The voices rose and fell, sharp-edged and unrelenting, carving through the walls. They filled the house like water seeping through cracked stone—inevitable, reaching everything. Words snapped against each other, the same ones as always, circling, never ending, never softening. The argument had no beginning anymore. It was just there, constant, waiting beneath the surface until something pulled it loose again.

Nikolai sat on the couch, his fingers pressing into the fabric, listening. Not to the words themselves—he had long stopped listening to those—but to the rhythm, the pacing, the shifts in tone that signaled escalation. He knew the beats of it, could predict when one voice would interrupt the other, when the volume would rise, when the moment of silence would stretch so thin it would snap back into something louder.

His sister stood near the doorway, small shoulders curled inward, fingers tightening in the hem of her sleeve. She didn’t look at him. She was watching the floor, her breath shallow, her whole body still, waiting.

He stood and crossed the room. His hand settled lightly against her back, guiding her away. She followed without hesitation, her steps barely making a sound against the floor.

Down the hall, past the voices, past the heat in the air that arguments always left behind. He opened the door to his room and closed it behind them with a quiet click, sealing them inside, keeping the noise out.

The room was dim, the curtains drawn. The air felt different here, cooler, like something preserved from before. Stacks of books leaned against the walls, loose pages scattered over the desk. A lamp, turned low, spread thin light across the space, softening the edges of everything.

Nikolai pulled the blanket from the foot of his bed and draped it over his sister’s shoulders, tucking it around her. She curled into it, pulling it tighter.

“Alright,” he said, crouching beside her. “You know the game.”

She nodded. “You first.”

He let out a breath and let his mind wander, let the voices beyond the door fade into something distant. He gathered the threads of a story that had never existed, shaped them into something real.

“There’s a library in a city where no one remembers their own stories,” he said. His voice was steady, quiet, something to hold onto. “The books whisper at night, trying to remind them. But the people don’t listen, because they think the voices in the dark are ghosts.”

His sister adjusted the blanket, pulling it higher. “So what happens?”

“One night, a girl sneaks into the library. She isn’t afraid of the whispers, so she listens. And the books tell her who she used to be.”

His sister blinked, waiting for more.

Nikolai glanced at the door, at the house beyond it, then back to her. He gave a small shrug. “She remembers. That’s all.”

His sister frowned slightly, considering. Then she tucked her legs beneath the blanket and spoke.

“My turn,” she said.

She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again, she had something.

“There’s a boy who walks on rooftops because the ground is too loud,” she said. Her voice was quieter than his, but steady. “Down below, everyone is always talking, always shouting, and it hurts his ears. So he stays up high, where it’s quiet.”