Chapter 28: The Letter Written in Blood
The Inkborne City was unlike anything Arin had seen before. The sky above shimmered like a parchment illuminated by starlight, and the buildings stood like open books, their spines forming towers and roofs built from overlapping pages that fluttered with whispers. Each step taken echoed as a written line, adding unseen sentences to the city's living script.
Aika walked silently ahead, clutching the glimmering feather quill that had chosen her in the Vault of Forgotten Verses. Ren followed cautiously, his hand close to his hilt. The Reader's brief encounter still haunted them — the knowledge that something, or someone, could alter reality by reading it had shaken even his Flameborn courage.
They had been given directions — not by a person, but by a sentient poem etched into the floor of a hall, where words rearranged themselves into a map. The destination was clear:
The Library of Last Letters.
It stood at the edge of the city, half-consumed by voidscript — a creeping black ink that erased what it touched, leaving only silence. The building's left wing had been devoured, but the center still stood: a rotunda surrounded by twelve statues, each bearing a symbol of the ancient Scribes.
As they stepped inside, the doors creaked — not open, but into verse:
Welcome, child of ink and grief,Within these walls lies blood and belief.
Aika hesitated. "This place knows me," she murmured.
"I think... it knows us all," Arin replied. His voice trembled — not from fear, but from the pressure in the air. Reality here was fragile.
They passed rows of tomes that wept. Literal tears fell from their bindings. One book begged them not to read it, while another repeated the same word: regret.
The letter — the one her mother supposedly left — waited beyond a sealed chamber. Its door was carved with three locks:
One of Ink, opened only by truth.
One of Blood, opened only by sacrifice.
One of Memory, opened only by forgetting.
Aika approached the first.
She held up the truthquill and whispered, "My mother was a traitor to the Readers."
The quill shone, and the Ink Lock dissolved.
Ren stepped forward next. "Let me do the blood," he said, without hesitation.
"Ren—"
He cut his palm and pressed it to the second lock. "It's not the first time I've bled for this cause."
The lock hissed, then dissolved into red mist.
Finally, Arin stared at the last.
Memory.
It terrified him. Because what if he forgot something... someone... important?
A whisper echoed in his mind.
You must forget the first truth you learned after reincarnating.
He clenched his fists. That meant forgetting why he had come here. The words... the words he'd seen written in the sky when he first awoke. The words that said:
"This world is not yours."
He exhaled slowly and let go.
The third lock melted, and the door opened.
Inside, it was quiet. No fluttering pages. No crying books.
Just a pedestal.
On it, a letter sealed in wax — deep crimson, too dark for ink.
Aika stepped forward. Her fingers trembled as she broke the seal.
She unfolded the page, and they all gasped.
There was no handwriting. No calligraphy.
Only symbols — ancient, arcane, older than language.
And when Arin looked closer, he realized something horrifying.
The symbols were moving.
They were alive.
And they formed a sentence he couldn't read — but felt.
Aika dropped the page. Her eyes went wide.
"She... she didn't write this in ink."
Ren caught her. "What does it say?"
Aika whispered, voice hollow:
"The Readers are coming.And I was one of them."
Silence.
Then the room began to tremble.
The letter pulsed, and the floor beneath the pedestal cracked open, revealing a staircase spiraling downward — into darkness laced with glowing script.
Arin stepped forward. "This is it."
"A trap?" Ren asked.
"A truth," Aika replied.
And together, they descended.
Unaware that at the top of the rotunda, behind the statue of the First Scribe, a figure in a tattered cloak watched.
Holding a quill.Smiling.
And rewriting the next chapter as they walked.