The first sign came with the wind.
It wasn't a normal wind — it carried whispers, fragments of language that didn't belong to this world. Every breath that stirred the ruined corridors of the Loomspire seemed to breathe with intention, forming words that vanished before they were fully spoken. The torches bent toward the sound, flickering as though listening.
Mary stood at the highest balcony, the dawn bleeding crimson along the horizon. The Loomspire's shadow stretched over the valley below, long and thin, cutting across the fractured sky like a scar.
Lucien joined her quietly. He hadn't spoken much since the ritual. His expression was distant, thoughtful, like a scholar trying to understand a new dialect of nightmare.
"Do you hear it?" Mary asked, her voice rough from sleepless hours.
Lucien nodded. "The wind shouldn't have language."
"Nothing should anymore," she said. "Not after what we did."
He didn't disagree.
The ritual had worked — mostly. The Codex was sealed beneath the Loomspire, its pages inert, the Queen's voice silenced. But that silence was wrong. It didn't feel like death; it felt like breath held in anticipation.
Now, the Loomspire itself was beginning to change.
Runes Mary didn't remember carving had appeared along the walls overnight, pulsing faintly with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. The ink that bled from the stone the night before had hardened into thin black veins that traced the halls like living roots.
Lucien leaned on the railing. "The others will come soon. They'll feel the shift."
Mary closed her eyes. She could already feel it — a tremor in the tapestry of their shared world, rippling through every thread connected to her. Somewhere far to the east, Lela would feel it in her dreams. Loosie would wake to the taste of ash. Even the Friend, lost in the spaces between doors, would hear the Codex's heartbeat echo through the void.
"What if the Codex isn't dying?" Lucien asked softly. "What if it's waking?"
Mary turned toward him, the red light catching the lines now etched along her neck — runic scars left from the ritual. They pulsed faintly with every beat of her heart.
"Then it's learning how to live," she said. "And that might be worse."
They spent the day in silence, tending to the Loomspire's library — what little remained of it. Most of the books had burned during the first breach, their words twisting into shapes too dangerous to touch. The surviving tomes were chained shut, whispering softly when they thought no one was listening.
Mary traced her fingers along one of them, a small black volume that trembled beneath her touch.
"Lucien," she said quietly, "this book… it's breathing."
He turned sharply. "Which one?"
She stepped back as the book pulsed once — an inhale — and the chain binding it snapped. The air grew cold, thick with the scent of iron and ink.
Lucien reached for his dagger, but the book opened on its own.
Its pages were blank.
Then, slowly, words began to appear, written in a hand both elegant and cruel — the Queen's script.
Mary felt her chest tighten. "No…"
The ink spread across the pages, forming a single line that glowed with dull crimson light:
"Did you think you could silence your own blood?"
The whisper came from nowhere and everywhere at once — a voice too close, too intimate, curling against the edge of her mind.
Lucien slammed the book shut, binding it again with a strip of silver-threaded leather. The whisper faded, but the echo lingered.
Mary pressed her hand to her chest, feeling the faint flutter of another heartbeat beneath her own.
"She's inside me," she said, her voice barely audible.
Lucien's jaw tightened. "Then we keep her there. Contained."
Mary met his eyes. "She won't stay contained."
Lucien didn't answer, but his silence said enough.
That night, sleep came for neither of them.
Mary sat alone in the observatory, surrounded by broken instruments and shards of starlight trapped in crystal. The air shimmered faintly, the edges of the world bending like warped glass. Every few seconds, she caught a glimpse of something that wasn't there — a woman's silhouette standing just beyond her reflection, watching.
When she finally spoke, the voice wasn't entirely her own.
"You don't belong here," she whispered to the shadow.
The reflection smiled — her smile, but sharper.
"Neither do you."
The glass rippled, and for a heartbeat, Mary saw another version of herself — eyes dark as ink, skin carved with runes that pulsed like veins of molten metal. The reflection tilted its head.
"You tried to kill me," it said. "But we share the same heart."
Mary stepped closer to the mirror, her reflection doing the same. "I won't let you out."
"You already did."
The mirror shattered.
