The moment Klein and Yeaia stepped out of the Archive of the Unwritten, the sensation of being watched did not fade. If anything, it grew stronger.
The world outside was… wrong.
They had expected to return to a familiar place, some semblance of the reality they knew. Instead, they stood upon a vast, ink-stained landscape, where the ground shimmered as if made of parchment, and the sky was an endless canvas of half-written words, shifting and rewriting themselves with each breath.
Klein felt his stomach twist. He wasn't sure if it was nausea or something deeper—an instinctive reaction to a world that should not exist.
"Did we… leave?" he asked, voice low.
Yeaia turned slowly, their mismatched eyes scanning the surroundings. The way they stood, the way they breathed—it was as if they were listening to something Klein couldn't hear.
"I'm not sure," Yeaia finally admitted. "The Archive let us go… but I don't think we made it back to reality."
Klein clenched his jaw. "Then where are we?"
"Between."
"Between?"
"A space that shouldn't be," Yeaia elaborated. "Neither story nor unwritten. Neither memory nor forgotten. This is… an error in the narrative."
Klein narrowed his eyes. "An Error Pathway's doing?"
Yeaia shook their head. "Not quite. This is different. This isn't a manipulation of reality—this is something outside reality."
Klein hated that answer.
Because if something existed outside of the narrative, outside of the carefully woven fate and rewritten destinies—
Then it meant something was watching from beyond the story itself.
Klein turned his attention to the horizon. The ink-like ground rippled as if responding to his gaze, and in the distance, he saw something moving.
A figure.
It was far away, but Klein felt its presence like a whisper against his mind. The figure was humanoid in shape, but it lacked details, its form shifting between silhouettes—male, female, something in-between, something beyond human comprehension.
It wasn't just watching.
It was waiting.
"We need to move," Klein muttered.
Yeaia smirked. "And where exactly do you think we'll go?"
Klein frowned. That was the problem—there was no direction in this place. No landmarks, no sky, no sun, no stars. Just endless ink and shifting words.
"Then we make a direction."
Yeaia quirked an eyebrow. "How?"
Klein inhaled sharply and reached into himself.
The Fool. The vision of the infinite gray fog. The throne that had once been his, and yet never truly his to begin with.
That was his anchor.
"This world isn't stable," Klein said. "It exists because of words. Narratives. If it can write itself, then I can write it too."
He raised his hand.
And he spoke reality into existence.
"There is a door."
The ink shuddered.
The sky trembled.
And then—
A massive, ornate door appeared before them.
Tall, gilded, carved with symbols that Klein didn't recognize yet somehow understood. A passageway that led somewhere—because Klein willed it to exist.
Yeaia's gaze flickered with something unreadable. "You're getting disturbingly good at this."
"I don't have a choice."
Klein reached for the door handle—
And the moment his fingers brushed the surface, the world collapsed.
—
The Visionary's Vault.
Klein landed on his knees, gasping. The sensation of falling had been abrupt, like being yanked through the threads of fate itself.
When he lifted his gaze, he realized they were no longer in the inked wasteland.
Instead, they stood within a vast library, but unlike the Archive of the Unwritten, this place was structured, ordered.
The shelves stretched endlessly into the distance, yet there was logic here—rows and corridors, paths meant to be walked rather than randomly shifting chaos.
And in the very center of the grand chamber stood a massive, ancient book.
A tome so large that it required its own throne-like pedestal, its cover bound in something that shimmered between leather and reality itself.
Klein's breath hitched. He recognized this place.
"The Visionary's Vault," he murmured.
Yeaia dusted themselves off. "Oh? So you do know where we are."
"I've read about it," Klein admitted. "A repository of knowledge lost even to deities. A place where the stories of those who rewrote fate are kept."
"And who do you think would keep such a place?"
Klein didn't answer. He already knew.
The Visionary.
The being that had once held dominion over stories, over fate—a concept that existed beyond mere gods and pathways.
But the Visionary was gone.
So why were they here?
Klein stepped forward cautiously, his eyes scanning the towering book in the center of the chamber.
His heart stopped when he saw the title written upon its cover.
The Story That Should Not Have Been.
Yeaia whistled. "Well, that's ominous."
Klein exhaled slowly, reaching toward the book—
And the moment he touched it, a voice spoke.
"You should not be here."
Klein's blood ran cold.
Because the voice was not unfamiliar.
It was his own.
The book flipped open on its own, pages turning rapidly, ink bleeding across parchment, forming words that wrote themselves faster than Klein could read.
Then—
It stopped on a single page.
Klein's gaze landed on the words, his heart pounding.
And what he saw made his breath hitch.
Because it was a conversation.
A conversation he had not yet had.
A conversation between himself and something else.
"Did you really think you were writing this story, Klein?"
The ink upon the pages shifted, twisting, rearranging itself—
Until it formed a single sentence.
"Or were you simply reading the words we wrote for you?"
Klein's vision blurred. The library shuddered, the bookshelves trembling as if the entire Vault was rejecting his presence.
He stumbled back, gripping his head as his mind fractured—
And in the reflection of the gilded book's surface, he saw it.
A figure.
Not Klein. Not Yeaia.
Something else.
Something wearing his face.
And it smiled.
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End of Chapter 86.
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