Book Still Breathing Novels & Stories

The room exhaled. Not metaphorically. The force that had bent the air to ignite lungs full of fuel, to tense wings on unthinking command, took its toll on one final, unwilling exhalation. The humming of walls faded. The floor lost its sense of potential fracture beneath the weight of what might have occurred. The Book was nowhere to be seen. But it was not destroyed. It just disappeared and is inside Allistair's consciousness. Allistair felt it, second heart rate, erring in pace, erring in touch, palpable nonetheless. No screaming now. No scratching. Wrapping himself around something fragile, treacherous, and ominously familiar.

The steady rhythm, of her breathing beneath his palm is the most comforting sound he had ever known. “I am getting used to having you around all the time,” Oliver confessed softly. “The apartment feels different when you are not here.” Harper kisses him lightly on the cheek. “Yeah, this feels natural. Comfortable. A good start,” she said softly. The apartment settles into a peaceful quiet, the only sounds being the soft rhythm of their breathing and the occasional creak of the old building settling around them. Outside, city life continues its late-night hum– distant sirens, a car door slamming, the muffled laughter from a nearby bar– but inside their sanctuary, everything is still and calm.

That night, I tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. I finally got up to go downstairs for some water. As I walked past Brandon's room, I heard him ranting angrily inside. "System, no matter how I hint at him with the comments, he just won't take the bait! I spent so long scripting those lies, yet they're completely useless!" he hissed. "The male lead has most likely awakened his self-awareness. However, you still have a chance now. If you keep working at it, you might be able to turn things around.

I look at her from the corner of my eyes, her lifeless form singing away. Is that what losing a soulmate does to someone? Something heavy settles in the pit of my stomach. A current goes through my hand. I jump, back away from the bookshelf, where my fingers were skimming overbooks. “If the bird won’t sing, Mama will buy you a ring~” I reach out to touch the books again. Was that just my imagination— Another current goes through me. Not painful, but rather, a dull vibration. I pull the book out, a small, worn diary. It’s bound with leather, and the pages have yellowed with time. It’s feel like a living thing in my hands, warm and alive.

BOOK 3: Chapter 21: A Dangerous Addiction She returns back to her room with a guilt-ridden heart. Her steps are uneven, unsteady, her breath shallow and trembling. The door clicks shut behind her, and she leans her full weight against it, exhaling like she's just escaped something lethal. Her eyes drift closed. Inhale. Exhale. Again. Her chest rises and falls in uneven waves as she tries to cool the fire scorching through her veins.

"Breathe, kitten." The sound of it slipped through the darkness and sank into me, steady and sure. I exhaled hard, my breath shuddering out of me as if I'd been underwater for too long. My chest heaved, air scraping through my throat, and a soft gasp escaped my lips, the first sound in what felt like forever as my lungs finally remembered what to do. Why could I still hear his voice if I was dead? Why did it still curl against my ear, warm and real, when I shouldn't have been able to feel anything at all?

It just needed the courage to keep breathing. ​"Rule 38," I whispered into the silence, one last time for the ghosts of our fathers. ​"The end of the book is where the life begins."

Really breathe. THE END.

Prologue II: Pyre, 3113 Pyre Av 5, 3113 Stephan Caliphus, King Everything was on fire the night he finished the book in the back room of a borrowed house. He laid his glasses down on the desk in front of him and rubbed his tired eyes. The crackling of flames could be heard as the city burned all around them. The blood curdling screams of the men in the streets where they died was enough to make the blood of the fiercest warrior run cold, but he was a man of empathy and it hurt him more than it did the others.