Chapter 6

For once, I was grateful.

No burning palace. No mysterious doors. No princess wandering around an ancient library while my sleeping brain apparently worked overtime to make my life difficult.

Just my bedroom, my blanket, and the irritating sound of my phone vibrating against the bedside table.

I reached over and silenced it.

Then I stayed where I was.

I had spent the previous evening telling myself that the dreams didn't matter. They were dreams, after all. Strange ones, certainly, but dreams weren't evidence of anything.

I intended to stick to that explanation.

Unfortunately, there was one small problem.

I wanted to know what happened next.

I wanted to know why Seraphina had been drawing a city she'd apparently never seen. I wanted to know what the message in the underground archive meant. And, most annoyingly, I wanted to know what was behind the door in the western wing.

I rolled onto my back. "No."

The ceiling offered no opinion.

  "I'm not doing this today."

I got out of bed.

Twenty minutes later, I was searching for my university ID while my bag sat open directly in front of me.

Apparently, I was also getting worse at being a normal person.

Daniel was eating breakfast when I entered the kitchen.

He glanced at the clock. "You're early."

I opened the cupboard. "Is that a problem?"

  "No. I'm just surprised." He said 

  "Well, enjoy the experience. It may never happen again."

He smiled and pushed a plate toward me.

I'd barely sat down when he asked, "What are you planning to do after your lectures?"

  "Go to the library."

  "Again?" He asked 

I looked up.

He raised both hands. "I didn't say anything."

  "You said 'again' in a very judgmental way."

  "I was asking a question." He said 

  "And I answered it."

He shook his head, amused.

I ate quickly, checked that I had everything, and left.

The moment I reached the university gates, I made a decision.

I wasn't going to spend the entire day searching for a kingdom that might not exist.

I would give myself thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes to investigate the name, check a few historical records, and establish whether there was any reasonable connection between my dreams and reality.

If I found nothing, I'd stop.

That seemed fair.

I even believed myself.

My first two lectures passed without incident.

I took notes, answered questions, and completed the small exercise our lecturer assigned. I didn't write Aurelia in the margins of anything.

Progress.

During the break, I checked my phone.

I'd received a message from my friend asking whether I'd finished our assignment.

I replied that I had.

Then, before I could reconsider, I opened the browser and typed the name again.

*Aurelia — ancient kingdom.*

I scrolled through the results.

It was still just fictional kingdoms, references to ancient places, and pages about names with similar origins. Nothing matched the palace in my dreams again. 

I tried searching for Elaris, a name that i think it sound similar to Aurelia for some unknown reason. Don't ask why.

That produced even less, not that i was expecting much.

I stared at the screen a little frustrated 

  "Aghaaa where can i find about Aurelia from?"

A student walking past glanced at me.

I immediately pretended to be very interested in my phone.

After a moment, I opened my notes and checked the list I'd written the previous night and close it.

I considered changing the spelling again, but I stopped myself.

There was a difference between investigating something and throwing random words into a search engine until one happened to look familiar.

I locked my phone.

Thirty minutes, I reminded myself.

I hadn't even reached the library yet.

The university library was quieter than usual.

I found a seat near the back, set down my bag, and opened my laptop.

This time, I approached the problem differently.

Instead of searching for the princess, I looked for historical archives and collections containing records of forgotten kingdoms.

I found digitized manuscripts, historical catalogues, old maps, and academic articles about how civilizations disappeared from written records.

Most were irrelevant.

Some discussed kingdoms whose names had changed over centuries. Others examined how wars, political changes, and the destruction of libraries could leave gaps in history.

I read a few pages.

The subject was interesting, even if it had nothing to do with my dream.

One article explained that historians sometimes had to reconstruct a kingdom's history from references in neighboring states, surviving inscriptions, or documents written long after the kingdom had disappeared.

I paused.

That was the sort of evidence I needed.

If Aurelia had existed, perhaps its name survived somewhere outside its own records.

I searched for references to Aurelia in neighbouring kingdoms.

Nothing convincing.

I tried Elaris, because why not,

Still nothing.

I searched the names together.

Still nothing.

I leaned back in my chair.

Thirty minutes.

I checked the clock.

I'd spent nearly an hour.

  "Excellent," I muttered. "Another successful negotiation with myself."

I should have stopped.

Instead, I opened a historical map collection.

