

But now, below it, faint and glimmering in silver ink, something new had appeared.

> "Chapter One: Dust on the Spine."

Ezren didn't breathe for a long time.

Because somehow…

somehow he knew:

This wasn't a warning.

It was a beginning.