"Be still, and know that I am God." — Psalm 46:10
There was a stillness that came after the crowds — the kind that settled
not just in the halls, but in the bones.
Campus quieted down like a held breath.
The sun had long since slipped behind the jagged London skyline, setting
the stones of University College London
aglow in molten hues before leaving them to the cold hands of evening. The
History Wing, a Gothic sprawl of arches and iron-laced windows, stood as it
always did — older than most maps, proud as an old cathedral.
Inside the Aurelius Library, fluorescent bulbs hummed like sleepy monks.
Rows upon rows of aged books, dusty archives, and handwritten folios watched
from the shadows like sentinels.
Everyone had gone home hours ago. Except her.
Thalia, sleeves rolled up, hair pinned loosely out of her face, stood on
a stepladder halfway up the Folklore section, reshelving a stack of texts that
smelled like dry moss and forgotten things. Her cardigan kept slipping off one
shoulder. She didn't fix it.
There was something sacred about this time — this hour when the world
belonged only to the still and the strange.
More importantly: no wraiths.
Not in the library. Not around her.
Here, the silence was gentle. Not haunted.
Down the aisle, the motion-activated lamp flickered once, then caught
again. A creak somewhere above her. The old rafters breathing.
She paused mid-motion, balancing a volume of Byzantine
Demonology in one hand.
"Don't be dramatic, Thalia," she muttered under her breath. "Not every
sound is a harbinger of doom."
"Only the ones that walk on two feet, dear."
Thalia yelped and nearly
dropped the book. She caught herself, twisting to see the figure behind her
with the grace of a startled cat.
"Marta!" she hissed, half-laughing, half-scolding.
Leaning against the end of the aisle, arms crossed and eyes gleaming
with mischief, stood Marta Aureel
— the senior librarian, wrapped in her ever-present shawl of emerald green and
charcoal grey, looking like a woman who belonged more in prophecy than payroll.
Her hair was silver-blonde, piled in a crown braid. Her eyes? Ageless.
Like they'd watched the stars blink into being and decided to stay curious.
"Honestly, you move like a ghost," Thalia said, pressing a hand to her
chest. "You should come with a bell."
"Oh no," Marta replied, eyes twinkling. "Then I'd never hear your
heartbeat leap like that. It's the little things, darling."
Thalia rolled her eyes, descending the stepladder. "You scared five
years off my life."
"You're young. You can spare them."
Marta crossed into the light, her footsteps soundless on the stone
floor. She reached for the book in Thalia's hand and reshelved it without
looking at the spine — her fingers moved like memory, like the shelves told her
where everything belonged.
"You shouldn't be here so late," Marta said lightly.
"Says the woman who lives here."
Marta smiled. "I'm not twenty-one with exams, a part-time job, and a
ghost problem."
Thalia didn't flinch — but the corners of her mouth stiffened. Marta saw
it, of course.
"Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong," the librarian added
gently. "Just that this place… protects you. Have you noticed?"
"I can't have a ghost problem Marta Im just a bit jumpy is all"
Thalia glanced around the quiet aisles. The air here didn't carry the
usual weight. The wraiths never followed her past the library threshold — even
when they clawed at her heels all day.
It was like Marta had drawn a circle around the building in invisible
chalk. And for whatever reason, the curse didn't dare cross it.
"…But I have," Thalia admitted softly. "Feels like I can finally exhale
in here."
Marta gave a knowing nod and handed her another stack of books.
"Then stay as long as you like. The night's kind to those who respect
her silence."
They worked in companionable stillness after that — Thalia reshelving
and Marta humming something that might've been an ancient hymn or a forgotten
lullaby.
For a moment, it felt like the world wasn't unraveling.
And Thalia could almost forget the curse she didn't know she carried.
Almost.
Martha's POV:
The hour had grown old.
Marta moved through the silent cathedral of shelves with quiet
reverence, her steps soft against the marble floor. She adjusted her glasses,
tucked a stray wisp of silvered hair behind her ear, and muttered a blessing
under her breath as she slid a crumbling grimoire back into place.
