The book on the table began to move.

  At first, it was just a slight sliding, as if an unseen breeze were pushing it. Then came a sharp knock. A more forceful movement followed. Something—or someone—was pushing it from within.

  Finally, it fell to the floor, its impact resonating through the silent room.

  And then the book opened on its own. Its pages, at first, turned slowly, as if an invisible hand were delicately leafing through them. But soon the movement became frantic. The pages flew about as if caught in an impossible gale, stirring with a frenzy that did not belong to this world.

  Pages turned and turned until, suddenly... they stopped on one particular page. On that page, nothing was written, yet it was not empty.

  And so the story began.

  From the ink and the paper, a figure emerged.

  First, a gloved hand. Then, an arm clad in an old, cracked, and battered armor—scarred by countless battles. A warrior ascended from the depths of the book as if the very tale were expelling him.

  When his body had fully emerged, he remained motionless.

  He breathed.

  His chest rose and fell heavily. His fingers trembled. His armor was dirty but still reflected the faint light filtering through a broken window.

  The Ruined Room

  Moonlight filtered through the shattered window, revealing an enormous room. The chamber stood in a state of majestic abandonment, as if time itself had forgotten its existence. The stone walls, carved with elaborate Victorian details and adorned with intricate reliefs, were covered in a patina of moisture and moss—silent witnesses to countless years of neglect. The stained glass windows, once proud, now lay in fragments, allowing ghostly light to stream in, painting deep shadows upon the worn marble floor.

  The furnishings, remnants of an era of decadent opulence, were scattered about: chairs and carved wooden tables, cloaked in dust and tattered fabrics, as if eager to recount stories of an exquisite age. Every corner was imbued with an ominous silence, broken only by the whisper of wind seeping through the cracks and the distant echo of footsteps that seemed to wander without direction.

  It was a Gothic refuge of undeniable beauty, where melancholy intertwined with decay. Yet, this beauty seemed merely the facade of a disquieting omen; in every shadow, in every nook, lay the inescapable sense that something dark and disturbing waited, ready to shatter the silence and reveal the true nature of that long-forgotten place.

  The knight advanced cautiously, observing every detail with the unsettling feeling of being inside a scene already set for him. He did not recognize the place, but something in the air made him feel that this scene had been repeated long before his arrival. His footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor, awakening murmurs that seemed like whispers trapped in the dust of centuries.

  Passing before a shattered mirror, his reflection returned an image he could scarcely recognize as his own. His armor, which he had taken from a corpse, was worn, scarred by battles he did not remember fighting. Yet what caught his attention most was his helmet: a large crack ran along its surface, and in the missing fragments, his face peered through. Between the gloom and the faint moonlight, he saw his expression… and met a pair of weary eyes.

  A weariness deeper than physical fatigue -the burden of having walked too long in a tale he still did not understand- began to take its toll.

  Then, without lingering any longer, he left the room.

  The corridor he entered was made of dark stone, draped with heavy red curtains. Outside, night and fog enveloped everything. On the walls, distorted portraits seemed to follow him with their gaze.

  He did not stop to admire them, for he knew well what happened in these tales. To look directly at places where he should not was to attract the attention of unwanted forces.

  He walked slowly, silently -he had to be careful.

  Yet the story soon reminded him of the futility of his will.

  At the far end of the corridor, the crunch of breaking glass was heard; the nameless knight caught sight of an aged yet still radiant silver mirror that reflected the corridor’s depth. Its frame, delicately carved, displayed twisting forms of leaves and flowers shaped by the passage of time, while the surface shone faintly, as if resisting the erasure of what it once reflected—still holding the ghostly image of a woman. For a few seconds, it shattered into a thousand pieces.

  The reflection of a woman -beautiful, tragic- cracked like glass.

  And when the shards fell, something emerged from the other side.

  Something that was not human.

  Barely illuminated by the moonlight, a horror with elongated limbs and an excessively wide smile appeared. It had no eyes, yet its face turned toward him.

  The nameless knight, upon seeing it, recoiled a step while attempting to unsheathe his sword. But his hand found only emptiness.

  His weapon… his sword…

  He had possibly lost it, though he did not know where.

