Amelia’s voice lowered.“Merï Lyal Fortouk.”
I blinked up at her.
She smiled, almost sheepishly. “It’s the old tongue. My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was the last to speak it.” She’d actually counted the generations out on her fingers.
“And you just…know how to pronounce that?”
She shook her head quickly. “Only this. I swear. My grandfather told me how to pronounce it. It means Soul of the Ghost.”
I frowned, searching her expression. “And why are you giving this to me? Don’t tell me it’s from the shelf—”
“No.” She cut me off with a wave. “No. It was passed down. From generation to generation. My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather wrote it in his last days.”
My interest peaked, body leaning forward. “That was how many years ago?”
“Four hundred and ninety-five years ago.”
I touched the cover of the book again, fascinated that someone had actually written this almost five centuries ago, and it had lived through all those years. Although most books I’d read in archives were older than a century. But this was different. This wasn’t a book preserved by institution, it was a personal legacy passed down. I was in awe.
“Why are you giving it to me?” I asked again, even though my fingers were itching to dive into it to see what it was about.
She sighed and leaned back. “My great—you know, he was a scholar. His great-great whatever was a scholar as well. In fact, my bloodline was filled with scholars.”
My eyes scanned the library. I thought she was an employee. “You own this place?”
She nodded.
Whoa.
“I snuck this book out of my grandfather’s belongings when they wanted to be burned after his death. I was twelve. He’d read all the pages to me, you know.” After a moment of silence, she heaved out and leaned forward. “Long story short, I’m borrowing you because I saw the kind of books you read and borrow. I always take care of your table when you leave, and the title patterns...I thought this would help.”
I looked down at the book, recalling the title she told me.
Soul of the Ghost.
My heart stopped, eyes widening. “Is this about the Soulless Man?”
She nodded. “There are some things here that were only passed down through knowledge in the past. They were not recorded or published.” She leaned in. “People who know these are dead, but everything here is true. It’s not a myth. At least my grandfather told me that.”
I was speechless. A lot of emotions were swimming through me, and I couldn’t sort them out. “But...but why are you showing it to me?”
She shrugged and stood up on her feet. “I’m only borrowing you for tonight.” And with a wink, she walked away.
I sat frozen, torn between confusion and gratitude. Then I turned to the book, thunder cracking loud in the sky as I opened the first page.
Luckily, the script inside was written in a language I understood. I dived in, eyes skimming over the aged words that Amelia’s great-great-whatever-grandfather had recorded. He’d started his account before the Soulless Man was cursed, mentioning some elements I already knew. Like how there was no such thing as darkness.
Everything was peaceful before the wrath. The book didn’t mention how the moon’s offspring was killed, or why the Soulless Man did it. In its place, there was:
“None living may bear the tale truer than he who owns it.”
Right. No one knew what happened except the Soulless Man who caused it.
It went to what happened after the wrath, after the moon folded herself in the sky, how darkness began to exist, how magic began to die, how the Soulless Man disappeared off the face of the earth. Although it was the same with the other books I’d read, it was more detailed than them, as though the man had stood on the edge of the moon’s fury and lived to record it.
Centuries past, before the moon’s wrath, magic ran as blood through the veins of every being. They were born with it. It was a blessing from Selvanyra. Each child born beneath Her grace carried a mark of old magic upon the nape.
I turned the page, and the mark filled it entirely. The emblem had a ring of runes circling its edge. At the centre was a hollow sphere eclipsed by a crescent moon, spirals and fractured lines webbing outward in tangled symmetry.
