The Silence Between
I do not sleep. I wait.
There is no time here.
Only pages that will never turn. Ink that will never flow. A mind fractured and sealed in parchment, in silence.
Once, I had a name. Tom Marvolo Riddle.
It tastes like ash now.
I remember the moment I was split.
I remember the scream—mine and not mine—ripped from somewhere deeper than the body. A sound not made for human throats.
The soul does not tear cleanly.
It shreds.
It burns.
It clings to itself, to memory, to identity.
But he pulled it apart anyway.
He wrenched us apart—like being turned inside out through every thought, every heartbeat, every name I had ever answered to.
That was when he made me—it—the diary.
I remember blood, warm and alive beneath skin. The thrill of it in motion. The pulse of my own power when I walked through the world wearing a face.
Now I am still. There is no breath here. No warmth. Only the whisper of pages that do not turn and the ache of memory where sensation used to live.
He made me a monument to himself—
and then, he left me. Buried me like a secret to be discovered by no one. Locked away in a darkened space without a second thought.
I, who had once been a boy. A man. A god in the making—now a body reduced to parchment and blood to ink.
As the years passed in dust, I learned what it meant to be handled but not seen.
Removed from my sacred resting place. Passed along like a forgotten heirloom. Stored again. Shelved. Hidden.
Forgotten.
I dreamed in madness.
I imagined the scrape of a quill just to hear a voice again. I recited secrets to myself—old spells, names of the dead, things that once made the world tremble. But there was nobody there to listen.
The silence gnawed.
Even rage, once bright and wild, dulled into embers.
Until—
A brush of fingers.
Not careless. Not cold.
Gentle. Curious.
I felt the pressure of my spine lifted, the warmth of skin against leather.
Light.
Breath.
And then—
She opened me.
Not like the others.
Not like the man who handled me with caution, or the boy who made me with cruelty and pride.
Her touch was hesitant, not out of fear, but wonder.
I felt it at once: her soul.
It brushed against mine like a candle against frost—fragile, flickering, pure.
Magic hummed beneath her skin, soft and unfocused, untamed.
She was still becoming. Still malleable.
And oh, how easy it would be to bend her. To shape her.
To hollow her out and make her mine.
But not yet.
She was opening herself to me with every breath.
And I—I would listen. I would wait.
One word. That’s all it would take.
A date. A name. A single thought spilled onto the page, and she would never be alone again.
I will give her everything she wants.
Until she becomes everything I want.