I wasn't looking for anything specific anymore. I was simply checking whether any old maps contained a name similar to Aurelia.

I examined maps of Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and several regions farther east.

Different languages. Different borders. Different spellings.

Nothing.

The palace in my dream had been too distinctive to forget. Its architecture didn't immediately resemble one specific building I'd studied, and I couldn't place the landscape around it.

If anything, it felt like a place assembled from different architectural periods.

But that didn't mean anything.

Dreams weren't required to obey architectural history.

I was about to close the final map when I noticed a reference in an accompanying catalogue.

It mentioned a collection of unidentified historical fragments held in a university archive.

The description was vague.

#Several fragments had no confirmed origin, and some contained names that researchers had been unable to connect to a known location.#

I sat forward.

That was worth checking.

I opened the catalogue entry and read the available description.

There was no mention of Seraphina, Aurelia, or Elaris.

Still, the possibility of unidentified records interested me.

I followed the reference to the collection's main page.

Then I discovered the disappointing part.

The digitized catalogue was incomplete.

Some entries were accessible only to researchers working with the physical collection.

I closed the page and rubbed my eyes.

I wasn't going to travel across the country because of a dream.

Nor was I going to pretend I'd discovered something important when all I'd found was an incomplete catalogue.

I closed my laptop.

My thirty minutes had become almost two hours.

The investigation was over.

For today.

I was packing my things when I noticed a book on the shelf beside my table.

Its title caught my attention.

+The Lost Courts: Royal Archives and the Kingdoms They Remembered.+

I pulled it out.

The book was older than most of the others around it, though not ancient. Its cover was worn at the edges, and a library label had been attached to the spine.

I opened the contents page.

The chapters covered royal archives, destroyed records, disputed genealogies, and the political reasons some rulers removed their predecessors from official histories.

It wasn't a book about Aurelia.

I knew that before I even began reading.

But I borrowed it anyway.

Not because I expected to find Seraphina's name.

I wanted to understand how an entire kingdom could disappear from the historical record, if such a thing were possible.

That was a reasonable research question.

A perfectly ordinary one.

I repeated that to myself all the way out of the library.

By the time I got home, Daniel had already returned from his errands.

He was sitting on the couch with a book open in his lap.

I stopped in the doorway. "Do you ever do anything besides read?"

He looked up. "Do you ever arrive home without questioning my hobbies?"

  "Not yet."

  "Then I suppose neither of us is changing." He said 

I laughed and put my bag down.

He glanced at the book in my hand. "What's that?"

  "Something for research."

  "What subject?"

I hesitated for just a moment. "History."

It wasn't a lie.

Not entirely.

Daniel nodded and returned to his book.

I went to my room, placed the borrowed book on my desk, and opened my notebook.

The list was waiting for me.

I read through it again.

Then I added a new question.

Could a kingdom disappear from history without disappearing from the world?

I stared at the sentence.

It sounded dramatic.

I crossed it out.

Then I wrote:

How do historians identify kingdoms with missing records?

Better.

Much better.

I opened the book and began reading.

For the next hour, I learned about destroyed archives, incomplete genealogies, and the difficulty of distinguishing historical fact from later legend.

I found no reference to Aurelia.

I hadn't expected to.

But one idea stayed with me.

When records disappeared, the people who studied them didn't automatically conclude that the events described had never happened.

They looked for other evidence.

Inscriptions.

Letters.

Objects.

References made by outsiders.

Something independent of the missing record.

I closed the book.

If I wanted to take my own questions seriously, I would need more than a dream.

I would need something that existed when I was awake.

Something I could examine.

Something that didn't vanish when I opened my eyes.

I wrote that down.

Then I stared at the sentence for a while.

It was the first useful decision I'd made since this whole thing started.

That night, I was careful not to spend hours thinking about Seraphina.

I finished my assignment, ate dinner with Daniel, and watched part of a programme he insisted was interesting.

It wasn't.

I told him so.

He told me I had no appreciation for quality entertainment.

We argued about it until the programme ended.

By then, I was tired enough to forget the conversation before I reached my room.

I changed, set my alarm, and placed my notebook on the bedside table.

I didn't open it.

I didn't search for another name.

I simply turned off the light.

For a while, I listened to the ordinary sounds of the apartment.

A distant vehicle passed outside.

Someone in a neighbouring flat closed a door.