The young ones were gone. Even Thalia, dutiful as ever, had finally
finished for the night and slipped out with a small, tired wave.
All that remained was the hush — that familiar, sacred hush that filled
the library long after the students had gone. A hush that remembered prayers
better left unsaid.
She was not surprised when she felt the shift.
No wind. No trumpet.
Only a faint flicker — like a candle guttering in a corner that
shouldn't have held flame.
She didn't turn. "You're late."
The voice that answered was soft — not divine, not commanding. It was
the voice of a scholar with ink-stained cuffs and sleeves rolled back just
enough to reveal hands weathered by centuries of turning pages.
"I took the long way," Raziel said simply.
When she finally turned, he was there. Leaning gently against the old
returns desk as if he'd always belonged there — like a misplaced professor who
never asked for attention and never drew it, yet knew more about the world than
anyone you'd ever meet.
His coat was plain. His posture unassuming. His presence… forgettable —
in the same way a locked door becomes invisible after a while, until you need
to pass through it.
"Still hiding in plain sight, I see," Marta said.
He smiled faintly, though it barely touched his eyes. "You taught me
well."
A pause.
Marta looked at him for a long moment — that familiar ache pressing
behind her sternum like a scar reacting to weather. She didn't need to say it
aloud: I remember.
He didn't need to answer: I wish you
didn't have to.
"Tea?" she offered finally, gesturing toward her little alcove tucked
behind the reception.
"I've missed your tea," Raziel said. "Still using the thyme blend?"
"I added rose hips. Helps with forgetting."
A flicker — something almost like humor crossed his otherwise unreadable
face. "A cruel joke, coming from you."
They sat without ceremony.
She poured. He watched.
It felt like the old days. But it wasn't.
"You heard about her," she said. Not a question.
"I knew before she was born," Raziel replied. He set the teacup down,
untouched. "But I did not expect… this shape
to her life."
"You mean the kindness," Marta murmured. "It disrupts your pattern."
"I mean the mercy," he said quietly. "The way it passed. The way she
carries it."
Marta nodded slowly. "She doesn't know what she is."
Raziel looked up. "She will."
They sat in silence again — not cold silence, but the quiet that forms
between two people who once stood on opposite sides of a divine argument and
survived it.
"How is He?" Marta asked after a time, almost in a whisper. "The
Father."
Raziel blinked, then smiled — not with lips, but eyes. It was the kind
of smile worn by men who'd spent lifetimes in rooms of dusty scrolls and still
believed in things they'd never seen twice.
"He waits by the road," he said, "as He always has. Arms open. No door
locked. No demand but return. Like the father in the story."
Marta chuckled — a brittle sound.
"I've been gone a long time."
"He's not counting."
She looked down at her tea. "And you? Still guarding forgotten things?"
"I don't guard them," Raziel said, almost absently. "I keep them
company."
The candle on the desk flickered again, though no wind passed.
There was more neither of them said.
The wound. The oath. The friend neither could name aloud.
The burden of remembering what the rest of the world had been made to
forget.
"You came for her," Marta said softly.
"No," Raziel said. "I came for you."
She met his eyes.
"To warn me?"
"To remind you." He gestured around them. "This place may be holy in its
own way. But soon, she will outgrow walls. And when that happens—"
"She'll need anchors," Marta finished.
Raziel stood then. Adjusted his cuffs like a man preparing for rain he
could already feel coming.
"She has a terrible path ahead," he said. "But she may also break the
chain. If she lives long enough."
Marta exhaled slowly.
As Raziel turned to go, she called out gently, "You were always good
with riddles."
He paused.
"Then I'll leave you with one," he said. "What happens when a forgotten
thing remembers itself?"
Marta watched him go — not with bitterness, but something like tired
hope.
The candle stilled. The scent of thyme lingered.
And somewhere beyond the stacks, in the dark spaces between known names
and lost ones, the air remembered a name it had once been made to forget.