After touching the Spiral's raw will, Kael could no longer feel the boundary between past and possible. Threads of memories not his own tangled within him—echoes of kings and beggars, murderers and saints. Each life brushed against his like stray embers in a storm.
But above all of them, one memory screamed louder than the rest: a library made of breath and bone, lost between realms. A place said to house the Vellum Codex, a tome that could rewrite a soul without killing it.
Kael needed it. Not for power, but for freedom—from the Spiral, from prophecy, from the weight of what he might become.
Unwritten knew the way. "It drifts," she said, "between the sigh of a dying world and the first heartbeat of a new one."
They traveled by silence, stepping through forgotten chants carried by Nyra's Hollow Tongue. Each syllable opened a gate. Each pause sealed it behind them.
Eventually, they arrived.
The library was alive. It breathed through vines of braided script, moaned with shifting shelves, exhaled ink-scented mist. The books here were not bound—each hovered, pages flapping like wings, whispering truths no one dared write aloud.
A shade greeted them—hooded, with a face made of empty quotation marks. "What do you seek?" it asked.
"A way to sever the Spiral's hold," Kael answered.
The shade tilted. "Then you seek contradiction."
It led them deeper.
Through aisles that moved.
Through chapters of forgotten gods.
Through the autobiography of a world that had never existed.
Eventually, the passage narrowed into an endless corridor of silence, where even the dust was made of forgotten letters. Statues flanked them—each depicting authors that had vanished into their own prose. Unwritten paused before one such statue: a weeping figure holding its own heart like a quill.
"My mother," she whispered. "She tried to rewrite fate. She became part of the Codex."
Kael lowered his head in reverence. "Did she succeed?"
Unwritten's voice trembled. "No. But her failure made the way possible."
At the end of the hall, they reached a pedestal surrounded by circling flames that neither burned nor warmed. Upon it lay the Vellum Codex.
Kael stepped forward.
The book opened to a blank page.
He placed his hand upon it. The page screamed.
Visions poured forth—of Kael murdering Nyra, of Unwritten feeding the Spiral with her own name, of Ayel becoming a tyrant cloaked in Kael's fire. Each image clawed at his soul.
"Every version of you wants something," the Codex whispered. "Which one are you willing to kill?"
Kael hesitated.
Then answered, "None of them. They are all part of me."
The page turned black.
And then gold.
The Codex accepted his defiance.
Ink rose from the book and danced in the air, forming a sigil that hovered above Kael's chest. His body convulsed as knowledge tore through him—languages older than thought, memories borrowed from stars, regrets that belonged to strangers. He fell to his knees, teeth gritted, as the transformation began.
From the shadows, another figure stepped forward.
It was the Reflection—Kael's mirrored self from the Tower of Lirathil.
"I warned you," it said. "You cannot hold all truths and remain whole."
"I'm not whole," Kael replied. "I'm choosing to be broken on my own terms."
The Reflection lunged, flame clashing against flame. But this time, Kael didn't fight to destroy.
He embraced it.
Their flames intertwined. Not consumed. Merged.
The battle was both physical and spiritual—blades formed from memory, strikes fueled by guilt. Every time Kael faltered, a ghost from his past stepped forward: Ayel's laugh, Nyra's song, his mother's dying words. They grounded him.
Nyra screamed a word that split the sky.
Unwritten cried out a name that had never existed.
And Kael burned—not into ashes, but into story.
When the fire faded, Kael stood alone. But now, within him, he carried all his contradictions. Not answers. But questions with teeth.
He closed the Codex.
And turned toward the final gate.
It was made of light. And wound.
Of music. And silence.
The Spiral still watched.
And now... it waited.