The winds over the Vale of Teeth had gone still. Not peaceful—never peaceful here—but hollow, as if something that once breathed through the peaks had finally exhaled for the last time.
Mary stood on the ridge, watching as the last of the Remainder's ink soaked into the torn stone like spilled blood. Her hand trembled on the Codex's spine. She had sealed the First Draft—the Author's original, broken vision—within the final page. But the silence that followed didn't feel like victory. It felt like a scar.
"She didn't scream when she vanished," Mary muttered, voice low. "Not really."
Loosie, her coat torn and face bloodied, came to stand beside her. "No. She laughed. Like she knew she'd be back."
Mary swallowed. "The page we wrote her into—it's not permanent. I felt it shifting already."
"She's not just trapped," said the Friend, joining them slowly, wrapped in a shawl Lela had offered. "She's waiting."
Beneath his skin, faint strands of Author-echo still flickered, dimmer now. He looked more human than he had in days, and more tired than ever.
The blind man sat on a boulder behind them, facing nothing, eyes sewn shut. "You've forced her into a memory. But memories rot. They stain. She's part of the Codex now, and she'll speak again."
Mary turned to him. "You called her the Remainder. A regret. A failure. But she spoke like she knew everything."
"She knows, yes," he answered. "But knowing is not the same as understanding."
Lela descended from the ridge, brushing snow from her shoulders. "The mountain's still shifting. The walking construct is dormant, but it's... humming again. The same rhythm the Remainder used when she arrived."
"Echoes," Mary murmured. "She may be sealed, but her influence lingers."
The Codex warmed against her ribs.
A new line had appeared, handwritten, in her own voice but not her own will:
"Truth has teeth, and the scar remembers what the skin forgets."
She slammed the book shut and stepped back.
"Something's wrong," she said. "We didn't stop her. We transplanted her. Now she's in the Codex."
Loosie's brow furrowed. "So what's our next move?"
Mary's answer came from the ridge behind them.
A voice. Not the Remainder's, not the Author's—but still familiar.
"Not all scars bleed," the voice said. "Some whisper."
The group turned slowly.
A man in dark scholar's robes stood beside a gnarled tree that hadn't been there a moment ago. His hair was silver, his face gaunt, and around his shoulders hung a mantle woven from rejection slips and editor's marks.
Loosie stiffened. "Do we know you?"
He smiled.
"You wrote me," he said.
Mary stared. "No. I didn't."
"You almost did," he replied. "You considered me. You outlined me in the margins of your sleep. But then you chose someone else. A more noble antagonist. A cleaner arc."
He bowed low. "I am the possibility that became a scar. I am the one who wasn't chosen."
The Friend stepped in front of Mary. "You're another remainder."
The man nodded. "But not hers. Not the Author's. I'm yours, Mary."
The blood drained from her face.
"You're saying... I created you?"
He didn't answer directly. Instead, he approached slowly, gesturing toward the Codex.
"Every time you chose a path, every time you rewrote a truth or changed a character's fate, something was left behind. Someone was cut. Buried. Forgotten. I am their culmination."
Lela drew her sword. "Why show yourself now?"
"Because the seal cracked," he said simply. "The Remainder's presence awoke us. Those discarded lines? They ache to matter. And now the Codex remembers them."
Mary looked down at the book in her hands. The pages pulsed. Whispered.
"So what do you want?"
The man smiled sadly. "I want to help you finish it."
Loosie barked a laugh. "Like hell."
But Mary held up a hand.
"Why would you help me?"
He raised his eyes to hers. "Because if you don't finish it, she will. And her ending will be cruel. Total. Yours may be flawed—but at least it allows choice."
The Friend touched the Codex lightly. "He's telling the truth. I can feel it. He's tied to you, Mary. Not the Author."
Mary stared at the stranger, then back at the Codex.
Inside, a new chapter was forming.
Not written by her.
Not written by the Author.
But shaped from her half-formed dreams, her abandoned ideas, her regrets.
A chapter titled:
"The Wound's Architect"
Lela scowled. "Is this chapter safe?"
"No," said the blind man. "But it's necessary."
Mary opened the Codex and read the first paragraph.
She recognized the voice. Her own. Hesitant. Uncertain. An echo of a younger self who thought she could write a perfect world.
"It's about me," she whispered. "My flaws. My failures. The choices I didn't make."
Loosie stepped closer. "You don't have to read it. You don't owe it to anyone."
But Mary shook her head. "I owe it to them—all the characters I discarded. The people I cut when I tried to simplify the truth."
She turned the page.
And the world shifted.
They were no longer in the Vale.
They stood inside a library the size of a continent, filled with unfinished books—some with blank covers, others with titles like The Ghost Prince Who Might Have Been, Daughters of the Unspoken Empire, and The Betrayer Who Never Spoke.
A soft wind carried the scent of ink and old dreams.
Mary walked slowly between the shelves, each one whispering as she passed.
"They're all mine," she murmured. "All the ones I didn't finish. All the ideas I left behind."
The man followed behind her.
"This is your scar. Your unfinished mind. And now you must choose: reabsorb these pieces and write something new... or let them rise and demand to be heard."
The Friend looked around. "And what happens if she fails?"
"They become real," the man said. "Unwritten, uncontrolled, and angry."
Mary nodded.
"Then I need to write."
She sat at a desk that had appeared out of nothing, placed the Codex before her, and opened to a blank page.
The ink formed under her hand, hesitant at first, then flowing:
"Here is the truth: I am not the Author. I am not perfect. But I am still writing. And I will not let silence finish my story."
The library trembled.
And a single voice answered back:
"Then begin again."