Lucien was there in an instant, sword drawn, scanning for danger. But the shards only fell harmlessly around her, each one reflecting a different face — some hers, some the Queen's, some unrecognizable.
Mary sank to her knees, shaking. "She's breaking through the glass between us."
Lucien crouched beside her. "Then we'll reinforce it."
"With what? Ink? Blood? Hope?" Her voice broke. "She's not just a voice anymore, Lucien. She's a pattern. A living idea."
Lucien touched her shoulder, grounding her. "Then we rewrite her."
She looked at him with something between disbelief and awe. "Rewrite a god?"
He gave a thin smile. "We've done worse."
By dawn, they had a plan — desperate, half-mad, but a plan nonetheless.
The Codex couldn't be destroyed. It was too deeply embedded in the fabric of their reality. But perhaps, it could be rewritten — not by tearing pages, but by overwriting its core narrative: the Queen's authorship.
"If the Queen is the story's source," Lucien said, sketching circles of sigils across the stone floor, "then all we need is a stronger author."
Mary arched an eyebrow. "You make it sound simple."
"It isn't," he admitted. "It requires someone who exists outside the Codex's influence — someone who was never written by it."
Mary frowned. "There's no such person left."
Lucien hesitated, then said quietly, "Maybe there is."
Realization hit her. "The Friend."
He nodded. "He walks between the stories, not inside them. If anyone can alter the Codex without being consumed, it's him."
Mary exhaled slowly. "Finding him won't be easy."
"The path between doors is unstable," Lucien said. "But we can open one, briefly. You'll need to anchor it."
"Me?"
"You're still tied to the Codex," he said. "Your blood is the ink. You can guide the door's narrative signature."
Mary closed her eyes. "You're asking me to use what's left of her."
Lucien's voice softened. "I'm asking you to use what's left of you."
They began the ritual that night.
The Loomspire's central hall glowed with candlelight. Circles of runes spiraled outward from the sealed Codex's resting place. The air shimmered, vibrating with language not yet formed.
Mary cut her palm, letting her silver blood drip into the center of the circle. Lucien added a drop of his own — shadow and moonlight merging again. The moment they touched the stone, the runes flared alive.
"Mary," Lucien said. "Once it opens, we'll only have moments before the Queen senses it."
She nodded, jaw set. "Then let's make them count."
The air split.
Reality folded inward, a black corridor stretching into infinity. Between its shifting walls hung countless doors — some glowing, some burning, some weeping ink. The Path Between Doors had opened.
Through the distortion, Mary caught glimpses of the Friend — his silhouette flickering as if caught between breaths. He turned toward her, his expression unreadable.
"You shouldn't have opened this," he said. His voice echoed like thunder and whisper all at once.
"The Queen's waking," Mary said. "We need you to rewrite her."
The Friend's gaze softened with something like sorrow.
"You don't rewrite a storm, Mary. You endure it."
"She'll destroy everything," Lucien said. "The Codex, the worlds, all of it."
The Friend stepped closer, his form wavering. "I can't stop her. But I can teach you how to hold the pen."
Before Mary could answer, the ground shuddered. The door behind her began to glow red — the color of living blood.
Lucien shouted, "She's found us!"
The Friend reached out, his hand pressing against the invisible barrier between them.
"Take this, Mary. A word without author."
He drew a single sigil in the air — a shape older than language, burning white-hot — and pressed it into her chest. Mary gasped as light filled her, the mark searing into her skin.
"Remember it," the Friend said, his voice fading. "When the Queen rises, it will be your name that decides the story."
The Path snapped shut.
Mary collapsed against Lucien, her heart pounding, the mark on her chest glowing faintly through her shirt. She could feel it pulsing — alive, steady, waiting.
Lucien caught his breath. "What did he give you?"
Mary stared at her trembling hands. "A word."
Lucien frowned. "What word?"
She looked up, eyes bright with light and terror.
"The one that can end her."
And far below them, deep within the sealed chamber, the Codex stirred — pages rustling like a restless heart.
A whisper slipped through the cracks, faint and cold:
"Then we shall see who writes last."