The Girl Who Never Fell in Love

In Liora Vale’s world, love was everywhere.

People talked about it constantly. It appeared in songs that played through someone’s headphones on the bus, in dramatic scenes from movies that made entire theaters cry, and in quiet conversations between friends who stayed up all night whispering about crushes and heartbreak. Couples held hands in the hallways at school. They walked home together after class, laughing about things no one else understood.

Everyone said love was the most natural thing in the world.

Something that happened to everyone eventually.

Everyone except Liora.

For her, love had always felt far away, like watching a story happen behind a glass window she could never open.

She was the quiet girl in the classroom. The one who sat near the window with a book open in front of her while everyone else talked and laughed together. Most people passed her desk without noticing she was even there.

And when they did notice her, it usually wasn’t kind.

They whispered that she was strange. That she spent too much time reading. That she lived inside books instead of the real world.

Maybe they were right.

Books had never laughed at her. Books had never ignored her.

Books were the only place where she could disappear and feel something close to belonging.

Inside books, people crossed oceans for each other. They fought wars, sacrificed everything, and protected the people they loved. Sometimes Liora would stop reading and stare at the page for a long time, wondering what it would feel like to matter that much to someone.

Every day after school she went to the library.

Not because she had nowhere else to go.

Well, maybe a little because of that.

But mostly because the library was quiet, warm, and full of stories waiting to be discovered. To Liora, it felt more like home than anywhere else.

One rainy afternoon, while the rest of the school hurried home before the storm grew worse, Liora stayed behind like she always did.

The library was nearly empty. Rain tapped gently against the windows, and the whole building felt wrapped in a peaceful silence.

As she wandered deeper between the shelves, something unusual caught her eye.

A staircase.

She had walked through the library hundreds of times before, but somehow she had never noticed this narrow staircase hidden behind a row of tall shelves.

A small rusted sign hung beside the door.

ARCHIVE ROOM

CLOSED

Students said the archive had been abandoned years ago. Some even said it was haunted.

But Liora had always liked forgotten places almost as much as forgotten stories.

Curious, she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The staircase creaked softly as she descended. Dust floated through the air like tiny stars, and the room below looked untouched by time.

Old shelves leaned against stone walls. Ancient books rested beneath thick layers of dust.

And in the very center of the room sat a single book on a stone table.

It was darker than anything around it.

Older too.

It had no title. No author. Nothing written on its cover at all.

Something about it felt strange, almost as if the room had been waiting for someone to find it.

Liora stepped closer.

Slowly, she placed her hand on the cover.

The moment her fingers touched it, the book opened by itself.

Its pages flipped wildly as if caught in a strong wind, even though the air around her was completely still. Dust lifted from the shelves. The silence of the room broke apart.

Then the pages stopped turning.

Words began to appear across the empty paper as if written by an invisible hand.

History remembers love.

But history never recorded how it began.

Liora stared at the page, her heart beating faster.

Another sentence slowly formed beneath the first.

Write the first heartbeat.

Before she could understand what the words meant, a bright light suddenly filled the room. The shelves disappeared. The walls dissolved like pages tearing away from a book.

The world around her vanished.

When the light faded and Liora opened her eyes again, the quiet library was gone.

The city was gone.

She was lying in tall grass beneath an open sky.

The wind moved softly across the field, carrying the scent of wild earth and distant trees. Slowly she sat up and looked ahead.

In the distance stood the towering walls of an ancient kingdom.

A kingdom from a time long before her world had ever existed.

And somewhere inside those walls lived a young king who had grown up in a world where love had never existed at all.

But history was about to change.

Because the girl who had never fallen in love had just arrived at the moment when love itself would be born.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***