The rain wouldn't stop. It poured as though the sky was trying to wash away the world itself, a cold curtain of water drumming against rooftops and street signs like a steady heartbeat.
Kikidori stood under the awning of a bookstore that smelled of damp paper and old wood, hugging his backpack to his chest. It was a quiet place on the edge of town, half-swallowed by ivy and time, and no one he knew ever came here.
It was the kind of place people passed without noticing.
He glanced up at the faded sign above the door. "Rare Finds & Forgotten Tomes." The lettering was crooked, hand-painted, and clearly hadn't been touched in decades. Something about it made his skin tingle.
He didn't know why he was here.
It wasn't on his route home. He'd taken a wrong turn—or maybe a right one. His phone had died an hour ago, the sky had turned black, and he'd wandered without really thinking.
But the strangest part was that the bookstore was open. There was no one inside, no lights on, and yet the door stood slightly ajar, inviting.
Kikidori hesitated. He was the kind of kid who never got in trouble, never went anywhere without a plan. But lately, nothing had felt normal. The world seemed… off. People moved slower. Colors looked duller. Even sound felt muffled, like someone had turned down the volume of his life.
His fingers brushed the handle. Cold metal.
He stepped inside.
---
The smell hit him first—dust, ink, leather bindings. The shop was narrow and impossibly deep, with crooked shelves that leaned like drunks in a storm. Books were stacked in teetering towers, some tied shut with twine, others stuffed into drawers or poking out from under worn rugs.
"Hello?" he called.
No answer.
He should've left. But the silence wasn't threatening. It felt... expectant. Like the shop had been waiting.
Kikidori wandered deeper, brushing past a curtain of hanging paper slips—each one scribbled with words in languages he didn't recognize. Some shimmered when his hand got close. One hissed.
In the back, past the final shelf, he found a table. And on the table lay a single book.
It was large. Old. Bound in black leather that seemed to drink in the light. There was no title on the spine. No author. Nothing but an embossed symbol on the cover—an open eye, surrounded by thorns.
Kikidori reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the leather, the lights in the store flickered. The air grew heavy, pressing against his skin like deep water.
Then—click.
He turned.
An old man stood behind the counter. Or maybe he had always been there. He wore a suit that didn't quite fit and had a face like cracked porcelain, lined and pale, with eyes that had seen centuries pass.
"You shouldn't be touching that," the man said. His voice was a whisper, but it filled the room.
Kikidori froze. "I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"That book isn't for reading," the man continued, stepping forward. "It's for choosing."
Kikidori blinked. "Choosing?"
The old man gave a slow nod. "Every book in this shop tells a story. Some are real. Some are not. Some… were never meant to be told at all. That one you touched—it was never written. Never titled. It's a book of what might have been. Or what might yet be."
Kikidori felt a shiver crawl up his spine. "But there's nothing in it."
"Exactly," the old man said. "Because the moment you touched it… it became yours."
---
The book pulsed. Just once. Like a heartbeat.
Then it opened.
Pages flipped with impossible speed, faster than the eye could track, and Kikidori saw flashes—flashes of places he'd never been. A tower of roots winding into the clouds. A forest of dying stars. A girl screaming underwater. A blade that sang. A door with no key.
And then—
Blackness.
He fell.
---
There was no sound. No ground. Just a feeling of falling, endlessly, gently, as if the universe had turned into an ocean and he had slipped through the surface.
Then came the whisper. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
Welcome... Kikidori.
Archivist candidate confirmed.
Synchronizing soul imprint... complete.
A screen appeared in his mind. Not glass, not metal—just pure thought.
> You have entered the Archive of Eternity.
The Book with No Name has accepted you.
Begin transcription?
Y/N
Kikidori tried to scream. He couldn't. He tried to think. Only one word rose in his chest.
"…Yes."
---
He gasped awake, but the world he opened his eyes to wasn't the bookstore.
He lay on a hill of white sand, under a sky with three suns. No sound. No buildings. Just silence, stretching in every direction.
And in his hand—
The Book.
Still blank.
Still waitingThe Book was warm in his hand.
Not like a heater, or sunlight. It pulsed—alive, like an animal breathing. The leather cover was no longer just smooth and black; it had grown intricate. If he looked closely, he could see tiny symbols etched across the surface—marks too small to read, shifting subtly when he wasn't watching. Like the cover itself was rewriting, constantly, invisibly.
Kikidori sat up slowly. The sky stretched out above him, three suns arranged in a lazy triangle—one gold, one silver, one faint blue. They cast long, warped shadows on the white dunes around him. The sand wasn't really sand. Each grain shimmered like powdered crystal, glittering as he moved.
He took a breath. The air was thin but clean. Crisp. Too perfect.
And still, no sound. No birds. No wind. Not even the beating of his heart.
Until the book opened on its own.
Its pages flipped slowly this time, as though being read by a patient hand. Symbols he couldn't understand scrawled themselves across the parchment in glowing ink—silver and red, pulsing gently like veins. Then, a new voice—not a whisper, not a thought—spoke inside his mind. Clear. Echoing.
> "The Scribe watches. The Page waits. The Story begins only when the pen accepts the hand."
Kikidori stared. "Is this some kind of dream?"
> "This is not a dream. This is a memory waiting to be written."
The voice was calm. Genderless. And yet it knew him. Knew his name. Knew his thoughts before he spoke them.
"Who are you?" he asked.
> "I am the quill that does not write. I am the library that remembers what should be forgotten. I am the witness to the worlds that have no name. And you, Kikidori, have opened the only door that was never meant to be opened."
"Why me?" he whispered.
> "Because you are not like the others."
Kikidori's breath caught. "What others?"
But the voice didn't answer. The page in front of him flashed, then slowly filled with his own name, written in glowing ink:
> [Subject: Kikidori | Role: First Archivist Candidate]
Beneath that, another line shimmered into view:
> "To write is to remember. To remember is to risk."
Suddenly, pain shot through his temples. He clutched his head as a flood of images poured into his mind—flickers of the bookstore, the streets of his home city, his mother's face at the breakfast table, his friend Reika waving at him from the school gates… all melting, fading, flickering like dying candles.
The memories were being pulled from him.
"No—stop—please!"
> "All beginning demands a forgetting. You may not carry your past into this page."
He screamed, but the world didn't echo. It swallowed his voice.
Then, silence.
A single memory remained—his name. Just that.
Kikidori.
That, and the book.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, eyes stinging.
"Where… am I?" he whispered.
And this time, the book answered not with a voice, but with a glowing line written across the next page:
> "Location: Null Continent – Sector E12 – Sundered Fringe"
Kikidori looked up.
And for the first time, he realized he was not alone.
At the edge of the nearest dune, a figure stood watching him.
Small. Barefoot. Cloaked in rags. Their face was hidden beneath a porcelain mask cracked down the middle. And in their hand—
They, too, held a book.
But theirs was bleeding.
A single drop of ink-red liquid fell from its pages and vanished into the glowing sand.
Kikidori opened his mouth to speak.
The figure raised one trembling hand, pointed toward him, and then—
Whispers. Thousands of them. "He's awakened. The blank one. The heir to the Unwritten."
The masked figure turned, dropped their book, and vanished into the dunes.
Kikidori stared at the spot where they'd been.
Then he looked down at the Book again, and saw a new line of text appear:
> "Target Acquired."
And beneath that:
> "First Encounter: Approaching in T-minus 00:03:19…"
Wind began to stir for the first time. Distant thunder echoed across the dunes.
Something was coming.
And Kikidori, holding a book that had no title and memories he couldn't name, had no idea how to survive it.
End of Chapter 1