The lantern pulsed in Kiran's trembling hands, its glass warm to the touch yet filled with a cold that whispered along his spine. Around him, the library was silent. Not peaceful, but the kind of silence that waits. Breath held. Teeth bared.
He sat there for minutes or hours—time unraveled here. His heart still raced with the echo of that word Selena had screamed. It didn't exist in any language he knew, and yet it had torn through the world like a god's sigh.
And now she was gone.
"Selena," he whispered, but the name fell dead in the air.
The lantern twitched.
A flicker.
Then—light. Not from the lantern's flame, but from within the glass. Shapes moved inside. A silhouette formed, then split, fractured like stained glass pressed too hard.
And then—a voice.
"I didn't die," said Selena.
Kiran jerked back. The lantern floated from his grip, suspended in the air by strings of glowing ink. Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, as if the room itself had been rewritten to speak.
"You're inside it?"
"No. I wrote myself into it."
The light bloomed. And there she was.
Not flesh. A projection, a ghost of herself stitched together from memory and magic. Her coat flowed like liquid parchment, eyes glowing dimmer now. But it was her.
"You said they took you."
"They did. But only what I allowed. A decoy. An edit within an edit. The rest of me escaped into the one artifact even they won't touch." She nodded toward the lantern. "It's made from first-story fire."
Kiran swallowed. His voice was hoarse. "Why? Why save me?"
Selena tilted her head. "Because I need you."
The library groaned again. Distant pages flapped like wings.
She raised a translucent hand. "This world's plot—the grand narrative—was written to end in blood. Fire. Ruin. All heroes fall. The villain wins. The gods are consumed. The world ends in silence."
Kiran stared at her. "So it's... doomed?"
"It was. Until someone like you fell in. Something unwritten. A contradiction. A footnote that refuses to stay dead."
She stepped forward, and with her, the light of the lantern expanded, illuminating forgotten tomes and cursed scrolls.
"I come from that end," she said quietly. "A time after the last page was inked in ash. I bled through time itself to find the moment it all turned."
"And that moment is me."
"Yes."
Kiran felt the weight of her gaze.
"So you want to change the story," he said slowly.
"We have to. If we don't, everything dies."
He looked down at his hands. The glif-mark was still there, twitching faintly, like it was listening. Or dreaming.
"How?"
"We find the Nodes," she said. "Moments where the narrative can be bent, broken, rewritten. They exist, hidden beneath reality's surface. But reaching them is dangerous. Every Node is protected."
"By the Editors?"
She nodded. "And others. Guardians. Ideas given form. They don't like deviation. They exist to keep the story on track—even if that track leads to extinction."
"And if we reach one of these Nodes?"
"Then we change something. A death. A birth. A betrayal. Each time we do, the future shifts. Just a little. Enough."
He stepped closer. "Why me?"
Selena smiled—a tired, honest smile. "Because you weren't supposed to exist. And yet here you are. That makes you dangerous in a way nothing else is. They can't predict you. Can't edit you without unraveling the rest. You're... narrative-resistant."
Kiran let out a long, slow breath. "You're asking me to fight the story itself."
"I'm asking you to corrupt it."
Silence again.
Then, from somewhere above, a sharp ringing—like a bell made from bone.
Selena's image flickered. "They're scanning. I can't stay long. I need you to follow the light. The lantern will guide you to the first Node."
"What will I find there?"
Her expression darkened. "The death of a child who was never born. The first fracture in the original plot. Change it, and you'll change everything that follows."
The sound grew louder. The shelves shuddered.
"Wait," Kiran said. "If we succeed... what happens to the original future? To you?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Then: "Maybe I vanish. Maybe I'm rewritten too. But if it means giving this world a second chance, then I accept that."
Kiran felt the decision settle in his bones. He gripped the lantern tight.
"Then show me where to start."
Selena's smile was proud.
Then her form shattered into light.
The lantern flared and shot a beam toward one of the cracked walls. It rippled, tearing open into a spiral staircase descending into impossible black.
Kiran took a breath and stepped toward it.
And as he did, something behind the wall whispered his true name—not the one he remembered, but the one that had been erased.
The staircase opened.
A scream rose from below, echoing with the agony of a thousand alternate endings.