TRIGGER: 4utumnD4rk4cademia

Beneath the arches carved with ivy’s grace,
Where autumn's gold had found its final place,
A scholar wandered, cloaked in wool and thought,
Through halls where time itself was finely wrought.

The library stood, both solemn and vast,
A shrine to knowledge buried in the past.
Its scent of leather, dust, and dying leaves
Breathed whispers of the secrets it conceives.

The scholar’s hand caressed a weathered spine,
Its title blurred, its cover worn with time.
She felt the weight of something left untold—
A story lost, a truth the ink could hold.

With trembling hands, she opened to the page,
Its script aflame, as if the parchment aged.
The letters danced, alive beneath her gaze,
And formed a riddle cloaked in autumn’s haze:

“To know the truth, your shadow must take flight,
The cost: your warmth exchanged for endless night.”

The scholar paused, the air grew thick and cold,
The firelight dimmed, the amber turned to gold.
Her breath became a mist, her heartbeat slowed,
As whispers from the stacks began to goad.

Yet curiosity, her fatal spark,
Compelled her steps into the library’s dark.
Through halls of marble steeped in scholar’s pride,
She chased the answer shadows dared to hide.

At last, she found a mirror tall and wide,
Its surface shifting, pulling light inside.
And there she saw herself, yet not the same—
Her eyes were hollow, yet her face remained.

The mirror whispered: “Knowledge is your due,
But autumn claims the fire once held in you.”

She turned away, her heart too frail to stand,
But found her body stiff, her form unmanned.
Now trapped within the mirror’s haunted pane,
She roams the library, both lost and sane.

They say each fall, the scholars hear her sighs,
A warning carried through the amber skies:
Beware the knowledge cloaked in ancient flame,
For truth once grasped will never leave you tame.