Chapter 20 – The Blank Codex
There was no sky.No earth.Only whiteness, stretching in every direction like a page yet to be touched by ink.
Kael breathed, but the air tasted like parchment.
Liora stepped beside him, her feet making no sound, as though even echoes had been erased. "We've been… unwritten," she whispered.
Kael turned slowly.
The Archivist stood at the center, a towering figure formed of bound scrolls, shattered glyphs, and whispering runes that hovered like caged birds around him.
Between his hands floated a new book.
Blank.
The Codex Inceptum.
The first and final book.
"Why did you bring us here?" Kael asked, voice thin in the void.
The Archivist spoke not in words, but in concepts—a language older than speech.
"You are corrupted by plot. Twisted by prophecy.Your choices are not your own.You must be cleansed."
Liora stepped forward, anger simmering. "We're not characters—we're alive. You can't just erase us."
The Archivist's many eyes turned to her.
"All who write… are written."
Kael clenched his fists. "No. That's your lie. We shape stories. We defy endings."
A spark of ink gathered in his palm.
The Author's Pen—or something older than it—was responding to his conviction. It pulsed like a heartbeat. Kael extended it, touching the Codex.
And the Codex responded.
A scene began to form.
Mountains bled into view.
An ancient tower surfaced from the mist.
A library of infinite mirrors appeared in the sky.
The Codex was reacting to Kael's will—to his identity.
But then the Archivist closed the book with a sound like thunder.
"This world cannot endure paradox.You will shatter the Realms."
"I'd rather shatter it," Kael said, "than live inside someone else's script."
The air cracked.
Another presence entered.
Not a person—an idea.
The Whisperer.
Invisible, but felt. A ripple across the edges of Kael's mind.
"Let him write," it said."Let him shape the silence."
The Archivist hesitated.
For the first time, the being made of absolute law seemed… unsure.
Kael wrote in the Codex:
"The book refused its master. The Realms opened their eyes. Truth bled through fiction."
A tear opened in the blank world.
Colors spilled through.
Pages fluttered back into place.
And Kael saw all the Realms—past, present, future—spinning like galaxies of thought.
He saw the Library again.
He saw Bran's shadow watching from the edge of light.
And he saw a child, not yet born, whose name had the power to undo even fate.
The Whisperer spoke again, softer now:
"Write carefully, Scribe. Some stories… write you back."