Ash.
It drifted down like snow from a darkened sky, blanketing endless shelves that stretched into the void. Books stood pressed together, spine against spine – bound fates, captive lives. Some still glowed faintly, as though their owners were writing them even now. Others lay blackened, reduced to brittle husks of emptiness.
Among these shelves, he awoke.
A young man, without memory, without a name. In his hand he felt the weight of a single volume: a book, gray as the ash around him. Its cover bore nothing. No runes, no words, no title.
"Your entry," whispered a voice.
From the shadows emerged a figure – a woman with eyes as black as ink, a quill glimmering in her hand. Her dress was woven of parchment strips, shifting like leaves in a restless wind.
"Everyone who awakens here carries a bound fate. But yours…" Her finger brushed across the blank cover. "Yours is empty."
He opened the book. White. Nothing but white.
"What does that mean?" His voice carried through the endless shelves, hollow and uncertain.
The woman's lips curved into a secretive smile. "It means your fate has yet to be written. You may fill every page. But know this: an empty entry stirs desire. Others will seek to claim it. Some will try to burn it. And if your book is destroyed… so are you."
In the distance came a crash. A scream. Then the crackle of fire. From between the shelves staggered a figure, its body half crumbled into ash. In its hands it clutched an open book, its pages burning.
"They are coming," the Chronicler murmured.
And the young man understood: his first word, his first sentence – would decide his life.
He took the quill the woman had placed in his hand. With trembling resolve, he pressed its tip to the page and wrote:
I will not vanish.
And the Archive answered.