A Fire in the Darkness

The City of Shadows

The clouds hung low and heavy over Edinburgh, casting its spires and domes into an endless sea of gray. Coal smoke clung to the air, and the people, wrapped in identical cloaks, moved like shadows through the streets.

Here, individuality was a crime, and knowledge was dangerous.

I hurried through the city, my footsteps lost in the whispers of fear that lingered in every alley. My apartment—a space both haven and prison—waited for me at the end of a narrow stairwell. But no matter how many walls surrounded me, I could not escape my own truth.

Would my grandmother still love me if she knew?

It was a question I dared not ask aloud, a ghostly echo haunting every reflection I passed.

And then there was the Wolf.

I saw him before I heard him. A man standing before a fire, feeding it with books—words swallowed by flames, knowledge reduced to ash. His eyes gleamed yellow in the firelight, and his unshaven scruff and broad frame made him look more beast than man.

I hated him, this man who destroyed history with such ease, who erased ideas as if they had never existed.

But when his gaze latched onto mine, I knew—he had seen my secret.

He knew.

The Flames Take Everything

The crackling of burning parchment was broken by a scream.

My grandmother.

I turned just in time to see one of the Wolf’s men dragging my grandmother’s precious letters from our building.

She pleaded, her frail hands grasping at the man’s cloak.

“Please, they’re harmless! They’re all I have of him.”

The Wolf took the letters in his calloused hands, studying them for only a moment before tossing them into the fire.

The flames swallowed them whole.

She collapsed into me, sobbing, but I knew—if we fought, if we resisted, they would take more than just letters.

“We have to let them go,” I whispered.

The Wolf chuckled, his teeth bared in something between amusement and warning.

He could have taken her then. Locked her away in the castle prison where no one returned from.

Instead, his gaze shifted back to me.

“You seem like more of a threat to the city than she.”

And just like that, he chose me instead.

His grip on my cloak was iron, his presence a storm of heat and smoke as he dragged me up the stairwell of my building.

I knew what he was after.

He would find my mother’s diary.

And when he did, I would burn with it.

A Wolf’s Secrets

The Wolf tore through my belongings, scattering them like discarded memories.

He was looking for something, and we both knew he would find it soon.

My mother’s diary was hidden inside my pillow—the last link to her, the last truth I had.

I should have been afraid.

But as I watched him, I felt something else.

A flicker of understanding. A fire of excitement.

“Do you ever read them first?” I asked, my voice steady.

For the first time, his hands hesitated.

I pressed forward. “You do. But you can never tell anyone, can you?”

His fist clenched. “Are you saying I would commit treason?”

I smiled. “I think you already have.”

His breath was hot against my skin, his presence overpowering, but he wasn’t searching the floor anymore—he was searching me.

I took his calloused hand in mine. The hand that had destroyed knowledge—and, perhaps, the same hand that had saved some of it.

“What was your favorite?” I whispered.

For a long moment, he didn’t speak.

Then, in a voice I never expected, he answered:

“Let me show you.”

Beneath Edinburgh’s Streets

We ran through the labyrinthine streets, slipping past the burning books, past the smoke and the ruins of words lost forever.

The Wolf led me into Mary King’s Close, into the forgotten underground of Edinburgh.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

His voice was quiet, hesitant. “A place where books still live.”

I followed him into a darkened vault, and there—a treasure beyond imagination.

Books. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Hidden away from the fires.

I traced their spines with my fingers, memorizing their titles, their touch, their scent.

He had saved them.

The Wolf—the monster I had feared and despised—had been hoarding knowledge in the shadows.

He was not a destroyer. He was a survivor.

I turned to him, a hundred questions burning inside me. But before I could speak, footsteps echoed through the tunnels.

My grandmother.

The Knife in the Darkness

She emerged from the shadows, knife raised, her eyes filled with betrayal.

“My grandson would never leave Edinburgh,” she spat.

The Wolf raised his hands. “Please, we’ll go. You’ll never have to see us again.”

But she lunged, plunging the blade into his shoulder.

He groaned, stumbling backward, blood darkening his cloak.

I caught him, pressing my hand to the wound.

For the first time, I saw my grandmother clearly—not as my protector, not as my last tie to family, but as a cage I could never escape.

I would not let her trap me again.

With a book in my hands, I struck—knocking the knife from her grip, shoving her into the stacks of books she could never understand.

Then we ran.

Through the vaults, through the tunnels, past the voices of a world that no longer mattered.

We stumbled into the night, where the stars blinked down at us through a canopy of leaves.

We were free.

A Fire That Could Not Be Put Out

The Wolf groaned in pain, his body heavy against mine, but he smiled.

“We made it.”

I nodded. “We did.”

The books we could not carry remained in the vault, but the words were inside of us now.

The world we had left behind had tried to erase us, to silence us, to bury us beneath ashes.

But we had become something greater.

We were the fire they could never extinguish.

And together, we would write a new story.