The corridors echoed with Eleanor's hurried footsteps as she practically ran through the ancient stone hallways. Her boots, old and scuffed from months of use, made soft slapping sounds against the cold floor. Behind her, the thick material of her student robes collected every speck of dust and dirt from the passageway, leaving a trail that marked her frantic journey to class.
This was getting ridiculous. Three times already this week she'd been late to Professor Hartwell's lectures, and Wednesday wasn't even over yet. The man had zero tolerance for tardiness, and Eleanor knew she was pushing her luck.
She tried to slip through the classroom door without making a sound, but the old hinges had other plans. The door gave an awful creak that might as well have been a trumpet announcement. Every single person in the room turned to look at her, and Eleanor felt heat rush up her neck and into her cheeks. Her robes looked terrible, streaked with grime where they'd dragged across the dusty floors during her mad dash to get here.
Professor Hartwell stopped talking mid sentence. His pale gray eyes locked onto hers with the kind of look that could freeze water. "Well, well. Miss Eleanor has decided to grace us with her presence once again." His voice had that razor sharp quality that made students squirm in their seats. "I'm sure you have a fascinating explanation for why you're late. Again."
Eleanor pulled herself up straighter, trying to look like she had everything under control even though her heart was hammering against her ribs. "I ran into some complications this morning, Professor. I'm really sorry about interrupting the class."
She kept things vague on purpose. What was the point in going into all the messy details? The ink bottle that had somehow tipped over and ruined three pages of her notes. The door to her room that had gotten stuck and wouldn't budge for twenty whole minutes. Professor Hartwell wasn't the type to care about explanations anyway, no matter how legitimate they might be.
His mouth formed a tight, disapproving line. "Miss Eleanor, your apparent inability to treat your education with the seriousness it deserves leaves me no choice but to assign consequences. You'll be spending your afternoon in the restricted section of the library, cleaning the open shelving units. And let me be absolutely clear about this: you are not to go near any of the locked storage areas."
A wave of whispers swept through the classroom. Everyone knew about the restricted section. It was the kind of place students talked about in low voices during dinner, sharing rumors and ghost stories. Eleanor's stomach felt like it had dropped into her shoes, but she managed a small nod.
"Additionally," Professor Hartwell went on, clearly enjoying himself now, "you will work in complete silence. No conversations with anyone. And under no circumstances will you use magic of any kind. If the library's detection systems pick up even a trace of magical activity from you, your internship is finished. Permanently."
Eleanor clenched her jaw to keep from saying something she'd regret and made her way to an empty seat. She could feel her classmates looking at her with a mixture of sympathy and relief that they weren't in her shoes.
When classes ended, she gathered her supplies and headed for the library's basement levels. The spiral staircase that led down to the restricted areas was narrow and poorly lit, making her feel like she was descending into some kind of dungeon. Halfway down, she met two members of the cleaning crew coming up.
The older of the two, a woman with graying hair and gentle eyes, stopped when she saw Eleanor. "You're the student doing detention down there?" When Eleanor nodded, the woman's expression grew serious. "Listen to me, sweetheart. Whatever you do, don't get clever down there. Those books aren't just old manuscripts. Some of them contain enough power to trap entire communities in magical bindings. We've had students go missing in those lower levels before."
Her companion, a thin man with worry lines around his eyes, nodded along. "These professors today, they don't seem to think much about what they're putting you kids through. Just keep your head down and stick to what you were told to do."
Eleanor thanked them both and continued her descent, their warnings playing on repeat in her mind. When she finally reached the massive wooden door that marked the entrance to the restricted section, she hesitated. Seriously, what was the worst that could happen in a library?
The door slammed shut behind her with a sound like thunder. The silence that followed was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. It wasn't just quiet; it was the kind of silence that seemed to have weight and presence.
Eleanor glanced up at the glass partition that separated this area from the main library and saw other students staring down at her. Even Professor Hartwell was visible up there, and she could swear he was smiling. The expression made her skin crawl.
