"The world is free now," they said.But no one asked what filled the silence after the song ended."—Sovael the Echoflame, Witness to the Crownfall
One week after the Crownfall.
Lucien Vaelthorn wandered through the shattered ruins of the First Archive—the original library of the Realms, hidden beneath the spine of the Hollow Continent.
Ash drifted like snow. Statues of authors and prophets lay decapitated. The Codex Seals hummed faintly, ancient enchantments still twitching after their masters had been unmade.
He had no crown now. No army. No enemies.
Just echoes.
And one final task.
To find the book that never wanted to be found.The Black Manuscript.
It was older than the Choir. Older than the Realms.
Said to be inked in godblood, bound in paradox, and buried at the intersection of three lost realities.
It did not contain stories.It decided which stories would be allowed to exist.
It was the weapon behind the Sovereign Choir's control, hidden away by the first Chanter Lords—too dangerous to destroy, too powerful to be trusted.
Now, with their song silenced, it stirred again. Whispers of it leaked into the world—through dreams, through madness.
And Lucien had heard it.
He descended into the Vault of Parables, where time fractured across the shelves. Books rearranged themselves to avoid being read. Every few seconds, he passed a different version of himself—one younger, one older, one that died screaming.
His path was guided not by light, but by absence—the trail of meaningless ink that stained even the memory of pages.
"You can still walk away," said a voice behind him.
He turned.
Lyrenna stood at the entrance, arms crossed, her once-golden armor dulled by ruin.
"I unbound you," Lucien said.
"You unbound my fate," she replied. "Not my will."
She walked beside him.
"So now what?" she asked."You're going to write a better ending?""Rewrite the universe again, this time by hand?"
Lucien shook his head.
"No. I came to erase the quill."
Deep within the Archive, they found it.
A sphere of anti-light suspended over a pedestal shaped like a spine. The Manuscript hovered above it, pages closed, pulsing like a heart.
Lucien stepped forward.
The moment he touched the pedestal, the world halted.
Lucien stood in a void.
No time.
No breath.
Just it.
The Black Manuscript unfolded.
Pages turned by invisible hands.
"Lucien Vaelthorn," it said.But not in sound—in understanding."Bearer of Null. Inheritor of Silence. Breaker of Verse."
Each word etched itself into his bones.
"Why do you seek us?"
Lucien didn't flinch.
"Because even silence can be abused," he said."Because now that the Song is gone, someone else will try to take its place.""Because stories should belong to the ones who live them."
The Manuscript flipped to a blank page.
"Then write, Hollow Scion," it said."If you dare."
A quill formed.
It hovered before him—its ink swirling like stars dying in reverse.
He grasped it.
And he hesitated.
Because to write was to bind.To bind was to claim.And to claim was to control.
Lyrenna's voice echoed in his mind.
"What makes you any different from them?"
Lucien closed his eyes.
Then he turned the quill around—
—and stabbed it into the Manuscript's spine.
The void screamed.
The Manuscript rippled, spasmed.
Then burned.
Its pages blackened, devoured by the ink it had once controlled.
As it collapsed, one final word branded itself across reality:
[UNWRITTEN]
The Vault exploded.
Lucien and Lyrenna were flung from the collapsing Archive as the entire structure devoured itself—vanishing into a hole in the world where no story could ever form again.
When they rose from the rubble, the sky above had changed.
No longer static.
No longer scripted.
But full of wild constellations—new ones. Unclaimed. Unmapped.
Lucien stared upward.
"It's over," Lyrenna whispered.
"No," Lucien said.
"It's finally beginning."
Elsewhere, in a place that should not exist…
A hand reached down and retrieved the burnt core of the Black Manuscript.
Its fingers were made of shadow-script. Its eyes were twin abysses.
It smiled.
"So the Hollow Scion chose freedom."
"That's fine."
"We prefer chaos anyway."
And from the fragments of the Manuscript, the first unbound god was born.