Klein stepped through the doorway.
For a moment, there was nothing.
No sound. No light. No Archive.
Just absence.
Then—
Reality lurched.
Klein stumbled forward, barely catching himself before falling. His senses reoriented, his mind struggling to grasp the wrongness of the space he had just entered.
It was neither bright nor dark. Neither vast nor confined. A paradox of existence.
The floor beneath him was solid but indistinct, as if made of the memory of something firm rather than true material. The air was heavy with the scent of old paper and ink that refused to dry.
Ahead, the space stretched infinitely—yet he could see its end.
A single desk stood there, pristine.
Atop it lay an open book.
A book that was writing itself.
Ink bled onto the pages, letters twisting into words, words forming sentences, sentences creating reality.
Klein's breath hitched.
The pages turned.
And his own name appeared.
—
The Name That Wasn't There
He did not move.
His heartbeat pounded in his ears as his mismatched eyes flicked over the freshly inked words.
"Klein Moretti stepped through the door and saw the book that wrote his fate."
The ink shimmered, shifting—
Then, before his eyes, the sentence rewrote itself.
"The being that was once Klein Moretti stepped through the door and saw the book that wrote his fate."
His breath caught.
A slow, creeping dread crawled up his spine.
He watched as the words erased themselves again—then returned, subtly altered.
"The anomaly known as Klein Moretti stepped through the door and saw the book that wrote his fate."
Klein's hands clenched into fists.
Anomaly.
That word should not have been there.
The book was changing his existence as he watched.
No—no, that wasn't quite right.
It wasn't changing him.
It was revealing something.
Something he had not yet realized.
—
The Reflection That Spoke
A voice cut through the silence.
"You shouldn't be here."
Klein turned sharply.
His reflection stood just behind him, watching the book with an unreadable expression. But there was something wrong about him now—his presence felt heavier, more defined.
More real.
And then Klein understood.
His reflection had never truly been a reflection.
It had always been something else. Something that existed independent of him.
The reflection stepped forward, stopping beside him.
"You weren't supposed to read that," it murmured.
Klein's jaw tightened. "Why?"
The reflection exhaled softly.
"Because now you can't ignore it."
—
The Unwritten Truth
Klein turned back to the book.
The words on the page twisted again.
Ink blurred, sentences unraveling, rewriting themselves at an unnatural pace.
Then, suddenly, the motion stopped.
A new line appeared.
One that made his blood run cold.
"The Fool never existed."
Klein froze.
His breath caught in his throat.
The ink shifted again—expanding, consuming the previous sentence, rewriting itself into something worse.
"The Fool was never meant to be."
A sharp pain stabbed into his skull.
Memories flickered—
A thousand scenes, a thousand moments—
All centered around The Fool.
Him.
But now, in the wake of those words—
The Fool felt…fragile.
Like a dream on the verge of fading.
Like something that had only been half-real.
Klein's hands trembled.
This was wrong. This was wrong.
He had existed. He had lived, breathed, fought, suffered.
How could he—
Not be real?
—
The Ink That Refuses to Dry
A low, distant scratching sound filled the air.
Klein's gaze snapped back to the book.
The ink was moving.
It bled across the page, expanding, twisting into a shape.
A name.
A name he could not read.
His eyes ached as they tried to process it—his mind rebelled, unable to hold onto its form.
But something deep inside him recognized it.
A name from before.
A name that had been erased.
A name that had been his.
And in that moment—
He remembered.
The pain was immediate, a searing, mind-breaking agony that ripped through his very existence.
A shattering of self—
A collapse of everything he had ever known—
And then—
Silence.
—
The Being That Was Never Named
Klein gasped.
He was somewhere else.
The book was gone.
The Archive was gone.
The only thing that remained was the lingering echo of that unreadable name in his mind.
He lifted a trembling hand to his face.
Something about him felt wrong.
As if a part of him had been peeled away.
As if something fundamental had changed.
His reflection was gone.
The door was gone.
There was no way back.
And Klein—
Klein was no longer certain that he had ever existed at all.
---
End of Chapter 76.
---