The Archive trembled.
Klein felt it beneath his feet—a subtle, rhythmic pulse, as if the very foundation of this place was breathing. The books whispered, their pages turning without touch, some crumbling into dust mid-flip only to reform the moment after. The air smelled of old ink, of parchment yellowed by time and rewritten too many times to count.
He turned to Yeaia.
"What do you mean, 'let's find out why'?"
Yeaia's mismatched eyes gleamed, the red burning faintly like embers beneath a veil of smoke, the silver reflecting something Klein couldn't see.
"This place doesn't let go of things so easily," Yeaia said, voice calm but edged with something deeper. "It records, it erases, it rewrites. And sometimes…" Their form flickered, a brief glitch in reality. "Sometimes it gets confused."
Klein narrowed his eyes.
"Confused how?"
Yeaia gestured at the endless rows of books, at the shifting titles that refused to be read.
"Look around. Do you recognize anything?"
Klein frowned. He stepped toward a shelf, fingers brushing the spine of a book. The moment he touched it, ink bled from the cover, swallowing whatever was written there. His stomach twisted.
He reached for another. The same thing happened.
One by one, Klein tried to grasp something—anything—that would give him an answer. But every title, every record, every thread of knowledge slipped away the moment he touched it.
"What is this?" he murmured.
"A contradiction," Yeaia said.
Klein turned sharply.
"What do you mean?"
Yeaia's gaze was steady.
"You remember the parchment, don't you?"
Klein hesitated.
The memory flickered behind his eyes—the shifting letters, the ink that refused to dry, the names that kept changing.
"Yes," he admitted.
"Then think about this: If you don't have a name, what does that make your story?"
Klein's breath hitched.
"Unwritten."
"Exactly."
The realization settled into his bones. The Archive of the Unwritten—it had always been a strange place, a place that contained stories that had yet to be, stories that never were. But Klein… Klein wasn't a book. He wasn't a record.
Or was he?
"Why am I here?" he asked.
"Because you're a mistake," another voice answered.
Klein tensed.
The air thickened. The Archive's whispering stopped, silence pressing in from every direction.
A figure stepped forward from the shadows.
Klein's eyes narrowed.
It was the same one.
The one he had seen before—the blurred, shifting figure with no clear features, no stable form. Its presence was wrong, as if it had been cut out of reality and hastily stitched back in.
"You don't belong," the figure said. Its voice echoed, layered over itself like multiple people speaking at once.
Klein clenched his fists.
"Then tell me what I am."
The figure tilted its head.
"A contradiction. A paradox. An anomaly in the ink."
Its form wavered, a smear against existence.
"You weren't supposed to be here, Klein Moretti. You weren't supposed to exist."
Klein felt something stir within him—a deep, bone-deep certainty that something about this was wrong.
"Then why am I here?" he asked again. "Why haven't you erased me?"
The figure was silent.
Yeaia stepped forward. Their form was flickering more than before, as if just standing here was taking a toll on them.
"Because it can't," they said.
Klein turned to them.
"What?"
Yeaia's lips quirked into a sharp, knowing smile.
"You said it yourself. The ink isn't dry."
The figure twitched.
"He is unfinished," it said.
"No," Yeaia corrected. "He is unwritten. And that means he can still change."
Klein's heart pounded.
"You're saying I can rewrite myself?"
"Isn't that what you've been doing all along?"
Klein's breath caught in his throat.
Yeaia was right.
From the moment he had awoken in this world, he had been shifting between identities. Klein Moretti. Zhou Mingrui. The Fool. The Lord of Mysteries.
Even now, he wasn't sure who he truly was.
But if he was truly unwritten…
Then maybe—just maybe—he could choose.
The figure's form flickered wildly, its shape distorting, unraveling.
"This is an error," it hissed.
Klein took a step forward.
"Then let's fix it."
The Archive shuddered. Books flew off the shelves, their pages tearing, ink spilling into the air like dark rain. The ground beneath them cracked, revealing an abyss of endless parchment and words that had never been spoken.
The figure reached for him, its form stretching unnaturally, its fingers dissolving into ink.
Klein didn't back down.
"I am Klein Moretti."
The words rang through the Archive, cutting through the chaos.
"I am Zhou Mingrui."
The ink-stained void around him trembled.
"I am The Fool."
The figure screamed.
The Archive collapsed.
And then—
There was light.
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End of Chapter 83
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