  He had forgotten it.

  His grip tightened into nothingness. A slight twitch ran through his fingers, as if he were trying to recall how to hold a weapon that no longer existed.

  Just one heartbeat. One second—and then, he ran.

  The shadows crumbled around him as he traversed the corridors. His footsteps echoed on the stone floor, followed by a damp, heavy echo. It was unnecessary to look back to know that the creature was in pursuit.

  Some horrors must not be confronted. And especially not when unarmed.

  He passed through a door and immediately shut it behind him, but the creature crashed against it. The wood exploded into fragments.

  The nameless knight knew there was no escape.

  His eyes scanned the room urgently, missing no detail. An exit, a weapon, anything.

  Nothing.

  Only ruins of a forgotten tale.

  Without giving him time to seek a solution, the horror advanced.

  There was no time.

  No more.

  As the horror crossed the room at an absurd speed, the knight tore a fragment from his own broken armor.

  Seizing the creature’s unstoppable momentum, he did not hesitate. He drove the fragment with all his might into the creature’s throat.

  Blood gushed in a black river.

  The worst part was not that the horror did not die from that wound, but that it did not even flinch.

  Panic gripped him from within.

  He was finished.

  The horror swung its long limb as if it were a scythe of flesh, aiming directly at his skull, but before the blow could shatter his head, the knight raised his left arm to block it.

  A muffled groan of silent pain resonated.

  The blow was devastating.

  Yet the knight was not so naive. He knew he lacked the strength to confront it—and much less to halt the impact completely without sustaining damage.

  He knew he had no chance. He knew he could not face the full force of the blow.

  So he allowed himself to be dragged.

  Propelled by the impact, it sent him hurtling backwards. He did not attempt to resist; he surrendered to the force, and his body passed through the room, crashing against the opposite wall. Yet the wall did not stop him.

  It was old.

  It was rotten.

  Dead.

  It crumbled under the momentum of the blow.

  Shooting out from the third floor of that mansion, he fell onto the damp ground of a neglected garden.

  Gravity offered no mercy, making the landing agonizing. He rolled several meters more and, after a few labored breaths, came to his guard.

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  Thinking that his luck had finally run out, the dawn struck his grimy face.

  The warmth of the sun served as a welcome reminder that he was still alive.

  He took a deep breath, his left arm throbbing in pain, barely functional. He knew well that if the horror attacked him again, he would die.

  But then, as he imagined the worst-case scenario, he realized something.

  The horror did not come out.

  It remained at the threshold of the opening. Its claws scratched the stone, but it did not take a single step outside the mansion.

  The knight understood at that moment: it was not that he was trapped. It was that the story had confined him here, prisoner to the rules of its domain, for that is how the tale was meant to be—and so it had been.

  And he, a stranger within this tale, had escaped by sheer chance.

  From the darkness of the ruined mansion, the horror observed him.

  When he lifted his gaze, he felt a chill run down his spine, for, for the first time in all that time, he truly saw it.

  At first, he perceived it only as a twist in the air—a formless silhouette in the dim light of dawn. But when the sun ascended in the dead sky of that story, the creature was revealed in its entirety from that gap in the wall. It was elongated, of impossible proportions, as if someone had stretched a human body beyond its limit. Its skin was thin and translucent, displaying the twisted dance of muscles and bones beneath. Yet the worst of all was its mouth. It had no lips or defined shape, only a huge, inhuman crack that descended from where its nose should be to the base of its neck. In that fissure, hundreds of stolen teeth were arranged in irregular rows, as if forced into place, forming a horrifying statue by some deranged sculptor, with gums made of foreign flesh and traces of still-fresh blood.

  The knight felt his body tense. He had never seen anything like it. Or perhaps he had, in nightmares he could no longer recall.

  The horror remained there, motionless, with its inhuman mouth and stolen teeth.

  Watching him.

  Waiting.

  The nameless knight began to retreat, never taking his eyes off the horror hidden in the shadows.

  One step more.

  Another.

  The horror did not move.

  But it did not vanish either.

