The Library of Lost Voices

The girl with the red hair arrived just after the storm.

Her boots left wet prints on the marble floor as she crossed the vast threshold. The ancient doors creaked shut behind her, echoing like thunder through the cathedral-high arches. Dust floated in shafts of silver light cutting through the tall, stained-glass windows. The scent of old parchment and older secrets hung in the air.

She didn’t know her real name.

They had called her Maera in the convent, but even that felt borrowed, like a coat slipped over shoulders too small to fit.

What she did know was this: somewhere inside this impossible library, her voice was waiting to be found.

A voice she didn’t remember losing.

The Library of Lost Voices was not drawn on any map.

It was whispered about in footnotes and riddles, encoded in old songs and madness-soaked diaries. Some said it appeared only to those who had lost more than they could name. Others claimed it was cursed—a place where voices went to die.

None of them were entirely wrong.

Maera had followed a trail of books that shouldn't exist. One led to another, and then another, each with marginalia scribbled in a script that mirrored her own handwriting. The last book did not open to a page—it opened to a door, etched with a sigil she felt in her bones.

And now she was here.

She passed aisles of shelves stacked higher than sight could follow. Books hummed faintly as she walked by, some whispering, others murmuring in forgotten tongues. One chuckled darkly. One sighed her name.

She didn’t stop.

Not yet.

At the center of the library stood a great staircase, twin spirals of black iron that led upward into shadow and downward into silence. Between them sat a pedestal carved from petrified wood, etched with countless names.

Upon it, a cube—levitating, faintly glowing green, spinning slowly.

Next to it, an open tome whose pages flipped slowly on their own, as if remembering something it once was.

As Maera approached, the cube spun faster and tilted toward her. A voice—hers, but younger—spoke with startling clarity:

"Entry accepted. Search resumed."

Her knees buckled.

She didn’t remember recording any voice. She didn’t remember this place. But something inside her knew this was not her first visit. A memory brushed against her, like wind through a half-open window.

The voice guided her to the Vault of Echoes.

Behind an obsidian door, lined with brass glyphs that shifted slightly when not being watched, waited shelves unlike any she'd seen—containing not books, but sound. Bottled in crystal, glowing softly, labeled in scripts older than memory and sometimes sanity.

Each bottle held a single voice.

Cries. Laughter. Goodbyes. Secrets. Screams muffled by water. Confessions buried in time.

Some of the bottles trembled as she passed, like they recognized her footsteps. Like they mourned her absence.

She reached for one marked only with a single symbol: a spiral curling inward, etched in silver thread that shimmered under her breath.

When she opened it, the air pulsed. A whisper filled the chamber:

“Don’t trust the stairs. They remember.”

The bottle shattered in her hand. The whisper was gone. But the warning lingered in her bones.

She descended anyway.

The further she went, the colder it grew. The whispers became louder, layered. Some begged. Some warned. Some wept. Some repeated her name in lullaby tones. But none of them lied.

She reached a chamber of mirrors, each reflecting a different version of herself—refractions of who she might have been.

In one, she wore chains and knelt.

In another, a crown, her expression unreadable.

In a third, her lips were sewn shut, but her eyes burned with fire.

One mirror cracked as she passed, her reflection smiling without her. That one followed her gaze until the next room swallowed her whole.

At the center of the room: a door of bone, wrapped in veins of gold.

And behind it, the Archive.

The Archive was not organized.

It was a storm of voices, swirling, screaming, singing in a cacophony that made her ears ring. They rushed around her like wind in a collapsing cathedral, desperate to be heard, desperate to be known.

But one voice—clear, calm, warm—called her name.

Her real name.

She followed it to a small book on a floating stand. Its pages blank. Its cover warm like a fevered cheek.

When she touched it, the voices fell silent.

And then she remembered.

Her mother’s laugh when it echoed off kitchen walls.

The song her brother sang during storms, off-key but full of heart.

The way her father whispered stories in the dark, his breath catching at the same moment each time.

A promise she made. A betrayal she chose.

All stolen.

By the Library.

No—by her own choice.

She had given them away, once. Willingly. To forget pain. To silence grief. To survive a night that had gone on too long.

Now they wanted to return.

She opened the book.

Her voice spilled out.

Not just words, but memories. Emotion. Truth.

It filled the room with color, with scent, with pain and joy wrapped so tightly together they were indistinguishable.

It was overwhelming. Beautiful. Terrifying.

She screamed, but no sound came out. She laughed, but it hurt.

She wept.

When it was over, she collapsed to her knees.

The book closed itself.

On the cover, a new title burned in golden ink:

"The Voice Reclaimed."

Maera rose.

Not Maera anymore.

She remembered who she was. All of it. The good, the broken, the forgotten. And she carried it with her now—not as a weight, but as a shape.

The Library did not stop her from leaving.

As she stepped into the light, the doors closed behind her with a sound like breath being held.

She didn’t look back.

And somewhere deep inside the Library, another voice stirred.

Not yet screaming.

But soon.

Waiting to be found.