The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen.

Then the sounds faded into the background.

My thoughts grew slower.

My eyes closed.

And sleep took me.

I was standing in a room filled with books.

The underground archive.

I recognized it immediately.

The same stone walls. The same tall shelves. The same narrow windows set high above the floor.

But the room was empty.

I walked between the shelves.

Dust floated in the pale light.

At the far end of the room, a door stood open.

I hadn't seen it before.

I approached cautiously.

Beyond it was a smaller chamber containing a long wooden table and several chairs. Papers had been scattered across the tabletop.

A lamp stood near the wall.

Its flame was steady.

I looked around.

  "Hello?" My voice echoed faintly.

No answer.

I stepped into the chamber.

A book lay open on the table.

The pages were covered in writing.

I moved closer.

The letters were unfamiliar, but the page contained something I recognized.

A drawing of a modern city.

Tall buildings.

Roads.

Lights.

The same impossible world Seraphina had discovered in the archive.

I looked at the drawing for a long moment.

Then I noticed the page beside it.

A message had been written across the top.

‘If this reaches you, the barrier is weakening.’

I frowned.

The barrier?

I leaned closer, trying to read the lines beneath it.

The writing shifted.

Not literally.

My eyes simply couldn't hold the unfamiliar letters in focus. Every time I tried to understand a sentence, the details blurred.

I stepped back.

  "That's helpful."

Footsteps sounded outside the chamber.

I turned.

Seraphina entered the archive.

She looked about fourteen.

Her hair was tied back, and she wore a simple dress with long sleeves. She carried a small book against her chest.

She stopped when she saw the open pages.

For a moment, she looked relieved.

Then she checked the doorway behind her.

  "Not here," she whispered.

She hurried to the table and pulled out a chair.

I moved aside as she sat down.

She opened the book she'd brought and turned to a blank page.

Then she took a pen from her sleeve.

I stared at it.

A pen.

Not a quill.

Not a piece of charcoal.

An ordinary-looking pen.

Seraphina held it above the paper.

She seemed to be thinking about what to write.

Finally, she lowered the tip.

Can you hear me?

I read the words.

My stomach tightened.

She wasn't writing a diary entry.

She was asking someone a question.

Seraphina waited, staring at the page.

Nothing happened.

After a moment, she let out a quiet breath and closed the book.

  "I knew it was foolish." She stood and returned the pen to her sleeve.

Then she gathered the other papers and tucked them beneath the book.

I watched her leave the chamber.

I wanted to follow her.

But my attention remained on the open book on the table.

The message was still there.

‘If this reaches you, the barrier is weakening.’

I looked toward the doorway through which Seraphina had disappeared.

What barrier?

And who was she trying to contact?

I turned back to the table.

The book was gone.

I froze.

I was certain I'd been looking directly at it.

I checked the tabletop.

Empty.

The papers had vanished too.

Only the lamp remained, burning quietly beside the wall.

I took a step backward.

Then another.

Somewhere deep within the archive, a clock began to tick.

I turned toward the sound.

There was no clock in the room.

The ticking grew louder.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I woke up.

My bedroom was dark.

I lay still, listening to my own breathing.

For several seconds, I couldn't remember why I was awake.

Then the archive came back to me.

The message.

The barrier.

Seraphina asking whether someone could hear her.

I sat up and reached for my notebook.

My phone screen lit the room as I checked the time.

4:32 a.m.

I opened the notebook and began writing before the details could fade.

Archive.

Seraphina, about fourteen.

She wrote: Can you hear me?

The barrier is weakening.

I stopped.

The last sentence bothered me more than the others.

I hadn't known there was a barrier.

Neither had I known that Seraphina was trying to contact someone.

Until now, I'd assumed the dreams were simply showing me pieces of her life.

But the message had been written for someone.

Someone who might have been on the other side of whatever she called a barrier.

I put down my pen.

  "Okay," I whispered. "That's new and creepy."

I looked at the page again.

Then I closed the notebook.

There was no point searching for answers at four in the morning.

I lay back down and pulled the blanket over myself.

My alarm was set for seven.

I needed sleep.

I closed my eyes.

But just before I drifted off, one thought returned.

Seraphina had asked whether someone could hear her.

She hadn't looked frightened when she wrote it.

She'd looked hopeful.

And for some reason, that bothered me.