A Fire in the Shadows

The city of Edinburgh had become a mausoleum of conformity. Stone towers rose into the ashen sky like gravestones, and every breath was laced with the smoke of burning words. Silence wasn’t peace—it was control. To speak freely was to rebel. To read was to risk your life.

I lived beneath this suffocating sky in a cramped apartment carved into the city’s stone heart. It was both a shelter and a cell. I could not show my true self here. The city punished difference like a disease.

Only one person in the world had ever loved me without condition—my grandmother. Her wrinkled hands had taught me how to read, how to think, and how to hold onto the past. She gave me the last link to my parents: my mother’s diary. Hidden within a pillow, the pages whispered a world long extinguished.

But danger had eyes. The Wolf always watched.

No one knew his real name. He was the government’s executioner, the destroyer of books and thought. With a beard like brambles and gold-flecked eyes that burned hotter than the fires he stoked, he was feared like a myth. He led the raids, tossing ancient texts into flame without flinching.

And still, something about him fascinated me. His gaze, when it met mine, didn’t just threaten—it questioned.

One evening, smoke rose thick into the air. I turned the corner to see a pyre blazing near my apartment. The Wolf’s men had raided our building. My heart froze as I heard her scream—my grandmother.

I ran. Flames lit her cheeks as she clawed at a soldier holding my grandfather’s letters.

“They’re harmless!” she cried. “They’re all I have!”

The Wolf examined the papers. With a flick of his wrist, he sentenced them to fire. My grandmother collapsed against me, weeping.

He could have taken her. Locked her away. But his eyes lingered on me instead.

“You’re the threat,” he said softly.

That night, he came to my door.

He stormed my apartment, rifling through drawers, tipping shelves. He was hunting the diary. I could feel his presence like a storm behind me as I stood silent.

And then I spoke. “Do you ever read them?”

He paused.

“The books you burn. Do you read them first?”

A bowl shattered as he turned sharply toward my bed.

“You do,” I said. “But you keep it hidden, like I do.”

He stared at me. I stepped closer.

“You destroy what you understand too well.”

His eyes lowered. He found the diary, tumbling from the pillow like a confession. But he didn’t reach for it.

“Tell me about the ones you kept,” I whispered.

He looked up. “Let me show you.”

Before I could respond, my grandmother burst in, a knife in her trembling hands.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “You corrupt my grandson?”

The Wolf grabbed my arm and we fled.

Down ancient tunnels we ran, through the ruins beneath the city—the old closes and forgotten vaults. There, deep in the earth, he revealed a chamber filled with books.

Hundreds of them.

He had been saving them all this time. The Wolf, the destroyer, was also a guardian.

“These are the ones I couldn’t let go,” he said.

I wept. I opened covers like unlocking treasure. I wanted to read every word, to know every soul that had once written freely.

But footsteps echoed. My grandmother appeared again, knife raised. She stabbed him in the shoulder before I could stop her.

He didn’t retaliate.

“You’ll never take him from me,” she cried.

I couldn’t let her drag me back to the darkness. Not now.

I knocked the knife from her hand with the hardback diary and shoved her aside. Then I caught the Wolf before he fell.

We ran again, blood soaking his sleeve, hearts thundering in time.

The tunnels ended beneath trees and stars. The forest welcomed us with its open sky. The prison of the city was behind us.

He leaned against me, weak but alive.

“Are we free?” he asked.

“For the first time,” I whispered.

And we disappeared into the wilderness, fire no longer something to fear—but something we carried inside us, ready to light a new world.