The Book That Should Not Exist

The ink ran dry before Vaelor could finish his sentence.

He sat in the dim glow of a dying lantern, his quill hovering above the brittle parchment, his thoughts a tempest of broken fragments. The words he had just written—names, events, histories—he had never heard of them before, and yet, they came to him as though whispered from a forgotten past.

The candle flickered. The walls of the archive, once solid, seemed to waver in the shifting light. He exhaled slowly. Not again.

For years, Vaelor had written what was dictated to him by unseen hands, a historian chronicling stories no one remembered, names that should not exist. His ink-stained hands were not those of a scholar, but a man burdened by an unbearable truth—his writings did not stay.

Every morning, his records vanished. Not stolen. Not burned. Not erased. They simply ceased to exist, as though reality itself refused to acknowledge them.

And yet, the words always returned to him, waiting to be written again.

Tonight, however, something felt different. The air itself held an unnatural stillness, as if time had momentarily ceased its march forward. The city outside—Velmora, the Last City of Gods—was quiet, save for the distant tolling of the Midnight Bell from the towering silver spires of the Divine Council.

Vaelor's fingers tightened around the leather binding of his journal. Something had changed.

Then he saw it.

Resting on the edge of his desk, where nothing had been before, lay a tome bound in black leather. It was ancient beyond reckoning, its cover worn and scarred as if it had endured a thousand lifetimes. Strange silver etchings spiraled across the surface like veins of liquid moonlight. And in the center, written in a language Vaelor knew but had never seen, were the words:

THE UNSHACKLED CODEX

His breath caught. His pulse quickened.

He had written of this book before—countless times. The forbidden tome. The book that should not exist. The key to truths no mortal or god was ever meant to know.

Yet, it had always been a myth. A piece of his lost records.

But now, it was real.

He reached for it with hesitant fingers, but the moment his skin brushed the cover, his mind shattered.

A flood of visions surged through his thoughts, like a river of time itself crashing into him.

Cities crumbling into the void. Gods screaming as they faded into nothing. The world rewriting itself again and again, each era replacing the last like pages torn from a book and rewritten in the same ink.

And standing beyond it all, watching with hollow, unblinking eyes—The Architects.

They were not gods. They were not men. They were something older, something beyond even the concept of time. Vaelor saw them at the edge of existence, their hands weaving the very fabric of reality, their faces unreadable, their will unquestionable.

Then, he saw himself.

Standing at the brink of eternity, holding this very book.

As everything he knew was erased.

The moment passed. Vaelor gasped, his forehead damp with sweat. His heart pounded against his ribs as he pulled the book closer, feeling the weight of something that should not exist.

For the first time in his life, something had remained.

The world had tried to erase his records, his memories, his truths. But now, he held proof in his hands.

And the gods would come for him.

The Whispering Walls

A gust of wind howled through the archive's open window, sending loose parchment fluttering through the air like dying leaves. The flame of his lantern flickered, casting elongated shadows that danced unnaturally across the stone walls.

Vaelor clenched his jaw. He had spent his life uncovering lost histories, but this—this was different.

Slowly, he unfastened the silver clasp of the book. A whisper curled through the room, soft as breath against the ear.

"You should not be reading this."

Vaelor froze. The voice was not his own.

It came from the walls.

He turned sharply, eyes scanning the vast shelves of the archive. Dust drifted lazily through the moonlight, and the towering bookshelves stood undisturbed. But the whisper had not been imagined. It had been real.

Swallowing hard, he returned his attention to the book. The pages were aged parchment, yet the ink upon them looked fresh, as if the words had been written only moments ago.

The first page bore no title, only a single passage written in flowing script.

"To those who remember, you are cursed. To those who seek, you are hunted. The Cycle is unbroken. The Architects have spoken. Close this book and forget."

Vaelor's grip tightened.

Forget?

That was all he had done his entire life—forgotten what the world erased.

No more.

Steeling himself, he turned the page.

And the moment he did, the walls of the archive began to bleed.

Dark rivulets of ink oozed from the cracks between the stone, spreading like veins through the room. The lantern's flame burned blue, and the air turned thick with the scent of old parchment and something metallic—like blood.

A sound echoed from the darkness beyond the shelves. A slow, deliberate footstep. Then another.

Vaelor slammed the book shut.

The bleeding stopped. The air returned to normal. The shadows stilled.

For a long moment, he remained motionless, his breath shallow, his pulse a war drum in his ears.

Then—

BOOM.

The great doors of the archive burst open, the silver inlays blazing with divine fire. The temperature in the room dropped instantly, and a gust of wind sent every book in the archive tumbling from the shelves.

Three figures stepped inside, their presence heavy as a death sentence.

They were clad in dark, ceremonial armor, their faces obscured beneath helmets engraved with celestial symbols. And at their center stood a towering figure in robes woven from starlight, a golden sigil of the Divine Council glowing upon his chest.

Vaelor knew who they were.

The Wardens of Fate.

They had come for him.

The leader stepped forward, his voice like a decree carved into the bones of the world.

"Historian Vaelor. You have read what was forbidden."

The shadows of the archive twisted, drawn toward the figures like ink to a quill. The weight of divine judgment settled upon Vaelor's shoulders.

He had one chance.

One moment to decide: surrender and be erased… or run.

And Vaelor had never been one to let history dictate his fate.

With a deep breath, he ran.

---