Marin didn't go to school the next day.
She didn't sleep either.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the ink vines coiling around her arms again—tightening, pulsing like they had a rhythm of their own. Sometimes, she could still hear the scratching of trees. Or Wyatt's voice, low and worn and wrong.
She tried washing the spirals off her skin.
They didn't fade.
No matter how hard she scrubbed, they stayed.
They pulsed faintly under her hoodie as she sat curled in the corner of her room, the book resting unopened on her desk like a curse. The window was open. The wind was still.
Then her phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number:
"Check the library's restricted index. Row three, shelf D. Ask for Ms. Fern."
That was all.
She stared at it for a long time. Then, slowly, she rose.
The school library was a strange place even before any of this started.
Too quiet. The kind of quiet that presses against your teeth. The lights always flickered near the back, and the old librarian Ms. Fern never seemed to move unless you looked away. Marin hadn't even been in there since sophomore year.
But now she walked in like she was sleepwalking.
Ms. Fern looked up from her desk.
She was older than Marin remembered—her skin like yellowing paper, her eyes clouded over with some unreadable shade. She wore a shawl woven with tiny symbols. Maybe letters.
Maybe not.
"Row three," Marin said. "Shelf D."
Ms. Fern blinked once.
Then stood, slow and deliberate, and beckoned her forward.
The restricted index wasn't on any official library map. It was behind a wooden door with no label, past a wall of nonfiction books no one ever touched. Ms. Fern unlocked it with a tiny iron key.
Inside was dust. And silence.
No overhead lights. Just dim orange sconces on either side, casting long shadows.
"Don't take anything out," Fern warned. "Read what you must. Then leave it be."
Her voice was rough, but not unkind.
Marin nodded.
Row three, shelf D.
She ran her fingers along the spines—each one unmarked, bound in cracked leather. Finally, she found it. A book with no title, but a faint spiral etched into the cover. Same shape as the one on her arm.
She opened it.
And the air got colder.
Inside were names.
Hundreds of them.
Each on its own line, written in careful, curling ink.
Next to each name was a date. Then a phrase.
Wyatt Roston – April 11th – "The Forgotten Open the Gate."
Erin Valesquez – October 9th – "Ink That Binds Becomes Ink That Bites."
Marlon Grant – March 3rd – "Swallowed by Script."
Pages and pages of the same thing.
Marin flipped faster, frantic.
Then she saw her own name.
Her hands went still.
Marin Locke – April 12th – "Next Chapter Unwritten."
She stared at it.
Her name was glowing faintly. The only one that shimmered.
"You shouldn't be here," said a voice behind her.
She turned.
A girl stood there.
Older. Pale. Dressed in a long, ink-black coat. Her eyes were two shades too bright. Her smile didn't reach them.
"But I suppose it doesn't matter now."
Marin backed up, the book still in her hands. "Who are you?"
"I'm just a character," the girl said with a shrug. "Like you."
"That's not funny."
"Wasn't a joke."
She stepped closer.
"Once you read the book, it starts writing you. That's how it works. Why do you think so many of us vanish?"
"I'm not going to vanish," Marin said.
The girl tilted her head. "No? Then stop reading."
Marin's throat felt dry.
"You can't, can you? You have to know how it ends. Even if it costs you."
The girl turned, slowly.
"It always costs something."
And then she was gone.
Like she'd never been there.
When Marin emerged from the index room, Ms. Fern didn't look surprised.
"You saw her," Fern said quietly.
"…Who was she?"
"Her name was Elorie. Class of 1999. She found the book and vanished before graduation." Ms. Fern's fingers curled over the counter. "Sometimes, the ones who fade... linger. Between paragraphs."
Marin couldn't breathe right.
"I want to burn it," she whispered.
"Books like that don't burn," Ms. Fern said. "They rewrite. Best you can do is finish your chapter before it finishes you."
Marin left the library with the name still echoing in her head.
Elorie.
That night, the book opened on its own.
Pages fluttered like wings.
Marin watched, frozen, as it stopped on a new section. One that hadn't been there before.
A blank page.
Slowly, words formed across it.
In her handwriting.
Marin Locke stood alone in her room, her breath shallow, her thoughts fractured. She could feel it pulling—something between the walls. Something coming for her now that the Fourth Page had turned.
She dropped the book.
It kept writing.
Even closed.