There is a silence that doesn't merely lack sound, it devours it.
That was the silence Elias stepped into as he descended into the forbidden vault beneath the Archive of Horns. Few living knew of this level. Fewer returned.
It had taken him days to piece together the ciphered route through the city's sacred texts, and even then, only after Ayélè grudgingly handed him a bone medallion carved with a spiral, the mark of the Wombbound, a now-extinct sect of dream-keepers who once guarded memory not with words, but absence.
This place had no name. It wasn't meant to be found.
So when the ancient door, sealed by blood-rust and covered in soot, opened to his touch, Elias did not feel triumph. He felt expected.
The Book was not a book.
It was a spine, severed at both ends, hollowed out and filled with a fluid like slow mercury. It floated above a pedestal of blackglass, surrounded by glyphs that wept when touched. As he stepped forward, the air around him became denser, like he was wading into something sentient.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the liquid inside the spine shifted. It coiled. It moved toward him, not toward his face or hand, but toward the small cut on his palm, a wound from earlier that hadn't healed.
The Book smelled his blood. And it opened.
What emerged was not paper but memory.
Flickering projections, like smoke caught in thought, swirled above the pedestal. Each was a different version of Djariné-Sa, some intact, some in ruins, some swallowed by vines, and one on fire, silhouetted against a golden sky burning with ships.
And each vision showed him.
Or someone wearing his face.
He stepped into the visions. Each had a gravity of its own. Each dragged him in.
In one, he stood atop the broken Spiral Throne. Below him, corpses of the bone-priests lay in ritual circles, as if they'd offered themselves. Ayélè was gone. The mirror pulsed in the center of the city like a second sun. A voice whispered:
"In this thread, you accepted the Watcher's offer."
In another, he wore a mask of flayed gold and commanded legions made of sand and bone. The city obeyed him, feared him, called him Son of the Rift. But there was no color in his eyes.
"In this thread, you became the parasite's voice."
And then there was the burning one.
Ships with spined hulls hovered in the sky. The Empire of Waking Glass, a name that came unbidden into his mind, was bombarding the city with mirrored weapons that didn't explode, they reflected pain. Buildings collapsed, then repeated their collapse, endlessly, as if caught in a cruel loop. Civilians tried to flee, only to find their paths mirrored back at them.
Elias, this version, stood defiant. And alone. And already dying.
"In this thread," the Book whispered directly into his thoughts, "you try to save them. You fail."
The visions withdrew.
He was back in the vault, sweating, blood dripping from his ears again. The spine's fluid was now still, but it bore one final message, written in red and already fading:
"THE CITY BURNS IN MOST THREADS."
And beneath that:
"BUT ONE PATH REMAINS UNWRITTEN."
He staggered back from the pedestal, but before he could leave, a second presence made itself known. It emerged from the far corner of the vault: a figure in a robe made of fragmented memories, half-glimpsed faces, names half-spoken, histories half-erased.
It wore a broken crown of teeth.
Its voice was both male and female, ancient and unborn.
"You've seen the Book. You've seen what may be."
"Who are you?"
"A librarian of lives unwritten. A scribe of potential. A gravekeeper of forgotten futures. Call me what you must."
"Can I change it? The ending?"
"The question is not if you can. The question is: at what cost?"
The librarian raised a finger and touched his chest.
Images flared behind Elias's eyes: Ayélè impaled. Rae wearing a crown of living bone. The First Elias crumbling into sand. A child with glass for eyes, whispering secrets to the mirror.
"The cost," the librarian said, "is always the same."
"Which is?"
"The Self. You cannot leap forever. One day, there will be no Elias left to carry."
The Book began to seal again, the spine folding inward with the creak of dying stars.
As he turned to go, the librarian spoke one final time:
"Beware the Mirror's twin. One divides. The other decides."
Elias froze.
"The what?"
But the vault was already unmaking itself, glyphs collapsing, stairs retracting. The door would soon forget it had ever opened.
He ran.
Outside, the city's bells rang sharply.
Not for prayer. Not for celebration.
But for war.
Ayélè was waiting for him at the threshold of the sanctum, sword already unsheathed, bone dust in her braids.
"The bloodline has been challenged," she said grimly. "A claimant from the Outer Sand is marching on the city. He wears the mask of the Sealed One."
"A Watcher?"
"Or something worse."
Elias looked to the skyline, where distant banners of broken glass fluttered on the wind for the first time in centuries.
"It's starting," he murmured.
"Then let's make sure we get to write the end," Ayélè said.