Michael and Lena uncover a strange book in the university library and are thrown into another era, only to realise they have not arrived alone.
The university library was nearly empty, the kind of empty that made every rustle sound deliberate. Rain tapped softly against the high windows, and the old lamps cast a yellow pool over the long oak table where Michael and Lena were buried in exam notes.
Lena was the first to notice the book. It had been wedged half-hidden between two battered history volumes, its dark cover smooth with age and stamped with faint golden letters that caught the light when she tilted it. She frowned. "I don't remember seeing this in the catalogue."
Michael leaned over, already intrigued. "Then open it."
She gave him a look that was half warning, half curiosity, and slipped her fingers under the cover.
The lights went out.
For one stunned heartbeat, the library vanished into blackness. Then the book flared open in a blast of white light so fierce it swallowed the table, the shelves, the silence, everything. Michael heard Lena gasp, felt the floor lurch away beneath him, and reached for her just as the light tore through them.
When the world settled again, he was lying in grass warm from the sun.
He lifted his head slowly. The air smelled of earth and smoke instead of dust and old paper. Birds were calling somewhere overhead. Around him, tall grass moved in ripples across an open meadow, and beyond it stood a line of trees thick and dark against a bright sky.
Lena was already sitting up, pale-faced and staring.
"Michael..."
He turned. A few feet away, half-buried in the sand at the edge of the grass, lay the book.
She snatched it up before he could speak. On the first page, written in a careful hand, was a single date.
1472.
Michael’s mouth went dry. In the distance came the faint clatter of hooves, the murmur of voices, and the creak of wood wheels on a road they could not yet see. They moved instinctively toward a boulder and crouched behind it, peering through the grass as a group of riders passed across the meadow in heavy cloaks and rough-woven clothes.
"This is impossible," Michael whispered. His voice sounded too loud, too modern, in that ancient place. "We can't have--"
Lena gripped his arm. Not hard. Hard enough.
Her eyes were fixed past the trees.
At first he saw nothing. Then, between the trunks, two yellow points caught the light.
They did not blink.
The meadow seemed to go still around them. Even the birds had gone silent. The grass along the edge of the trees shifted, not with the wind, but with something moving through it. Slow. Patient.
And whatever it was, it had started coming closer.