The Chronicle pulsed like a second heartbeat as his words burned across the girl's fading Entry. The inkbridge thrummed—alive, dangerous. If he faltered, both books could combust.
He guided her hand with his own, the quill trembling between their fingers. Her eyes rolled back. Ash-veins crawled higher up her throat.
He wrote, careful and clean:
I will not fade while another breath steadies mine.
The Archive shivered. The girl gasped—her eyes snapping open, pale irises focusing sharp on him. The ember-veins slowed. The glow in her book steadied into coal-red.
New Trait: [Shared Breath] – Life steadies while linked to donor's breath. Cost: donor weakens until severed.
Air fled his lungs like payment taken. He staggered, chest tight, as if each inhale was being shared, halved.
The storm slammed into them. He dropped over her, Chronicle raised. Ash-Stone turned the cutting edges aside, but numbness swallowed his hands to the elbows.
"Move!" the Archivist barked. "Now!"
He yanked the Chronicle free of her book. The tether pulsed, draining, but held. He shoved the girl upright, dragging her with one arm. She weighed almost nothing.
The Librarian's mask tilted, considering. Its quills flicked, and the storm narrowed into a funnel. Pages speared forward, piercing shelves, impaling books that burst into ash-fire.
He scrawled again, teeth gritted:My steps carry two as one when danger closes; afterward, my joints ache double.
New Trait: [Twin Stride] – Movement eases while carrying another under pursuit. Cost: doubled pain after use.
Heat licked his calves. He ran. And the world shifted. His body moved smoother, the girl's weight flowing with his stride. Their breaths tangled through the tether, harsh and shallow, but matched.
The Archivist led them through collapsing aisles. The storm chased, tearing shelves apart as easily as paper dolls. Pages shrieked with stolen words. The Librarian followed, never hurried, quills scribbling pursuit into being.
They slid beneath a fallen beam, into a narrow crawl. Ash choked the air. Behind, the storm shredded the beam like silk. He didn't look back.
The passage opened into a low chamber. Desks and charts leaned broken against the walls. One chart showed a book's anatomy: spine, leaf, marrow. Another showed a family tree of titles branching into void.
He dropped the girl onto a desk. Her book beat slow but steady, ember glow refusing to gutter. His chest still pulled uneven, Shared Breath tugging at him. "She'll live," he rasped.
"For now," the Archivist said. She traced her quill against the floor, sketching sigils. "But you—burning ink that isn't yours invites ruin."
He ignored her. To the girl: "Your name?"
Her lips cracked. No sound. The name on her cover flickered and died again.
The Librarian struck the far wall. Wood exploded. Pages slithered through cracks. The mask's blank slits gleamed, patient, inevitable.
"Door," the Archivist snapped, pointing at a seam between shelves. "Pay for it."
He didn't hesitate. He opened the Chronicle, heart racing.
One had to go. One truth had to be released. He grit his teeth and wrote:
I give up my shield and keep my feet.
The Chronicle seared. His [Ash-Stone] trait peeled away like skin shed. Cold exposure rushed in. But the seam in the shelves shivered—then opened, remembering it was a door.
"Through!"
He shoved the girl first. She stumbled but moved. He followed. The Archivist last. The seam closed, forgetting it had ever yielded.
Pages beat the wood behind them, hissing give give give and finding no purchase.
They stood in a high, cold corridor. Carvings glimmered faintly on the walls—names without letters, destinies not yet written. The air smelled of old ink, deep and bitter.
"The Margins," the Archivist said. "Where the Archive keeps what it might become."
The girl slumped against the wall, breathing hard. Her book pulsed faintly, alive.
"You rewrote her," the Archivist said at last. "That will not go unnoticed. Those who can Rewrite will be hunted."
The young man stared at the Chronicle. His hands trembled where once they had been stone. His shield was gone. But the girl lived.
And the title on his cover glowed faintly, answering:
[The Chronicle of the Unwritten]