(Author here; Please leave comets and power stones)
The world beyond the Garden trembled.
Not violently. Not yet.
It was a trembling like breath before a scream. Like silence before a storm.
The Codex hovered in the center of the circle the companions had formed — a living tome now, radiant with merged fragments. Its pages no longer turned by wind or hand, but by purpose. It responded to presence. To belief.
But belief, Mary had once said, was a dangerous thing.
And something — someone — was coming to test it.
Lela felt it first. A flicker of wrongness at the edge of awareness.
A dissonance not unlike the riddle-gates she once kept, but deeper. More primal.
"Something's bleeding through," she said, hand reaching toward the hilt of the blade she'd reforged in Loosie's forge.
The Friend turned, eyes narrowing. "Not from the Codex. From outside it."
Mary closed the violin case slowly. "It's not a story that's coming. It's a counter-story."
They all felt it then — like a cold wind sliding between the seams of their worlds.
Not a character.
Not a force.
But an intention.
The air twisted. The horizon folded.
And from the creased edge of reality stepped a figure cloaked in absence — a shape made not of ink or light or shadow, but lack.
It wore no face, only a shifting mask of unspoken stories. Its cloak trailed behind it like torn pages never written.
And its voice, when it spoke, was like dry quills snapping in an empty well.
"You have made a mistake."
The Friend stepped forward. "We made a choice."
"You call it creation," the figure said. "I call it clutter."
Mary narrowed her eyes. "Who are you?"
"I am the Null Scribe. I am the One Who Would Unmake. The hand that never wrote. The voice that refused."
Lela felt her grip tighten on the obsidian blade. "You're here to destroy the Codex."
"I do not need to destroy it," the Null Scribe replied. "You will undo yourselves. All it takes is one doubt. One untied thread. One discordant note."
He extended a hand of ghost-ink toward the Codex.
"And I will wait."
The Codex flinched.
It recoiled as if scorched, its pages fluttering violently, light dimming.
Suddenly, a fissure opened in the space between them — a rift of non-story, blank and cold, a void that devoured sound.
From it poured fragments of undone worlds — characters who had never been chosen, landscapes that had never been named, timelines abandoned before the first word.
Mary staggered backward, clutching her chest.
"It's not just erasure," she gasped. "It's anti-meaning. A void that infects narrative itself."
The Friend bent to shield the Codex with his coat, but the light continued to dim.
And then the Null Scribe said:
"Tell me, Mary. What song will you sing when the notes unravel?"
"Tell me, Loosie. What will your hammer strike when the forge cools?"
"Tell me, Friend. What will you connect when the stories collapse?"
One by one, he turned to each of them.
"You are only as strong as your belief."
"And belief is fragile."
A second rift opened.
Through it came a twisted version of Mary's garden — dead vines, broken melodies, a violin cracked in two.
Then another: a forge of rust and ruin, where no steel held shape, no flame held warmth.
And another: a hall of doors, all closed, all locked, all leading nowhere.
"These are the worlds I offer," the Null Scribe said. "Clean. Silent. Undisturbed."
Loosie stepped forward, fire blooming at her feet. "That's not clean. That's empty."
"Empty is safe," the Null Scribe replied.
The Friend held the Codex in both hands now, and it began to pulse again — faintly, like a heartbeat resisting sleep.
Mary raised her voice. "You mistake silence for peace. You mistake absence for wisdom."
The Null Scribe extended both hands.
"I offer an end. Isn't that what stories long for? Closure. Stillness. Resolution."
Lela's voice rang clear across the gathering wind.
"No," she said. "Stories long to begin again."
As the rifts widened, the Codex's light flickered.
But then — from its center — came a sound.
A single word.
Spoken not by mouth.
But by intention.
It rippled through the space like thunder in reverse — collapsing every false echo, sealing every rift.
"Again."
The Null Scribe staggered.
The word struck like a hammer, a violin string, a heartbeat.
And behind it came more.
"Hope."
"Return."
"Transform."
The Codex began to glow again, not in gold or silver, but in colors that had no name — the hues of unwritten truths.
Sera stepped forward, palms open.
"We don't need one ending," she said.
"We need openings."
The Null Scribe screamed — not in pain, but in unraveling.
Its form shimmered, losing coherence.
The mask of silence cracked.
From within, a human shape emerged — not monstrous, but tired.
Worn.
A writer who had once stopped writing.
A voice that had once given up.
Mary stepped forward, hand still trembling on the violin case.
"You're not our enemy," she said softly.
"You're our fear."
The Null Scribe collapsed to its knees.
"Then name me," it whispered.
The Friend knelt beside him.
"You are the blank page," he said.
"But only before the first word."
Loosie held out her hammer.
"You're potential."
Lela held out her hand.
"Not a void. A pause."
And Mary stepped forward.
"Then let this be your first song."
She opened the violin case.
And played.
The melody wove through the chamber, delicate but sure. It carried the weight of stories lost, and those yet to come.
It reached the Null Scribe, now weeping, now fading, now becoming.
The last of the rifts closed.
The Codex brightened — not to completion, but to continuance.
The garden began to bloom again. The forge relit. The halls of doors reopened.
The characters stepped forward.
And in that moment, they understood:
The Codex was never about writing the perfect story.
It was about welcoming them all.