  Eventually, the knight emerged from the garden and reached a rusted iron gate, covered in black vines that seemed to whisper to the wind. His body was tense, each step toward the exit a battle against his own fear. As he approached the gate, the air grew thick, as if the weight of his presence in that place still held him back. Yet, with one final glance at the dark threshold, the knight took another step, and the gate stirred, as if waiting for someone to open it. The garden now lay behind him, but the echo of his steps resonated in the air, transforming into a whisper only he could hear. He left the place, but he knew he had not truly escaped it. The story endured, and the creeping vines of time began to wind around his thoughts.

  And then, the wind changed.

  An inexplicable feeling appeared wherever the knight looked.

  A whisper swept through the air, sliding among the dead trees like icy fingers caressing living flesh. The knight, perhaps the only one who understood that signal, felt time begin to lose its solidity, as if every being moved to the rhythm of a forgotten pulse.

  In those moments, the very notion of time evaporated, causing reality to stagger, for all living things seemed to move in unison to an invisible beat. Suddenly, the end and the beginning blended into a chaotic maelstrom, and the story itself attempted to rewrite, without anyone being able to say with certainty what was truly happening.

  It was like watching the world crumble into a primitive core of letters: words that transformed into objects and events, sketching an uncertain destiny amidst the void. In that abyss, the knight perceived how the narrative tried to reshape his body and mind, as if an uncontrollable force sought to erase him, to rewrite him so that he would fit into the tale. But, not fully belonging to that story, his essence resisted, failing to be absorbed by the chaos.

  At that instant, the world seemed to disintegrate, reduced to a tangle of ink and shadows—a web of words forming a destiny that was both an end and a beginning. Gradually, everything reassembled, as if an unseen force gathered the scattered fragments of reality and returned them to a precarious order.

  And so, the cycle began anew, leaving the knight trapped between the certainty of the eternal and the uncertainty of the ephemeral, not knowing whether he had discovered the truth or merely lost himself in an unyielding fate. The knight still could not grasp the strangely beautiful and terrifying scene before him when, suddenly, he realized that the shadows were devouring him.

  And then, the tale restarted.

  The knight opened his eyes; a warm, yet not overwhelming light caressed his shattered, blood-stained face, blinding him for a few moments. When he could see clearly, he realized he had returned to that chamber. However, it had changed. It was no longer the same ruined room.

  The room now rose in all its splendor, as if time had decided to pause in order to preserve it. The stone walls, finely sculpted with intricate Victorian details, looked immaculate, enhanced by reliefs and filigree that recounted stories of grandeur and elegance. The stone, polished by the passage of years, displayed a subtle shine, while small touches of moss were confined to discreet corners, not disturbing the majesty of the setting.

  The stained glass windows, perfectly preserved, filtered the moonlight into shimmering patterns on a polished marble floor, projecting designs that looked like the strokes of an expert hand. Each window invited one to contemplate an exterior that, despite its melancholy, harmonized perfectly with the magnificence within.

  The furnishings, relics of an era of unparalleled opulence, were arranged with precision: chairs and carved wooden tables, draped in rich velvets and adorned with ornaments that evoked times of glory. Everything in the room was meticulously cared for, as if oblivion had never dared to touch this sanctuary.

  Yet, despite its flawless appearance, a dense, enigmatic silence pervaded every corner. It was a silence that spoke of secrets guarded jealously, of omens lurking beneath the surface of beauty. Every shadow, every glimmer of light, suggested the existence of an ancient darkness, latent and expectant, reminding that even in the most absolute perfection lies the echo of past tragedies.

  The knight felt an immense weight; the world had returned to what it once was, but he, being alien to the narrative of the original tale, had not returned as before. He still bore the wounds, his arm still incapacitated. At last, the knight had time to think. With his uninjured hand, he took hold of an old, broken book, staining it with the dry blood on his hands; he lifted it, and, cleaning the dried mud from its torn pages, the book's title was revealed:

  “THE PRINCESS OF ORD”

  But no—this was not a mere book. It was the tale into which the poor knight had fallen.

  The knight sighed and held it for a few seconds.

  Then, with a strange, cold determination burning in his dark brown eyes, he opened the book and began to read.