The Tomb begins to breathe.
Not like stone.
Not like death.
But like a blank page.
Elóranth feels it before it forms a presence shaped like possibility.
No voice. No past.
Only intention.
Then, a whisper crawls from the white:
"You took what should've been mine."
A shape peels from the void
faceless.
Genderless.
Storyless.
Not a ghost.
Not a reader.
Not even a villain.
Just… a placeholder.
The one who never got the role.
Never got the name.
Never got written in.
And now?
It wants hers.
"You were chosen," it hisses, voice like flicked pages.
"You were loved. Do you know how rare that is? I watched from the margins, waiting to be inked. But they picked you."
Elóranth lifts her chin. Magic hums behind her eyes shimmering like unfinished verses.
"Then they chose right," she says.
"You changed," it snaps.
"They loved you when you were a villain they could save. When you cried pretty. When you died well."
"I evolved."
"You escaped."
The entity lunges.
Its weapon?
Not magic.
Doubt.
Elóranth's memories flicker moments of weakness, of cruelty, of choices that made her unreadable, unlikeable
Maybe I was better before…
But her spine straightens.
Her shadow roots deeper.
And her power blooms not from perfection but from defiance.
"You think I stole your story?" she breathes.
"You can't steal what no one was brave enough to write."
With one breath, she opens her palm.
And in it: the quill.
Not silver.
Not gold.
Bone.
The same pen she forged when she burned her first ending.
"Write your own," she says, offering it.
The entity freezes. Trembles.
Because it never wanted to create.
Only consume.
"No," it whispers. "I don't want to write. I want to be."
"Then you'll die as all unused ideas do," she says.
"Unread."
And she closes her hand.
The blankness vanishes.
Now the Archive trembles again not from enemies.
But from awakening.
Because far below, below even the cut chapters and lost timelines…
The Original Ending still breathes.
The one no one dared publish.
The one where she was meant to become something terrifying.
Not a villain.
Not a heroine.
But a concept.
And it's calling her name.