The heir fell through fractured time like a stone through stained glass, their scream torn away by the rushing wind of unraveling reality. Colors bled together, crimson into cobalt into molten gold, as the prison's heart convulsed around them. Their silver-threaded hand burned where it had signed the contract, the fused quill pulsing like a second heartbeat against their skin.
They landed hard on a surface that shouldn't have existed, a bridge of frozen light spanning an abyss where stars died screaming. The air reeked of burning vellum and spilled ink. Before them stretched the impossible,
The Library of Lost Causes
Shelves towered into infinity, their contents shifting as the heir blinked, one moment leather-bound tomes, the next screaming faces pressed against the inside of their covers. The walkway beneath their feet was paved with broken quills, each one twitching as if trying to write one final word.
"Welcome to the aftermath."
The sister stood waist-deep in a pool of liquid shadow at the bridge's center. Her arms were submerged to the elbows, the dark substance clinging to her skin like tar. When she lifted them, the heir saw why, she was stitching something beneath the surface, her fingers moving with surgical precision as silver thread unspooled from her own veins.
"You signed the contract," she continued, teeth gritted as she pulled another length of thread through what looked like raw spacetime. "Which means you've finally agreed to pay attention."
A sound like cracking bone echoed through the library. One of the shelves exploded outward, spraying parchment and teeth across the void. Through the gap staggered, Kaelion. But not.
This version was younger, softer around the edges, his scholar's robes still pristine. In his hands he clutched an identical contract, the parchment smoking where his fingers touched it. His eyes, still wholly human, still violet, locked onto the heir with desperate recognition.
"They told me I was the first," he rasped, ink dripping from his lips. "They lied."
The sister didn't look up from her work. "Show them."
Kaelion's mouth opened in a silent scream as the contract in his hands burst into black flames. The fire spread up his arms, consuming him from the outside in, but instead of flesh, it burned away layers of time itself. The heir watched in horror as years peeled away like pages from a calendar.
Kaelion at twenty-five, weeping over his sister's corpse
Kaelion at nineteen, signing his name in a pool of his own blood
Kaelion at twelve, wide-eyed as his father pressed a stylus into his palm and whispered, "This is your purpose"
Then, a version so young it made the heir's throat tighten. A child no more than six, clutching a toy quill, laughing as his sister chased him through sunlit gardens.
The fire reached him.
The heir's own scream echoed Kaelion's as the child dissolved into smoke, leaving only three words hanging in the air,
Remember your name.
The sister finally looked up. Her eyes were no longer black, but the exact shade of the Arcanthus violet, the color of twilight on the last day of the world.
"That's the cost," she said softly. "Every law you write burns another memory. Kaelion forgot his childhood to forge the Oblivion Sceptre. He forgot his sister's voice to create the Hollow Codex." She lifted her hands from the shadow-pool, revealing what she'd been stitching,
A patchwork of moments. The heir's own face stared back from a dozen fragments.
A first kiss under dying stars
The taste of their mother's honey cakes
The exact shade of dawn light through the Scriptorium's eastern windows
"Your turn," the sister whispered.
The bridge began to collapse. The heir's quill-hand moved on its own, carving words into the air as they fell,
Let me remember.
The library answered.
Every book burst open at once, their pages fanning out like wings as the voices of every Arcanthus who'd ever lived rose in chorus. The heir felt memories that weren't theirs flood in a thousand first breaths, a thousand last words, a thousand lives reduced to ink on parchment.
They hit the ground kneeling, their fingers buried in warm earth. The scent of blooming nightflowers surrounded them. They knew this place.
The Scriptorium Gardens. But not as ruins. Whole. Alive.
The sister stood before them in full sunlight, no blood on her hands, no void in her eyes. Behind her, the original Scriptorium towers gleamed like white teeth against the blue sky.
"You see now," she said, offering a hand. "The first lie was written in blood."
The heir took it.
"The last," the sister finished, pulling them to their feet, "will be written in you."