The Library Between Worlds

M Mehran

Most people walked past the alley without noticing it. It was narrow, damp, and always smelled faintly of smoke. But Aria had always been drawn to places that seemed forgotten.

That night, when the city was loud with Friday traffic, she slipped into the alley and found a door she’d never seen before. It was tall and arched, made of dark oak carved with symbols she didn’t recognize. A brass plaque read simply:

The Library Between Worlds.

Aria hesitated only a moment before pushing the door open.

The room inside stretched impossibly wide, its ceiling lost in shadow. Shelves upon shelves towered upward, filled with books bound in leather, cloth, and even materials that shimmered like metal. Candles floated in the air, their flames steady though no wax dripped.

At the center stood a man in a long coat, his hair silver though his face looked young.

“Welcome,” he said, as if he had been expecting her. “Few find this place without searching. Fewer still are invited.”

Aria swallowed. “What is this?”

“A library,” he said with a smile. “But not the kind you know. Here, every book contains a life—every possibility you might have lived, had you made a different choice.”

Her pulse quickened. “You mean… alternate versions of me?”

“Exactly.”

He led her to a shelf where the spines bore her name. Hundreds of them. Aria reached out with trembling fingers and pulled one down at random. The moment she opened it, the library dissolved.

She was standing on a stage, bathed in golden light, a violin tucked under her chin. A crowd cheered wildly as she bowed.

Aria gasped. She had quit violin when she was twelve, convinced she’d never be good enough. But here, she was a prodigy.

The librarian’s voice echoed in her ear: This is one path. Do you wish to stay?

The temptation was sharp, but she closed the book. The stage vanished. She was back in the library.

Her heart raced. “That was real?”

“As real as the life you are living now.”

She pulled another book. This time, she was older, sitting on a porch with a ring on her finger and children laughing in the yard. A man whose face she didn’t recognize handed her a glass of lemonade. She felt warmth spread through her chest—love, family, belonging.

But again, she closed the book, shaking.

Book after book, life after life. Some glorious, some tragic. In one she was a surgeon. In another, a thief. In one, she died young. In another, she lived to a hundred.

The librarian watched silently as her hands trembled. “Every choice you’ve ever made opens one door and closes another. Here, you may step into whichever you desire.”

Her eyes burned. “But… if I choose one, do I lose the others?”

He nodded. “That is the cost. You cannot carry them all.”

Aria sank to the floor, overwhelmed. All her life she had wondered about the what ifs—what if she hadn’t given up music, what if she’d said yes to love, what if she’d dared to be braver. And here they all were, stacked neatly on shelves.

But as she stared at the endless books, another thought broke through: she had always been so busy regretting the lives she hadn’t lived, she had never honored the one she was living.

“I… I can’t choose,” she whispered.

The librarian’s eyes softened. “That, too, is a choice.”

He reached out, placing a single blank book in her lap. Its cover was plain, its pages empty.

“This one is still being written,” he said. “It is yours, and only you can finish it. Not by stepping into someone else’s story, but by living your own.”

Her throat tightened. She clutched the book as the shelves began to fade, the candles snuffing out one by one.

When she blinked, she was back in the alley, the blank book still warm in her hands. The brass plaque was gone, and the door with it.

The city’s noise returned around her—cars honking, people laughing—but everything felt different.

For the first time, Aria wasn’t chasing what ifs. She was carrying a story still unwritten, and she knew she had the power to make it extraordinary.