The girl never spoke much.
Not because she couldn't—but because the world rarely gave her reason to. She found more comfort in silence, in the gentle rustle of pages, in the quiet hum of wind brushing against windowpanes. While others filled rooms with noise, she filled journals with thoughts she never said aloud. Her home was lined with books, some old, some newer, but one stood out among them all.
It wasn't there before.
She found it one rainy afternoon tucked behind loose boards in the attic—a dusty, weathered book bound in black leather. No title. No markings. Inside were hand-written pages, each telling a story unlike any other: a tale of a world beneath their own, of monsters sealed underground, of a war long forgotten and a child who fell.
But so many pages were missing.
The story jumped erratically, scenes fading mid-sentence, names left incomplete. But what was there was enough to stir something inside her. A curiosity she couldn't ignore. There were places mentioned she recognized from stories. One stood out more than the rest:
Mount Ebott.
It was real. A solitary mountain, distant and cold, wrapped in legends and mystery. No one climbed it anymore. People whispered about disappearances, about old myths passed down through generations. But she wasn't afraid of stories. She was afraid of not knowing.
So she packed lightly, brought the book with her, and left without a word.
The journey was quiet—just how she liked it. Her boots crunched over fallen leaves and frozen earth, up the narrow path that twisted around the mountain's edge. Clouds swallowed the sun. The air grew thin. Her breath fogged the space before her lips.
And then—
A man stood in the path ahead.
Cloaked in a heavy robe, his hood drawn over a featureless face. No eyes. No mouth. No voice came from him at first. But when he turned, she felt his gaze.
"You shouldn't be here," he said. His voice echoed, soft and strange, as if spoken from behind a veil. "You seek answers—but some truths are buried for a reason. History has already written its ending. I don't want to see it repeated."
He turned and walked away.
But the girl followed.
Through the winding trail and the growing mist. She did not speak, but her silence was loud. Persistent. At the mountain's peak, he stopped again.
"You follow strangers without question?" he asked.
She only looked at him.
A pause. Then, something like a sigh.
"You want to know what happened. The real story. Not the fragments you found. Not the lies buried in time."
She nodded.
He sat down, cross-legged on a cold stone. The wind howled past them, and snow began to fall.
"Then listen closely," he said. "And I will tell you a tale. One of monsters, of war, of betrayal... and of a child who fell."
He reached into his robe, pulled out a small, tattered notebook, and opened it to the first page.
"It begins like this—Once upon a time..."