Ash muffled their steps as they entered the atrium.The space felt different from the narrow aisles of shelves—vaster, more broken. The ceiling rose into a half-dome, split open like an eggshell. A seam of black sky gaped above, snowing down ash in pale, ceaseless threads. Fallen shelves lay in heaps, ribs of a collapsed beast, their charred planks jutting out at angles that made the chamber feel both enormous and claustrophobic.
The young man drew his cloak tighter around the Chronicle, hiding the faint glow of its pages. Every nerve in him said this place was wrong. The silence was too deep, the air too heavy.
The Archivist paused a step ahead of him, parchment skirts whispering against the ash. "This hall remembers battles," she murmured. "Be wary. Some places never forget what they were forced to hold."
He swallowed and nodded, though his hand had already found the quill tucked into his belt.
Then a voice slithered out from the shadow of the far wall."Unwritten."
The word cut the silence like a knife.
A figure stepped into the light that seeped through the broken dome. Tall, draped in robes stitched from scraps of burned parchment, his form looked both regal and ruined. His face was hidden behind a mask, bone-white with lines carved into it like cracks in porcelain. Chains coiled around his torso and arms, heavy with the weight of several half-burned tomes dangling from them. The tomes pulsed faintly, like diseased hearts.
The man's gaze—or whatever hid behind the mask—fixed on the young man."You walk unbound. Dangerous. The Blank Threat."
His stomach dropped. "Blank… threat?"
The Archivist's voice had lost all softness. "A Librarian."
The masked figure tilted his head. "At last. I wondered when the Archive would dare offer me something rare." His voice was like paper tearing, stretched into words. He lifted one chain-bound book and let it fall open. "Now I will shelve you properly."
The book snapped wide. Fire surged from its pages—not flame, but black cinders given shape. Out of the burning words rose a figure of ash: a warrior clad in armor that melted and reformed as it moved, a sword of smoke in its hand. Its eyes were hollows, but its stance was that of a fighter long trained.
The young man stumbled back, clutching his Chronicle. "What—what is that?"
"A theft made into a soldier," the Archivist said, her quill trembling faintly at her side. "A soul stripped from its Entry and chained to another's will. He has made it into a weapon."
The Librarian opened another tome, and a second ash-figure spilled out, then a third. They staggered forward like marionettes, movements stiff yet deadly.
The young man forced a breath through his lungs and flipped open his Chronicle. The warmth pulsed under his fingers, eager, warning. He pressed the quill down. His mind raced. He could feel panic ready to scald the page.
He wrote: Ash slows when I breathe steady.
The line glowed, searing, then sank into the page.
New Trait: [Calm Step] — Movement steadies under controlled breath.
He exhaled once, twice, thrice. His pulse evened. When the first ash-figure swung, he slid back smoothly, as if his body had been waiting for the breath to tell it where to go. The blade cut only air.
But the figure did not falter. Its arm crumbled as the swing finished, shoulder cracking into flakes of ember. The sight froze him. The creature was burning itself away just to move.
The Archivist's whisper threaded into his ear. "They are not alive. They are borrowed lives, already half-consumed. The Librarian burns them down to nothing."
Another slash whistled past him. He ducked, rolled, came up again, the Chronicle clutched to his chest. He dared a glance into the hollow eyes of the warrior—eyes that flickered for an instant, as if something human still watched from within, begging release.
His throat closed. These weren't enemies. They were victims being forced to fight.
The Librarian's voice boomed across the atrium. "You carry lines that are not yet fixed. You carry choice. I will chain them. You will be filed and forgotten."
The young man's hand trembled around his quill. He wanted to shout back, but his mouth was dry, his fear caught between ribs.
The Librarian raised two more chained tomes. With a sound like tearing flesh, both burst open. More ash-figures fell out onto the stone, dragging themselves upright, swords and spears crackling into shape. Their eyes were only holes, but their hunger fixed on him.
The Archivist's gaze flicked toward him, ink-dark and unwavering. "He is testing you. Do not break."
He felt the ash shifting under his boots as the summoned warriors closed in. The air thickened with heat, sparks drifting from every step they took. Around him, the ring tightened—five, six, now seven shapes staggering closer, blades raised.
His pulse hammered. His palm bled from how tightly he gripped the quill.If he faltered, if the Chronicle slipped—if the Librarian seized it—he would vanish.
The Archivist's voice was cold steel. "If you fall, he will shelve what remains of you. A blank page filled with chains."
The young man's jaw clenched. He could feel the book's heartbeat in his hands, steady and hot.
He whispered to himself, to the words, to the ash:"Then I'll write something he won't expect."
The quill touched the page.
And the ash-figures lunged.