Elio Freyr: Burn Thy Wounds

Chapter 6: Vanishing Books

The afternoon lecture classes had ended, and instead of going straight to his dormitory, Elio Freyr walked to the hallway towards the Library. 

It was not crowded that time of the day, because most of the students were in the black room to get their afternoon training as it was their schedule for the weekdays. 

Not everyone was interested in training, and it was fine for the school if they chose not to attend every afternoon session, but they were required to attend at least two every week. 

And Elio Freyr was one of those students who didn't like the idea of having training after lectures, instead he had chosen to be alone in the library. 

But the thought of being alone was not possible, because a woman in her invisible form has never left his side ever since. 

"Professor Euls is better than your Professor for the History of Magic. What's his name again? George? Yeah, Professor George. His class is so boring." 

For how many times already since the moment he spent his time with Esther, Elio sighed again. 

With her beside him, his silent world has become too noisy again, just like before. 

"But I really thought I was with another person earlier. Back then, you never skipped classes, not even slept during lectures even though they're boring. But you were sleeping soundly earlier, and you didn't even bother to listen to anything he had said." 

The door to the library was not too far from where they were but it felt ages to be there for Elio while being with his old friend. 

For the past two years, he had lived alone in silence like a shadow in darkness where he never let anyone know where he was. 

He learned to live and distanced himself from anyone who knew him, and there he found his inner peace while being alone. 

The path he has taken was too dark for the past two years while grieving for his loss for his whole family. 

And for that, he needed to make a huge adjustment for the things he was used to, and one of them is to be surrounded by people again, especially his old friends.  Another thing was the adjustment of having a noisy environment and a noisy person beside him. 

Elio stopped in front of the door to the library, and gave her a glance. 

"I want to be alone inside." 

"No worries. I'll be with the others inside." 

He gave her a doubt, but instead of asking, he just pushed the door open. 

It only took him three steps inside the library after he closed the door behind him before his feet automatically stopped. 

In the middle of the reading hall inside the library, six students were seated at a long table, and that caught his full attention. 

There was no one inside the reading hall except for them. 

"Why are they here?" He couldn't contain his baffled self within him, and so he whispered and let Esther hear it. 

"They were assigned to be at the library for the whole week, and to see your expression, you don't have any idea about that." 

"Why?" 

"Don't you know? Books have been missing for the past year, and no one knows why. So they assigned all the class four sections in the library.Class Four-A are assigned here now, except for Ayden and Aislah, who I saw walking towards the Infirmary earlier." 

"That's enough. I want to be alone now." 

"Sure. See you later, El." 

In an instant, Elio became all by himself again as Esther jogged towards their table and left him alone. 

Elio took the nearest staircase from his left and decided to get to the next storey of the library to avoid them. 

The bookshelves were twice his height that extended to the ceiling. They were filled with books, but the gaps were just too many not to be noticed. 

The first shelf he stopped by was the shelf for History books where the gaps of every book had gotten too many compared to the other shelves he had walked past by. 

He stepped closer to the books, and touched the book on the end of the bookshelf. He then let his hands slide to that line of books as he moved slowly towards the other end of the bookshelf, touching each book that he could. 

It was his way to find a particular book that would give him an answer to the thing he wanted to know, but unfortunately, the thing he was looking for was not on that line of books.

He stopped as soon as he reached the other end of the bookshelf. 

Elio Freyr let his eyes travel through the rest of that shelf in front of him while he stayed on where  he was standing. 

What he was looking for was not there, and he could feel it. His mind did the job for him to look for each book, but he found nothing. 

He was about to get to the next shelf when he stopped all of a sudden. Furrows formed in between his brows as he stared straight in front of him. Something had appeared suddenly in front that got all his attention. 

"Stop." Elio maintained his voice low. 

Through the History Bookshelf, books were floating and vanishing in front of him from different layers of the bookshelf.

No one could ever notice what was happening if seen from someone's normal vision, but with Elio's everything was so crystal clear. 

"What are you all doing?" 

A book has fallen to the ground as it slipped from the hands of one of them. 

Their attention was now all directed to Elio Freyr who hadn't moved a little from where he was standing. 

"Can he see us?" One of them asked as he stared in shock at him. 

There were five of them in front of that bookshelf, and all of them had stopped just to look at Elio - the very first person who had seen them. 

Elio walked towards the book that had fallen on the ground and picked it up while others were just watching him. 

"History of Wizards and Sorcery." He read the words on the cover that made everyone gasping beside him. 

"He can, and this is bad."