I. The Arrival

Diya krishnan had seen many strange things working at the Mahadevan Rare Bookstore-but none like the book that arrived that Tuesday morning.

It came in plain brown parcel, no return address, sealed with a wax emblem that had been partially rubbed off. The handwriting on the label was delicate, curling like smoke.

Inside was a book that reeked faintly of camphor and burnt paper.

The cover bore no title. Its spine was frayed and bound in dark leather that seemed to throb faintly under her fingertips. She opened it carefully, flipping through brittles pages yellowed with age.

The pages were mostly blank.

Except for one.

Near the centre, written in faded ink and an unfamiliar script,was a single line:

"You do not find this book.
The book finds you."

Diya blinked. The words were moving letters curling, shifting,as if they were alive.

She dropped the book, her heart hammering in her chest.

From the space between the pages, a fine black ash drifted onto her desk.

*****

II. The Previous Owner

Diya slid the book back into the parcel and left it untouched for the rest of the day. But that night, something followed her home.

It wasn't just the feeling of being watched it was the smell. The faint scent of signed cloth, of old incense and something far more ancient. More...decayed.

That night, she dreamed of fire.

In the dream, she stood in an old haveli, it's corridors endless and lit only by oil lamps. A shadow paced behind her. And in the centre of a great, crumbling library, she found the same book lying open, it's pages smoldering with black flame.

The next morning, she woke to soot beneath her fingernails.

Determined to learn more, she went to store's backroom-the archive. It was a narrow, airless place cluttered with seller logs and donation slips from past 50 years. She checked the most recent shipment entries but found no record of the parcel.

Then she tried something more desperate: she flipped through the lost inventory ledger - a handwritten book where they tracked all undocumented or unsold rare items.

And there it was.

Item #407: Untitled. Black leather. Tamil incantations on interior leaf. Origin unknown.
Previous owner : revathi shanmugam
(Deceased, 1976).
Returned by : ???

Diya's breath caught.

Revathi shanmugam.

She'd heard that name before -from the urban legends that circled. A reclusive writer who vanished without trace in the 70s. Said to have studied forbidden texts. Said to have gone mad.

Said to have turned alive.

Diya's hands shook as she flipped the mysterious book back open.

This time, more words had appeared on the page:

"To see the truth, rub the ash across your eyes."

She slammed it shut.

But as she did, she noticed something strange on her hand, fine black powder had clung to her skin. It shimmered subtly in the light.

And in the mirror behind her desk, her reflection was smiling.

But she was not.

*****

III. The Reader's Curse

Diya didn't go home that night.

Instead, she stayed in the archive room of Mahadevan Rare Books, the strange volume laid out before her like a wound waiting to bleed. The lights above flickered, their hum low and sinister. Every so often, she thought she heard footsteps above, but the bookstore had closed hours ago.

She took a breath. Her fingers trembled as she brushed the ash from the book onto her fingertips and without quote knowing why, she pressed it to her eyelids.

It burned cold.

And then she saw.

She was standing in a circle of fire.

All around her were others -specters of men and women, all with blackened mouths and ash in their eyes. They whispered in forgotten tongues, mouthing words she almost understood.

They held books.

Hundreds of them.

Each one bore the same leather binding.
Each one open to different pages, different moments in time.

And then she saw revathi shanmugam.

Her eyes were gone, sockets smeared with ink. But she smiled -broken and beautiful.

"The story wants to be told," she whispered. "We wrote it. Now it writes us."

The flames surged.

Diya woke on the floor of the bookstore gasping, vision blurry. Her watch has stopped at 3:33 AM. The book was still there, open, its pages blackened but not burned.

But now she understood.

It wasn't a book.

It was a trap -an ancient tamil ritual disguised as literature. A grimoire of curse stories that fed on memory and breath. Anyone who read it too long was written into its pages, piece by piece, forgotten by the world and remembered only in the ink.

And she had opened it too wide.

As dawn broke, diya packed a small bag and wrote a note for her colleague, Varun:

Don't follow me. Burn this if you're smart. But if you can still hear me, I'm going to find the root of this book -the first scribe. The one who made it a prison. If I can find the story's end, maybe I can write the rest of us out.
- Diya Krishnan

She left the book on the desk, sealed in iron chains

But by the time Varun arrived that morning, the note was gone.

The book was open.

And a new entry had appeared on the first page:

"Diya krishnan, Reader #408. Still writing."

*****

If you visit Mahadevan Rare Books today, you won't find diya listed on the employee roster. Ask about her, and the current manager will give you a confused look.

They'll say there never was anyone by that name.

But behind the register, on the highest shelf, there's a locked glass case containing a book with no title, bound in black leather.

Sometimes -late at night -visitors swear they hear pages turning on their own.

And if you get too close, you might notice ash beneath your fingernails the next morning.

The End.

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