Novel & Cerita Ellora's Cave Books

POV: Lila (primary), Maximus (reflection), Kehra (as tether) Lila The Gate hadn’t pulsed in three days. That's what Elora said out loud while holding the parchment half-folded and her hands covered in dustroot ink. However, she did not say it out of dread. She said it like someone marking the edge of a field that had stopped blooming and didn’t need coaxing only patience.

And yet the last light of the evening fell through. Golden. Warm. Almost alive. There were three beds in the room. Little. Ordinary. Despite the decades. A closet. A table. A shelf full of books. All covered with dust. And yet nothing was left. Not really. It's safe. Like someone was looking after it. “Look at this.” Elio already knelt beside the shelf. The books were old. Very old. Fairy tales. Kidneys. School books. Character blocks. And there was a little notebook in between.

"She ran out of light." ​The weight of the book felt like a mountain in her lap. As she stared at a drawing of a "Perfected Star," her vision suddenly began to flicker. The amber glow of the cottage bled into a sickly, bruised indigo. The smell of cedar was replaced by the stench of ozone and rotting roses. ​Elara’s soul didn't leave her body; it expanded, stretching across the miles of frozen tundra, drawn by the shared blood of the woman who was currently occupying her home.

“You never told me that, baby girl?” Christian’s voice floats my way as Jenny nudges me gently and nods across the aisle. I had finally gotten into my book after all and blanked them all out as I was pulled into a magical world of Vampires and Werewolves fighting over human girls. I look up nonplussed, catching Arrick glancing my way with that infuriating unreadable expression and yet a softness to his face that I haven’t seen in a long time. He almost looks a little bit happy and it just makes me feel shittier.

Ivonne's pov The room was filled with towering stacks of books and strange artifacts I didn't recognise, Artifacts like dark curved stones, glass bottles with light that seemed to breathe inside them, coiled metallic ropes on carved wooden stands. Elara had pulled all of it from the deepest stores of the Lycan realm, and now the collection made the room feel both sacred and suffocating at the same time. I sat cross-legged on the mat, eyes closed, sweating through what had to be the most exhausting ritual the Oracle had walked me through yet. By the time she told me to open my eyes, I felt like I had run for miles.

Closing her eyes, she pressed both palms on the pages, focusing not on memories but the present, the cool air, dripping water, weak hum of the mountain and she filled the book with the now. A soft warmth spread from her hands. She opened her eyes, and a faint, silver outline of the alcove appeared: the pool, the glowing veins, like a ghostly sketch, but it lasted only moments before fading. Her breath caught. It wasn’t dead; it was reset. A canvas for the now, not the past. “So it only responds to you now.” Liora jumped as Elara stood at the entrance, arms crossed, no smile. “It seems so,” Liora said, closing the book.

She pointed towards a narrow tunnel that seemed to be opening up, the rocks parting slightly to form a path. Guided by Lila’s instincts, they navigated through the tunnel, the ground beneath them shaking with each passing moment. The cave's walls, once solid, now seemed to close in around them, the passageway narrowing and threatening to trap them. Elara, using her control over flames, conjured a protective barrier of fire, casting a flickering light that pushed back the encroaching darkness. Her flames were a beacon, illuminating their path through the suffocating gloom.

After that he stood and left me in the room. Now barely an hour later he sends me a trunk full of books. Ella moved to stand behind me and I could hear her sharp intake of breath when her eyes landed on the books. "They're beautiful, right?" Ella only nodded her head and leaned down to touch the spines of one of the books. They weren't really books to be precise, well they were books but not really big ones, almost like journals, just bigger and fresher. The covers were embossed in a beautiful flower pattern, each color having a flower of its corresponding color on it.

“Why don’t we give them a look? Just to see. No one has to know.” “Oh, I don’t think he’d like that. But . . . come to think of it . . . ” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “That’s actually a good reason to, isn’t it? Especially now, while he’s busy. Oh, maybe just a peek.” Mr. Pervis’s library was just down the hall. It was considerably smaller than Salem’s, so it didn’t take us long to find the ritual books. “There’s so many,” Loretta said, pulling a few off the shelf and flipping through them. “But they’re all so bloody confusing. Doesn’t he have any for apprentices?” She climbed a ladder to rummage through the higher shelves.

ELLA The pages of the spell book glitter and shine as I flip through them like they have never done before. Gently I turn the pages one by one, mumbling the names of the spells as I pass them by. “Summoning Spell… Tracking Spell…” The symbols on the page morph and transform into readable words before my eyes.