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> "There are mornings when the world chooses not to wake up.
That's how you know the dream is over."
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🌘 Scene 1 — A World Without Dawn
Aric opened his eyes to darkness.
No sunrise.
No birdsong.
No time.
Only a grey-blue static filled the sky like a canvas that had refused to be painted.
Cassia burst into the room, pale.
> "It's not night. It's nothing."
Clocks across Aegis were frozen.
Plants didn't respond to light spells.
Students sat in silence, afraid to breathe too loudly.
> "It's like we're trapped in the moment before time," Myles whispered.
Aric stood.
He didn't speak.
Because deep in his chest, something pulsed—
The Hollow had made its move.
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📜 Scene 2 — The Letter from the Future
Cassia found the letter tucked beneath her blade.
Unmarked. Unsealed. The ink still wet.
The handwriting was her own.
But older. Cracked. Shaking.
She read aloud:
> "Cassia,
If you're reading this, it means I failed to stop him.
Aric has become something… unbound.
And the world is burning from the inside out."
> "Don't let him open the vault beneath the Endless Library.
That's where the Hollow becomes real."
"If he asks you to follow… say no.
And tell him I loved him until the very end."
— You, from 11 days ahead.
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🕳️ Scene 3 — The Hollow's First Demand
The sky trembled.
A single word appeared across every reflective surface:
"JUDGE."
Aric stepped outside.
The statues in the Garden of Names began to bleed.
One by one, voices rose from them — echoes of the people Aegis had erased:
A girl falsely accused of soul-harvesting.
A boy sacrificed for a weather ritual.
A teacher silenced for exposing corruption.
Aric listened.
The Hollow spoke through them all:
> "Bring them justice.
Or we erase the sun forever."
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⚖️ Scene 4 — The Tribunal of the Dead
Aric, Cassia, and Myles entered the academy's oldest hall—now a shifting trial room of light and echo.
There, the Hollow had summoned the Council of the Lost — ghosts, records, fading truths.
Each case was presented like a broken memory.
And Aric had to judge:
Verdict One: A student who stole to survive. Branded a traitor.
> Aric absolved him.
Verdict Two: A priest who let a village die for prophecy.
> Aric condemned him.
Verdict Three: A mother who used forbidden magic to save her child.
> Aric rewrote her name into the academy records.
With each judgment, a sliver of dawn returned.
But barely.
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⏳ Scene 5 — The Endless Library
After the trials, Aric turned to Cassia.
"I need to go to the Endless Library."
Her face drained.
"I read the letter. The one from me."
"I know."
"You still want to open it?"
He nodded. "Because I need to see what they buried there."
Myles tried to intervene. "What if you become what future-Cassia fears?"
Aric's eyes flared.
> "Then let me become it in full light. Not in shadows."
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🧬 Scene 6 — At the Gates of Memory
The Endless Library was never meant to be found.
But the Hollow knew the path.
It whispered the doors open.
Aric stepped inside.
Walls of infinite tomes. Stairs that led through thoughts. Time frozen in script.
And in the center—
a vault wrapped in roots and silence.
The Hollow spoke:
> "Within lies your true name.
The one the gods feared to record.
Read it… and we give the sun back."
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📓 Scene 7 — Notebook Update
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"Phase 14: The First Demand"
Hollow paused the sun
Trials of the Erased: complete
Future Cassia: warning received
Endless Library: entered
> "I was never born Aric Vale.
That was the name they gave the version of me they could control."
> "But the version that stood trial today…
He doesn't want the sun.
He wants the truth."
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