The fire in the Unwritten did not fester—it lived. As waking from a perpetual sleep, it pulsated with ancestral craving once, then a second time with infantile awe. It surrounded by doubt stirred the emptiness, raging with broken echoes and ghostly histories. Time was warped. The world stood still.
Kael stood arm cocked, the thread trembling in his hand, every muscle of his frame howling with tension. But he held on, not just to the power of the void—but to the piece of him that still whispered, finish it, now, while you can.
Elira's hand was over his, her fingers entwining with his in soft insistence.
"Look," she whispered.
And he did.
The Unwritten gathered—not as monster, not as deity, not even as foe. It unfolded like page kissed with ink, not pressed into folds, but invited. Memories poured into it—not stolen, not seized—but offered.
Visions emerged between them like stardust frozen in residual gravity.
A boy huddled in the Forbidden Hall, lost to history.
