The path to the heart of the Library did not exist.
Not in the way paths usually do. It remembered having existed, once — but like a name on the tip of the tongue, it remained elusive. Shifting tiles, blinking staircases, doors that forgot they had ever opened. Evelyne walked it anyway.
Beside her, Alaira carried a lantern that didn't burn, only remembered light. Its glow pushed back the creeping dark in thin, trembling threads.
The walls whispered.
"Ink. Ash. Echo."
Words unbound from their pages drifted like smoke. Some curled into shapes — broken letters trying to reform meaning — only to disintegrate again.
Alaira muttered, "I hate this."
"Why?"
"It's like being erased in slow motion."
Evelyne nodded grimly. "Because we are."
Behind them, the world had begun to unravel. The Library's outer wings no longer collapsed — they forgot themselves entirely. As if they had never been built.
Only Chron remained behind, weaving circles of time around the exits to stall the collapse. He had warned Evelyne: once she reached the Heart, no path would lead back.
No door would remember opening for her.
No page would recall her touch.
She had replied: Then I'll write myself into the end.
They passed a hall of stories that had never found readers.
Books with no titles. Shelves stacked with unrealized dreams. A row of poems that lived only in a child's mind before sleep took her forever.
Each shelf faded as they passed.
Each story vanished.
Evelyne didn't look back.
The Heart wasn't a room. It was an absence given shape.
A hollowed sphere carved into the foundation of the Library. The air was heavy, like breathing through grief. Floating above them was a mass of negative space, pulsing like a dying star — Oblivion, not as a creature, but as a concept.
It had no face. No form. Just suggestion.
A smear of entropy. The antithesis of memory.
It did not attack.
It simply waited.
Evelyne stepped forward. Her boots echoed on ground that hadn't been walked in centuries — or seconds. Time frayed around her limbs.
Alaira stayed close.
"Can you feel it?" Evelyne asked quietly.
"Yes. It's trying to forget me."
"It's stronger now."
"No," Alaira said, drawing her sword. "It's hungrier. That's different."
Evelyne almost smiled. But Oblivion moved.
Not in motion, but in concept.
The chamber grew colder. The stories etched into the walls — names, languages, fables — unraveled. Letters unstitched from stone. History erased in reverse.
Evelyne reached into her satchel.
Chron's gift: a tale unwritten.
She unfolded the parchment. It was blank. But in her mind, she felt the shape of it — a story that could have been. Of a girl who made a vow in the dark. Of a warrior who remembered her.
She tore it in half.
The silence screamed.
Oblivion pulsed in response, recoiling slightly.
Alaira blinked. "What did you do?"
"I gave it something new," Evelyne said. "It doesn't know how to unmake what's never been made."
Oblivion twisted.
From its core, shadows peeled away — shaped like versions of Evelyne.
Some were regal. Some cruel. Some broken.
All forgotten.
Each one stared at her with hollow eyes.
"Those are your echoes," Alaira whispered.
Evelyne swallowed. "No. They're the pieces of me I tried to bury."
One stepped forward.
It wore a crown of bones.
Another held Alaira's dagger, stained red.
A third was just a child — burned, frightened, alone.
"Oblivion isn't just forgetting," Evelyne said slowly. "It's regret."
Alaira gripped her hand. "Then don't let it speak for you."
But Oblivion spoke.
Not in sound — in emotion.
Guilt surged through Evelyne's veins like acid.
She remembered every life she had failed to save. Every mistake. Every cruelty she had committed as the villainess in lives rewritten and erased. All of it surged into her mind in a tidal wave of despair.
Alaira cried out, reaching for her, but Evelyne had already dropped to her knees.
"Why fight?" the shadows whispered.
"All stories end."
"You can rest. You can forget."
Tears slid down Evelyne's cheeks. Her fingers trembled.
"I'm so tired."
The child-Evelyne stepped forward. "Let me sleep."
The crowned one raised a blade. "Let me rule again."
The blood-stained one hissed. "Let me finish what you started."
Evelyne clutched her chest, her breath ragged.
She was losing herself.
She—
Alaira knelt in front of her.
Held her face gently. Pressed their foreheads together.
"I see you."
Two words.
Two anchors.
Like a breath after drowning.
Evelyne gasped. Reality tilted. The shadows flickered.
She gripped Alaira's wrist with both hands.
"I'm still here," Evelyne said.
"Yes," Alaira whispered. "So am I."
Together, they stood.
Oblivion pulsed — not in anger, but confusion.
It did not understand resistance.
It had never been fought this way.
Evelyne unrolled the rest of Chron's parchment. It was still blank.
She picked up a quill. Dipped it in her own blood.
And began to write.
"Let this be the record of those who defied erasure.
Let this name remain: Evelyne Caelum.
And let hers be beside mine: Alaira Venn."
The shadows screamed again.
Oblivion cracked.
The echo of her words rewrote space.
Not just memory — meaning.
Evelyne kept writing.
The sphere above began to shatter.
Fragments fell like ash.
But instead of destroying, they became pages — blank, waiting to be filled.
Oblivion had been a void.
Now, it was a canvas.
The Heart trembled.
Alaira shouted, "It's unraveling!"
Evelyne nodded, still writing. Her blood smeared the parchment. The quill snapped.
She didn't stop.
She spoke now.
"Let every forgotten story find breath.
Let every erased name be remembered in defiance."
Oblivion howled.
The shadow-Evelynes fell apart — not violently, but gently. Like grief finally exhaled.
The last to fade was the child. She reached for Evelyne's hand.
"I'm sorry," Evelyne whispered.
The child smiled.
And vanished.
Then silence.
But this time, it wasn't the silence of unmaking.
It was peace.
The Heart collapsed — not from destruction, but completion.
When Evelyne opened her eyes, she stood in a vast white space.
Alaira was beside her.
Floating around them were stories.
Not books — not yet. Just possibilities. Whispers. Songs.
And in the center: the last piece of Chron's parchment, now glowing faintly.
Alaira picked it up.
Read the single word etched in the center:
"Remember."
They returned to the Library.
Or what remained of it.
The halls had stabilized.
The walls stopped fading.
Chron waited by the gates, his form a flickering statue of shadow and starlight.
"You did it," he said.
"No," Evelyne said. "We rewrote it."
Chron inclined his head. "Then write wisely. Oblivion sleeps, but its nature endures. So too must your meaning."
They stepped past him.
Out into a world that had not yet decided what it would become.
But Evelyne knew one thing:
She would be the author of it.