They fled the city in silence.
Behind them, the fountain cracked. The names it once poured evaporated into fog — not forgotten, but scattered. The Unreader no longer followed. It didn't need to. It had tasted Elías. And once tasted, a story is never fully untouched.
They walked through a ravine of bent steel and black glass. The sky above hung too low, dripping what looked like stars, but burned the skin like acid. Tirian carried a wound now — not from battle, but from memory. The Unreader had touched something in him.
He no longer remembered his sister's face.
Elías said nothing.
There were no words for grief stolen from the inside out.
"Where are we going?" Tirian finally asked, voice raw.
Elías stopped.
Before them stood a gate — not built, but grown. It twisted from roots of silver, glass bones, and teeth. Symbols carved themselves into its bark as they approached.
Elías read aloud.
"Here breathe the ones too broken to die."
The gate opened.
Beyond it: a field.
Silent.
Still.
Filled with thousands of figures.
Some stood.
Others knelt.
A few wept.
But none moved.
Tirian stepped forward, trembling.
"Are they... statues?"
Elías shook his head.
"No. They're stories that were never finished."
He knelt beside one — a woman with hair made of strings, her mouth full of keys.
"She was meant to unlock something," Elías said.
"But the author forgot."
Tirian walked among them, stunned. Warriors mid-strike. Children reaching toward something that wasn't there. Beasts paused mid-roar.
Each one frozen.
Each one… breathing.
Very faintly.
Elías looked up.
"This is the Valley of Unfinished Souls."
He turned toward Tirian.
"And we are trespassers."
The wind shifted.
And from the center of the valley, a single bell rang.
Low. Deep. Final.
The statues stirred.
A voice echoed across the plain — not loud, but certain.
"Only one story may finish itself here."
Elías turned toward the sound.
A figure approached.
Cloaked in parchment.
Eyes blindfolded with red thread.
It held no weapon.
Just a mirror.
"Elías," it said, "you wrote your name in ink."
It raised the mirror.
"Now see who holds the pen."
Elías stared into it.
But the reflection was not his.
It was… older.
Cruel.
And smiling.
The reflection raised a hand — and from its shadow, a quill grew. Not a feather, but a claw made of sentences.
"You are not the first Elías," the mirror-being said.
"You are the one who made it furthest."
The statues began to move now, turning toward them — toward the mirror — toward the truth.
And Elías whispered:
"…How many versions of me have tried this path?"
The being answered:
"All of them."
---
Question for the reader: If you met a version of yourself who succeeded where you failed… would you follow them, fight them, or become them?