The night was long in the White District.
After the pact had been sealed, Seraphine lingered in the Scrollkeeper's library—an impossible archive of half-remembered tomes and living manuscripts. Her fingers skimmed the edge of one dream-scroll that pulsed faintly, flickering between languages she didn't recognize.
"You're drawn to that one," came a voice behind her.
It was Leron, the younger of the Sleepwrights who had guided her. His face was uncovered now. He had pale, golden skin and eyes that gleamed like candlewax—half-dream, half-memory.
"It called to me," Sera admitted, still watching the scroll shift. "Like a hum I couldn't place."
Leron nodded. "It's a fragment. From the era before the Between. Before the Anchor was built. We think it's part of the original Mindweave—the mechanism used to map collective thought before there was structure to dreaming."
She raised an eyebrow. "Before the Echoes?"
"Long before."
Sera turned fully to him. "Then why show me this now?"
"Because the pact you signed isn't just a symbol. It's a key. And keys don't only open—they reveal."
He held up a prism of translucent obsidian, etched with seven interlocking circles. Dreamcraft of the rarest kind. "This is the Lens of Retrospection. It allows you to see moments lost to untruth. You'll need it."
Sera hesitated before taking the Lens. Its surface was cool but vibrated faintly in her hand, like a tuning fork to unseen frequencies.
"What am I supposed to see with this?" she asked.
"Whatever was taken from you," Leron replied. "And whatever was never supposed to exist."
✦
The ride back to Haven was uneventful, yet the city's skyline unsettled her. The towers seemed misaligned. Familiar alleyways felt too wide, or too narrow. Children played games she didn't recognize—chanting rhymes in strange cadences. It was subtle, yes, but undeniable.
The rewriting had already begun.
She made her way directly to the Hall of Echoes. The guards let her pass without question now, her authority cemented by the pact and her deeds.
Inside, the Anchor stood bathed in a new shimmer. The threads of the pact that had wrapped around it earlier had sunken into the stone, absorbed like blood into cloth.
She stood before it and raised the Lens.
"Let me see," she whispered.
Light refracted, twisted. The world blurred.
And then—
She was standing in the Garden of Lanterns, but it was wrong. The paths curved in the opposite direction. The sky above was deep violet, not Haven-blue. A monument stood at the garden's center—a statue of the boy, older than he had ever lived to be, dressed not in the garb of a Dreamwatcher, but as a sovereign. A ruler.
The inscription read:
Here Stands the Founder of the Anchor Empire – The Dreamforger King
Sera's breath caught.
"No," she whispered.
She reached out to touch the statue—
—and the vision shattered.
She stumbled backward, landing hard on the stone floor of the Hall. Sweat coated her palms.
Lucian was suddenly beside her.
"What happened?" he asked, catching her arm.
She handed him the Lens. "I saw something. A different future. Or maybe… an alternate past. The boy—he was alive. He ruled. They built an empire around the Anchor."
Lucian's expression darkened. "A fabricated lineage. That's what the Sleepwrights feared. Someone is inserting false legacies."
Sera nodded. "This isn't just about memories anymore. It's about rewriting authority. Reforging history. And if they succeed…"
Lucian finished for her: "They'll control not just what we believe—but who we think we are."
✦
The Dreamwatch convened that evening in the subterranean Circle Hall.
The leaders of each district—Threadbearers, Archivists, the newly allied Sleepwrights—sat around the luminous table of echo-glass. The pact had been broadcast via Dreamglyph, but the weight of its implications still hung over them.
Sera stood at the center.
"There is a force using pre-Echo structures to insert counterfeit legacies into our history," she began. "It's subtle, invasive, and dangerous. And it's accelerating."
She relayed what she saw through the Lens. The boy. The statue. The name: Dreamforger King.
Murmurs rippled around the table.
An old Archivist slammed his palm down. "This cannot be allowed. If they falsify his legacy, they undo his sacrifice."
Another, more cautious, leaned forward. "But if it's possible to shape the past with such tools… we must ask why it was hidden. Why haven't we protected this knowledge?"
Leron spoke from the Sleepwrights' seat. "Because knowledge without anchors becomes poison."
Lucian added, "Which means we need a new safeguard. Not just a memory record—but a counterforce."
The room went silent.
Sera stepped forward again. "We need a Librarium Vivens."
Eyebrows raised.
"That's myth," someone muttered.
"No longer," she said. "We create a living archive. A Dreamwatcher trained not just to guard the truth, but to inhabit it. Someone who will walk through rewritten histories and burn away the false threads from within."
The idea sent shock through the Circle.
"You want to make a Warden of the Past?" Lucian asked.
Sera nodded. "We'll need to forge a new glyph. One built from the old mindweave and bound by a Dreammaker's pact."
Leron's voice was grave. "That will require sacrifice. Part of you must remain inside it. Your memories, your truth, embedded."
She stepped into the center of the table's glow.
"I'm ready."
✦
Three days later, beneath the foundation of the Hall, the ritual began.
Sera stood in a circle of quartzstone, the Lens of Retrospection embedded in the center. Sleepwrights chanted. Archivists fed braided scrolls into flames of blue dreamfire.
The Anchor pulsed above them. Not just a stone now—but a witness.
Lucian stood opposite her, holding the pact scroll, now inked with her blood.
"Do you, Seraphine of Haven," he said, voice strong, "bind your memory to the Librarium Vivens? Will you become its Warden, and burn false legacies from the roots of the dream?"
"I do," she said.
The light surged.
Her thoughts unraveled—not painfully, but like threads willingly surrendered. She felt her memories braid into the artifact. Her childhood. The boy's smile. The Between. The war. The peace. The echo of everything they'd tried to protect.
She opened her eyes—and the world had changed.
Where once there was a Hall, now there was a mirror of possibilities.
And in the mirror, she saw a thousand versions of Haven.
Some bright.
Some false.
And she would walk among them.
Until only truth remained.