: The Library of Unsaid Things

: The Library of Unsaid Things

The storm broke over the Wastes of Orin at dawn. Rain fell in sheets, thunder cracking across the barren hills like the sky was being torn in two. Wale stood at the crest of a ridge, his cloak drenched, eyes fixed on the strange structure rising from the ground below.

The Library of Unsaid Things had no doors, no windows, and no clear entrance. From a distance, it looked like a shattered cathedral turned inward—walls collapsed toward a center that pulsed faintly with blue light. No map marked it. No path led to it.

It was never built.

It had grown.

Chris, climbing beside him, wiped her soaked face. "This place isn't in any of the old records."

"Of course not," Wale murmured. "It's a collection of things no one wanted written."

Grey joined them from the other side, his boots caked with mud. "I scouted ahead. No guards, no wards. But the closer you get, the quieter things become."

Wale turned to look at him. "Quieter?"

Grey nodded. "No birds. No wind. No thoughts. Like something is editing the air."

They descended in silence.

Closer now, Wale could see faint script spiraling around the Library's walls, like vines of ink. It didn't follow any grammar he knew—just raw, broken fragments of memory.

Whispers slithered between the cracks in the walls.

"...you said you'd stay..."

"...they believed you..."

"...we were supposed to forget..."

Chris pressed a hand to the stone as they reached the structure. "It's humming. There's grief in this place."

Wale's jaw tightened. "That's because this is where all the erased truths go."

He stepped forward, and the wall opened for him.

Not with force.

With recognition.

Inside, the air was heavy.

Books floated in columns, unbound by gravity. Pages turned by themselves. Shelves stretched and curved into spirals, like the inside of a great conch shell. The floor was covered in fallen letters—individual characters that had slipped loose from the stories they belonged to.

And at the center: a pedestal.

A mirror rested on it, fogged with breath, as though someone had only just stepped away.

Chris moved toward it, but Wale stopped her with a hand.

"No. Let me look first."

He stepped to the mirror and wiped the surface.

It didn't show his face.

It showed the moment he rewrote himself—the day he cast off the monster he once was. But this version was twisted: in the reflection, he embraced the corruption. Smiled as he devoured the world around him.

Chris gasped behind him. "That's not what happened—"

Wale cut her off. "It's not lying. It's showing what was erased. Every version that could've happened but didn't."

Grey picked up a floating book. Its title burned away in his hands.

"The Library remembers everything that was rejected. Even us."

A sound echoed through the chamber.

Not a voice.

A footstep.

Wale turned, sword halfway drawn, as a figure stepped from between the shelves.

She wore robes of dark blue and gold, and her face was familiar in a way that made Chris recoil.

It was Seraphine.

But older. Eyes duller. A line of ink ran down from her tear ducts like dried blood.

"That's impossible," Chris whispered. "She died in the war—"

"No," Wale said slowly. "This is a version of her. One that was erased."

Seraphine spoke, voice soft and distant. "We all end up here, eventually. Every truth someone couldn't live with."

They learned her name was Silence.

She had once been Seraphine in a timeline where Wale never changed. Where he gave in to the monster. Where she tried to stop him—and failed.

Instead of dying, she had fled into the place beyond story. Found the Library. Became its keeper.

"You are walking a tightrope," she said to Wale. "Every truth you protect is a thousand truths you bury."

"I know," he said.

She stepped forward, placing a hand on the mirror. "The others are stirring. Versions of you. Of him. The more you speak, the more you draw them toward your world."

Chris stepped in. "Then help us stop them. If we preserve the right memories—"

"There are no right memories," Silence said with bitter calm. "Only remembered ones. And belief, Wale, is becoming too fragile to carry them all."

Silence led them deeper into the Library.

She showed them the Vault of Forbidden Narratives—rooms filled with chains of gold binding manuscripts too dangerous to read.

One showed a world where Grey betrayed them. Another where Chris burned an entire city to stop a lie.

Another… where Wale never existed.

"I keep these safe," Silence said. "But their weight is growing. If even one breaks loose, your world could collapse under contradiction."

Wale stared at a volume titled "The Day the Truth Died."

"Then why bring us here?"

"Because one of the volumes is leaking," Silence said. "It's writing itself into your present."

Wale's blood went cold. "Ash?"

"No," she whispered. "Something worse. Something older."

They reached the final chamber.

Here, a single book sat alone on a plinth made of obsidian.

It pulsed with a heartbeat of ink.

Grey moved closer, but Wale stopped him.

The title read: "The First Lie."

Silence's voice trembled. "This... is the origin of the mirror creature. Not the one you killed. The first of its kind. The one who taught the world how to hide."

Chris narrowed her eyes. "Is it waking?"

"No," Silence said. "It's searching. Looking for an opening. A contradiction. A gap between what's said and what's meant. It will use it to rewrite the foundation of your reality."

Wale stepped forward. "Then we stop it here."

But the moment he touched the book, a crack split through the Library.

Silence screamed, vanishing in a whirl of paper.

The light dimmed.

The ink fell silent.

And from the pages of The First Lie, a voice whispered:

"I remember you, little monster."