My fingers hovered over the humming box, with breath caught just between inhale and regret.
I turned slowly.
And there she was.
Grandma Elira.
Not cloaked in light or mystery or the soft folds of ethereal magic, as I’d seen her countless times within the safety of the Academy or during quiet midnight moments of tea and truth.
No.
She wassolidhere. Present. Real in a way that made my stomach twist.
She meant business, and I had no idea why.
Her silver-streaked hair was pinned up in its usual coiled knot, though a few strands had slipped free around her face. Herdeep-blue robes moved slightly as if she’d just stepped through a gust of wind that hadn’t touched me. She looked like she'd simply walked into the library the way anyone might.
“Grandma?” I asked, my voice smaller than I meant it to be.
Her eyes met mine, and something flickered in them. Was it relief tangled with concern? A blend ofhow did you manage thisandplease don’t do it again.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I could ask the same,” she said, stepping into the narrow aisle with the ease of someone who had never obeyed boundaries as written.
She glanced toward the book sprites, who hovered a few feet above us now, unmoving and tense. Her gaze then dropped to the box at my side, still humming faintly on the shelf.
“What is that?” I asked, but even as I said it, I knew she wouldn’t answer.
Not yet.
Instead, my grandma took a slow breath, eyes returning to mine.
“You weren’t supposed to find this,” she said. “Not yet.”
“So itismeant for me,” I said, straightening. “You’re notsurprisedI’m here.”
“No,” she admitted. “I’m only stunned that it happened so soon.”
The humming deepened, and for a moment I could almost hearwordsburied inside it—a tone, a name, a warning.
“Grandma,” I asked carefully, “what is this?”
She looked at the box again and then closed her eyes as though choosing her words from a very, very old shelf in her memory.
“It’s a record,” she said finally. “But not the kind you read. The kind you feel.”
I didn’t understand. Not fully. But part of me did.
Part of me had known the moment I felt it through the book spine.
“The circle?” I asked. “Is it about the bent circle?”
Her eyes opened.
And they were suddenly far older than the lines around them.
“Yes.”
