Torn Pages Book Novels & Stories

“I needed to know what was inside.” He looked at me. “But apparently…” His fingers rested against the damaged pages. “…the important sections were removed.” I took the book from him immediately. My eyes scanned the pages. He was right. Entire portions had been torn out. Cleanly. Deliberately. My stomach tightened. Now my question was who tore them out? And why? Someone hadn’t removed those pages by accident. They had known exactly what they were looking for. Slowly, I lowered the book.

Set it on the table and opened to the section where pages had been torn out. Four pages. Gone. Removed with surgical precision. I ran my fingers along the ragged edges still clinging to the binding. The paper was not yellowed like the rest of the book. Not aged. The tears were clean. Recent. Very recent. I pulled the lamp closer. Examined the binding. There. At the base of the torn section. A fragment. So small I had missed it the first time. A corner of a page that had not completely pulled free. I used my fingernail to carefully extract it. The fragment was maybe an inch square. Most of it blank. But in the corner. A few words visible in that same ancient script.

If anything, it had widened. Where books had once been stacked spine‑out in a solid column, there was now a jagged, gaping passage. Pages slithered over its edges, adhering and tearing and re‑adhering as if the world couldn’t decide whether to close the wound or line it. They clung to the inside of the rift, overlapping layers, forming a crude tunnel that slanted down through the Librarian’s ruined back into… somewhere else. It felt wrong in a different way than in the ink.

Gabriel’s steady breathing came from beside me, but my chest tightened with the memory of last night—the folder, the fight, his words echoing like a sentence: “Prove it.” My phone lit the dark. A message from Sebastian. I sat up fast, pulse hammering. > Got a hit. The clinic responded. Records are flagged. They know something’s off. My breath caught. Flagged? Another message came in before I could type a reply. > This isn’t just suspicion, Eve. The documents she handed Gabriel… they’re tampered with. Someone’s been altering files. My hand clamped over my mouth, muffling the sharp inhale that wanted to turn into a scream. Tampered. Altered. That was it. That was the crack.

Instinctively, my hand rested on the hilt of my sword as I stepped beside him. He picked up the first book on the stack: The Compendium of the First Blood. It was a book so old its pages were made of cured vellum that should have lasted ten thousand years. I watched as he opened it and gasped. Cold rushed through my veins—the book was mutilated. "This is the chapter about the ancient evils," Orion commented as he flipped the pages. It seemed like something, or someone, had reached into the book and torn off the pages with claws. I suppressed the anger bubbling to the surface at such damage done to something so historical.

The binding looked older than the other textbooks, and something about its placement on the shelf struck me as odd. As I strained my eyes to get a better look at it, I noticed a small part torn on the ridge side of the book, a tiny imperfection that caught my attention. The tear was subtle, barely visible unless you were looking closely, but it seemed deliberate somehow, like it had been created to mark something specific.

I stepped up onto the carved wooden stool beside the shelf, reached up, and pulled the book down. It was heavier than expected. Cold. As soon as it was in my hands, I felt it—a slight pulse. Like the book had a heartbeat. I sat back down in the alcove and cracked it open. Instant confusion. Half the pages were gone. Literally ripped out. Jagged tears where parchment should've been. And it wasn’t recent. The edges were aged, browned and curled like they'd been torn long ago. My heart sank. "What the hell..." I flipped through quickly, scanning for anything. Page after page was just ruined. Gone.

"You're tired after the flight." "I'm fine." He caught my book from beneath my hands, frowning at the torn page and gulped with shock reflecting through his eyes. He couldn't believe it. I never tear my books. "College is ended." He pressed the pages to put them back to place, but they couldn't be placed back. I had torn them in pieces. I tear everything in pieces. "I wanted to give something to you. Come with me." Before I could protest, he slipped his free hand into mine and helped me to stand up.

She got up and left. Frances yawned. "Good night mom." She turned off the lamp and shut her eyes. Frances worked as a salesclerk at the Soft View Bookstore, along Huxely Street, Boston. The bookstore was well known, not because it was a large establishment, but due to the style of book display ordered by Mr. Yamato -- nearly half of the books were displayed outside in a heavy show glass. This could be the most reason why each morning of a working day wore Frances out. She just hated everything about the book store.

I turned to the next page. "Given to… What?!" I turned the page back and forth. What was going on? There was no continuation. I looked at the spine carefully and saw that there was a bit of torn paper. A page was missing! Someone had ripped out the page! I was frantic. I was this close to finding the solution to our problem and now, it had been ripped away from my fingers like candy that had been snatched from a baby. I closed the book and sat up on my bed.