She got to work, methodically wiping down the shelves she was allowed to touch. The only sounds were the soft whisper of her cloth against old leather and wood. But after she'd been working for over an hour, something else joined the quiet symphony: a steady tapping noise coming from somewhere among the locked sections.
Eleanor tried her best to ignore it.
She remembered all the warnings, all the stories, all the rules. But she'd always been the curious type, and the tapping seemed to be getting louder and more insistent, like someone was deliberately trying to get her attention.
Eventually, she couldn't stand it anymore. She walked over to the locked shelf where the sound was coming from. There was a small sign attached to it, the letters faded but still readable: "Do not open the locked shelves." The irony struck her immediately. If they really didn't want people opening it, why put up a sign that basically announced there was something interesting inside?
The shelf didn't have any kind of padlock or chain securing it. Instead, it seemed to be held closed by some sort of magical seal. Eleanor knew she shouldn't even be thinking about it, but she found herself reaching out to test the barrier.
To her surprise, it gave way easily, almost like it had been waiting for her touch.
Inside was a single book, its leather binding glowing with a soft, unnatural light. Eleanor's first instinct was to slam the shelf closed and pretend this whole thing had never happened. But before she could move, the book began to speak.
"Well, hello there," it said, its voice smooth as silk and twice as tempting. "Finally, someone with a bit of curiosity."
Something from her first year studies flickered through Eleanor's memory. A warning she'd read somewhere: "Do not talk back to books that talk back to you." But the book kept talking, and its voice seemed to grow more compelling with every word.
"You're not like the others, are you? They don't understand your need to explore, to question things. They punish you for being human, for having natural curiosity. But I see who you really are."
As the book continued speaking, Eleanor began to notice changes. When she caught her reflection in the glass partition above, her eyes looked different. The green was deeper, more intense, almost luminous. The change was subtle but unmistakable, and with it came a strange sense of knowledge and power flowing through her.
The conversation went on, though later Eleanor would find it impossible to recall the specific words. She remembered only pieces: promises of understanding, offers of forbidden knowledge, and a creeping darkness that seemed to spread from the shelf into her very thoughts.
When Eleanor finally left the restricted section, the library staff couldn't hide their shock at seeing her emerge unharmed. Students who had been expecting her to come out terrified or shaken were surprised by how calm and collected she appeared. But Eleanor kept her mouth shut about what had happened down there. She simply cleaned up her supplies and went back to her regular routine.
The next morning revealed the first signs that something fundamental had shifted. On her way to her part time job at the local bookshop, Eleanor started noticing that the customers looked wrong somehow. The changes were subtle but unmistakable once you saw them: extra fingers, strange eye colors, limbs that were just a little too long or bent at impossible angles.
The customers themselves didn't seem to notice anything unusual about their appearances. They chatted about increasingly bizarre events happening around town as if they were perfectly normal occurrences. Three armed figures materializing in the town square. Mysterious symbols appearing overnight in the mayor's office. Other strange incidents that everyone seemed to accept without question.
Eleanor listened with growing alarm, but she didn't say anything. It wasn't until Professor Hartwell cornered her later that day that the full scope of what she'd unleashed became apparent.
"Eleanor," he said, his face drained of all color, "what in God's name did you do down in that restricted section? Your eyes... they're completely transformed."
Before Eleanor could even begin to form an answer, a deafening crash echoed from the direction of the town center. Through the library's tall windows, they could see a massive black vortex tearing open in the sky above the buildings. People were screaming and running in every direction.
That's when Eleanor remembered the book's final instruction, the words that had seemed so harmless when she'd first heard them: "Do not read the intended words on the book."
But she had read them, hadn't she? And now, with chaos erupting all around her and the book's presence still pulsing somewhere in the back of her mind, Eleanor found herself whispering the same question that had gotten her into this mess in the first place:
"What could possibly go wrong?"
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