Morning broke slower than usual.
Selene opened her eyes to soft sunlight through lattice glass. Her first thought wasn't about politics or the gala aftermath. It was a name—one she couldn't recall, but felt pressed against the inside of her heart.
She reached for her notebook.
Nothing had been written the night before.
Just a page torn neatly, left blank.
Aro wasn't beside her. But a single thread—fine, red—was tied around the edge of the doorknob.
Meanwhile, in the Archives
Iris had stayed late after the celebration, cataloguing the new entries mysteriously deposited in the city's public memory vaults.
Except… something was off.
One parchment bore her signature—but she had never written it.
"To the One Who Watches:
We never agreed to forget.
So I am remembering loudly."
The ink was hers. The language was hers. But she didn't remember ever forming the words.
She shivered.
Not from fear—but familiarity.
Elsewhere: Jun and Mei
Mei sat on the edge of a rooftop, her gaze locked on a distant spire. Her fingers traced symbols on her palm, absentmindedly decoding an algorithm only she seemed to understand.
Jun leaned beside her, uncharacteristically quiet.
"You feel it too, right?" he asked, not looking at her.
"The rules changed," she whispered. "But no one told the story it changed from."
He gave a small, almost sad grin. "Maybe they're waiting for us to tell it."
"Or for someone to remember how it ends."
They didn't speak again for a while. Just watched the clouds move like slow ink across the parchment sky.
Final Scene: The Threadwright's Corner
A dim room with no clear ceiling.
A single figure sits before a desk scattered with papers, many of them blank.
He dips a pen into ink, hesitates, then speaks aloud without turning:
"You've found your names.
But now you must choose… who you are when no one is naming you."
The pen moves again.
Words form, not on paper, but in light.
The chapter ends with a sentence forming mid-air:
"This story remembers itself differently each time it is told."