The moment Lena's fingers brushed the book's cover, the world inverted.
Her reflection in the mirror—the one where she'd never existed—reached back. Cold glass became liquid as its hands clamped around her wrists, pulling her through. The last thing she heard was Alistair's scream dissolving into static.
Then—
Silence.
Lena stood in a place that defied physics. The sky was a vast, open book, its pages yellowed and torn, words bleeding through like old wounds. The ground shifted beneath her feet, alternating between teeth and typewriter keys that clicked with every step. The air smelled of burning hair and dried ink.
Before her stood a door.
Not wood. Not metal.
Skin.
Stretched taut over a frame of bones, its surface pulsing with veins that spelled out a single phrase:
"ABANDON ALL STORIES, YE WHO ENTER HERE."
The knob turned on its own.
---
THE FIRST TRUTH
Inside waited the shadow god.
Not a monster. Not a beast.
A concept.
It wore human shapes the way a corpse wears clothes—ill-fitting and wrong. One moment it was Alistair, his mouth sewn with gold. The next, Mira, her skin peeling like parchment. Then Lena herself, her eyes hollow pits filled with swirling text.
"Little Keeper," it sighed, its voice the sound of pages turning in an empty library. "You were never supposed to see this place."
It gestured to the nightmare landscape. The horizon was a towering press, its gears made of fused skeletons, churning out books that screamed as they were bound.
"The Liber Mortis was never a prison," it said. "It was a feast."
Lena's scars burned. She looked down. The ink beneath her skin was rearranging, forming new words:
"THE LAST KEEPER IS THE FIRST COURSE."
---
THE SECOND LIE
The shadow god stepped closer. With each movement, its form destabilized—flickering between a man, a storm of ink, and something with too many teeth.
"Your grandfather understood," it whispered. "The book must be fed. Stories must be consumed. Or the world..."
It snapped its fingers.
The sky tore open, revealing a void where New York should have been. Empty streets. Silent buildings. And everywhere, mirrors—each reflecting a world where the Liber Mortis had never existed.
"Unwritten," the god finished.
Lena's breath came in short gasps. The vision was worse than any horror the book had shown her. In that world, no one remembered the dead. Jenna, Dan, Varrick—their lives had left no mark. No grief. Just...nothing.
The god cupped her chin, its fingers cold as old type. "Sign your name, Lena. Become the new heart of the book. And they live."
It held out a pen.
Not bone. Not metal.
A spine—tiny and human, its nib sharpened from a femur.
Lena reached for it—
Then stopped.
Something was wrong.
The god's perfect facade rippled. For a fraction of a second, she saw the truth:
It was afraid.
---
THE THIRD REVELATION
Lena laughed. The sound startled even her—harsh and broken, like a book ripped in half.
"You're lying," she breathed. "You don't preserve stories. You consume them."
She pointed to the press. The gears weren't printing books.
They were erasing them.
Whole volumes fed into the machine, emerging blank. The screams weren't from pain—but from oblivion.
The shadow god's form fractured. Its human masks slipped, revealing the hunger beneath.
"You need me," Lena pressed. "Not just as Keeper. As fuel."
She stepped closer, ink dripping from her eyes like tears.
"Because the book is dying."
The admission hung between them. The god twitched, its edges blurring like wet ink. Then—
It lunged.
---
THE BLOOD EDIT
Lena didn't flinch.
She embraced it.
As the god's form crashed into her, she pulled, dragging them both toward the press. The machine roared to life, its bone gears gnashing. The shadow god howled—a sound that shook the sky—as Lena forced its essence into the grinding teeth.
"NO!" it screamed. "YOU'LL KILL US BOTH!"
Lena smiled.
"I know."
Then—
Impact.
The god splintered, its form shredding into fragments of text that whipped through the air like dying wasps. Lena felt herself unraveling too—her memories, her body, her name peeling away in strips.
But before the press could claim her, a hand grabbed hers.
Mira.
Not the corpse. Not the Witness.
The real her, ink-stained and furious.
"Not yet," she hissed.
She yanked Lena free—
And the world shattered.
---
THE AFTERMATH
Lena woke choking on ink.
She was back in the morgue, sprawled across Mira's autopsy table. The original Liber Mortis lay beside her, its cover now blank.
No title. No ouroboros.
Just...nothing.
Across the room, the Last Witness (Alistair? Herself?) slumped against the wall, its form flickering between solid and shadow.
"What did you do?" it whispered.
Lena looked down at her hands. The scars were gone.
So was the ink beneath her skin.
But when she touched the book, a single word pulsed on its cover—weak but persistent:
"LENA."
Then—
A knock at the morgue door.
Three precise raps.
The Collector's signature.
---