The door only opens when both their hands touch it.
It's carved from bone-colored wood and veined with silver like stardust. Hidden behind the oldest shelf in Asterley's north tower, it doesn't appear on blueprints or maps — only in dreams.
---
Haera and Cairos step inside.
And the air… shifts.
Not just in temperature.
In time.
---
Rows of books — endless — stretch across a cathedral of shadow and gold.
Not dust. Not silence. But memory thick in the air, humming like a thousand unsaid names.
> "Where are we?" Haera whispers.
Cairos runs his fingers along a glowing spine.
> "The Library of Lives."
> "Our lives?"
He nods.
> "And theirs too. Everyone who ever lived, ever loved, ever forgot."
---
A woman with moth wings for eyelashes glides past them, shelving a scroll.
She doesn't speak, but bows her head — not out of fear. Out of recognition.
---
Each book thrums as they pass.
Haera is drawn to one. Small. Leather-bound. Wrapped in violet silk.
She picks it up and opens to a random page:
> "She died by riverlight, singing."
She flips again:
> "He kissed her, not knowing her name — only the ache in his soul."
She stops on a page near the end:
> "Together, they unbound the curse and rewrote fate in their mother tongue."
---
> "Is this…" she starts.
> "One of the lives we haven't lived," Cairos finishes.
> "Then why does it feel like I remember it?"
> "Because love doesn't forget the way logic does."
---
In the center of the library sits a table.
On it, a blank book bound in moon-dyed silk.
Above it: an inscription in a language Haera doesn't know but feels.
> "The Final Chronicle."
---
> "This is where we decide," Cairos says.
"If we write our ending… or choose not to."
"But once written, it becomes the truth."
---
Haera's hand trembles.
Not out of fear.
But freedom.
---
> "Then we write," she says.
Cairos picks up the silver pen.
> "Together."
---
But before ink can touch the page, a thunderclap echoes through the library.
Books fly off the shelves.
Lights dim.
And a voice — both ancient and childlike — bellows through the chamber:
> "You are not authors. You are characters. You do not choose your endings."
---
The floor cracks.
A black mist swirls in from all sides.
From within it, a figure rises.
The Editor.
Neither man nor woman. Cloaked in erasure. Covered in scissors and keys.
Eyes blank. Mouth sealed with thread.
They move forward.
---
Haera stands her ground.
Cairos shields the Final Chronicle.
---
> "You erased us before," Haera says, voice steady.
"But we came back. Again and again."
"You can't kill what's already rewritten."
---
The Editor raises a blade made of forgotten memories.
Lunges.
---
But something stops them mid-strike.
The books begin to hum.
Then sing.
The stories — thousands of them — rise like a choir, pages turning furiously, echoing one word over and over:
> "Choose."
---
Haera touches the Chronicle. It glows.
Cairos places his hand on hers.
The Editor shrieks and vanishes in a burst of black feathers.
---
The page before them finally appears.
And it writes itself:
> "In this life, they were no longer haunted.
They were the authors.
They loved by choice — not by curse.
And the story, this time, was theirs."
---
They sign their names.
And the book seals.
A new star appears in the sky above Asterley.
One shaped like an open book.