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[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/R26JXiA.png[/img][/center]

[color=a187be]Time:[/color] It’s hard to tell in the dank, dark castle dungeons
[color=a187be]Location:[/color] Alibeth is telling her offspring the story: the flashback itself is in a shantytown in Krasivaya.
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[center][color=red]FLASHBACK CONTINUED[/color][/center]


The book did not corrupt Polina in one moment. It ate away at her the way rot does on a floorboard until one day you step where you always have, and the wood gives way.

At first, Alibeth told herself she was being unfair. She watched her sister at the candle, hunched over the pages with that fevered look, and mistook it for diligence, and the way she licked her lips before sounding out a line of script for courage.

After all, they had lived their whole lives beside death and called it ordinary. If a book offered even a sliver of relief, was it really wicked to reach for it?

So Alibeth watched. Then it began with Polina’s sleep.

At first, she stayed awake longer, as if bargaining with exhaustion. She insisted she was fine even when her words started to blur into each other.

The next change came in how Polina looked at their siblings.

In the beginning, she’d used the book the way poor children use anything precious—shared it too eagerly, desperate to make the miracle belong to all of them. It had been easy to forgive the glow in Polina’s eyes then. Joy was rare in their house; it startled them whenever it appeared.

Then one day Alibeth decided to hide the book.

She waited until Polina finally dozed with her head bowed over the pages and slid it out from beneath her hand. She wrapped it in cloth and tucked it under a loose floorboard beneath their bed. Then she went back to tending their mother’s forehead with water, rocking the baby, and portioning broth into cups.

Polina woke less than an hour later. The room was dark except for torchlight leaking through the cracks, but Alibeth could feel Polina’s gaze.[color=#F4C2C2]“Where is it?”[/color] Polina demanded, voice ragged.

Alibeth didn’t lie. Lying to Polina had never worked. [color=#A187BE]“Away,”[/color] Alibeth said, keeping her eyes on the baby because if she looked at Polina too long, she might forget Polina was still her sister.

[color=#F4C2C2]“You think you can keep it from me?”[/color]

[color=#A187BE]“I think I can keep it from killing you.”[/color]

Polina stepped closer. The floorboard creaked under her weight, and Alibeth noted the sound despite everything. It annoyed her—her body reacting to Polina as if she were a threat.

[color=#F4C2C2]“I can fix it,”[/color] Polina whispered. [color=#F4C2C2]“I can fix her.”[/color]

Their mother coughed in her sleep, wet and ugly, as if the word fix had summoned the sickness itself. Alibeth stood slowly, then she set the baby down with care and wiped her hands on her skirt.

[color=#A187BE]“No.”[/color] She kept her voice steady. [color=#A187BE]“You would have done so already if you meant to.”[/color]

Polina’s eyes flashed. [color=#F4C2C2]“But you’re refusing it.”[/color] Her voice cracked with outrage. [color=#F4C2C2][i]“You’d rather watch her die?”[/i][/color]

Alibeth held her ground. [color=#A187BE]“I’d rather watch her die than watch you become—”[/color] She stopped. She still didn’t have a word for what she could already see forming.

Polina’s breath shuddered. For a moment, there was a flicker of the sister Alibeth knew—the girl who was exhausted, terrified, and desperate enough to do anything.

[color=#F4C2C2]“You don’t understand.”[/color]

Then Polina went to the bed and knelt. Her fingers slid beneath the loose board.

Alibeth moved to stop her, but Polina didn’t even look up. She simply spoke quietly to herself, and next, the room shifted. The candle flame bent. The baby began to wail. Pressure bloomed behind Alibeth’s eyes. Polina’s hand came up with the book, and when she stood, her pupils were so dilated the amber looked drowned.

Alibeth stared and understood with sick clarity: the book was no longer an object Polina carried. It was a limb.

[color=#F4C2C2]“You can’t hide it from me,”[/color] Polina whispered, pleased.

Alibeth’s fingers curled at her sides. [color=#A187BE]“What did you just do?”[/color]

Polina blinked slowly. [color=#F4C2C2]“I didn’t do anything.”[/color] The lie came easily. [color=#F4C2C2]“You’re just… scared.”[/color]

Alibeth wanted to slap her. She didn’t waste her hands on gestures that changed nothing.
[color=#A187BE][i]“You’re going to stop.”[/i][/color] Her voice lowered. [color=#A187BE]“We’re going to burn it.”[/color]

Polina’s lips parted and Alibeth thought she might cry.

Instead, Polina smiled and it made Alibeth’s blood go cold.
[color=#F4C2C2]“You can’t burn it,”[/color] Polina murmured. [color=#F4C2C2]“It’s already in me.”[/color]

After that, Alibeth stopped negotiating like they were still children.

She tried to outlast her, watching Polina through the days the way she watched the street for danger. She kept the younger siblings away when the book lay open. She assigned chores strategically, kept bodies moving. She forced Polina to eat when her hands shook too badly to hold a cup. She put Polina to bed like she used to put the sick ones to bed.

Polina became worse anyway.

She began to speak to herself. At first, it sounded like rehearsing—sounding out the book’s strange instructions—but then Alibeth heard pauses, as if Polina waited for an answer. Sometimes Polina laughed low in her throat at nothing. Sometimes she hissed like someone had insulted her.

Alibeth’s attempts to stop her grew more direct, and more dangerous. She tried to take the book when Polina slept. She hid it under a loose stone in the alley, only to find it back beneath Polina’s pillow by nightfall. Polina began to treat Alibeth like a nuisance.

The youngest brother started wetting the bed again. The baby screamed whenever Polina opened the book. Their mother’s cough worsened. The house felt colder even when the weather warmed, as if the book had pulled heat into itself and refused to give it back. Alibeth began sleeping with one eye open.

And then came the evening Alibeth tried to take the book for the last time.

It was late and their mother’s breathing had gone shallow. One of the younger sisters slept with her head in Alibeth’s lap. Polina sat by the candle, reading too fast. There was dried blood at the corner of her nose.

Alibeth reached out and placed her hand over the page. [color=#A187BE]“Polina.”[/color] Her voice came out softer than she meant. [color=#A187BE]“Enough.”[/color]

Polina’s gaze lifted to Alibeth’s hand. [color=#F4C2C2]“Don’t.”[/color]

Alibeth didn’t move, and Polina didn’t push her away. The candle guttered. The room went icy. That pressure bloomed behind Alibeth’s eyes, and her knees almost buckled. The child in her lap whimpered awake, confused and frightened.

[b][i][color=#F4C2C2]“Move.”[/color][/i][/b]

Alibeth’s hand jerked violently, and pain flashed up her wrist, causing her to gasp.

[color=#F4C2C2]“You see?”[/color] she said in a bright tone. [color=#F4C2C2]“It listens.”[/color]

[color=#A187BE]“You’re hurting me.”[/color]

Polina blinked. [color=#F4C2C2]“I’m stopping you,”[/color] she corrected.

The next morning, the book was gone. And so was Polina.

She sat up that morning, heart hammering, eyes scanning the room. The space where Polina slept was empty. At first, Alibeth told herself Polina had gone to fetch water, that she’d stepped outside to breathe.  Alibeth and stepped over the sleeping bodies of her siblings without waking them, and went to the door. Outside, the street was quiet—eerily so. 

Polina had taken the book. And whatever she had become, [i]she was now loose in the world.[/i]

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