The wind changed after the tower vanished.
Aurora stood alone on the ash-coated earth, the remains of the story tower scattered like burned paper around her. The sky, once scrawled with names and endings, was now a silent sheet of gray. No quills hovered. No whispers trailed behind her. Only the quiet hum of something unfinished.
She clutched the silver quill still warm in her hand—the last tool used to rewrite fate.
And fate, it seemed, wasn't finished with her.
A thread of silver light unraveled from her chest and began to drift eastward, tugging like a compass.
Without Lysander, the world felt wrong.
But standing still would be worse.
So she followed it.
The trail led her through a dying grove where all the trees had folded themselves shut like books unwilling to be read. Their bark bore symbols—broken runes, etched in languages she didn't recognize, names she'd never heard: Caelum, Virel, Thorne, Rien.
She moved with caution. The path had no sound. Even her footsteps fell mute. Only the breath of the trees reminded her this place lived, albeit reluctantly.
As dusk bled into a moonless night, Aurora found herself before an obsidian gate with no handles and no keyhole.
Just a single phrase carved above:
"Here lie those who were never allowed to finish."
The gate read her quill like a blood offering. It opened, folding inward like torn cloth.
Inside: a library.
But unlike any she had seen.
It spiraled infinitely downward, shelves suspended in midair by webs of starlight. Floating candles lit volumes bound in skin, bone, glass, and shadow. The air was thick with loss. Grief hung like dust, ancient and ignored.
She descended.
Level by level, the titles shifted.
"The Boy With No Throne"
"The Fifth Twin"
"He Who Was Chosen, But Not Written"
Books that were never finished. Stories stopped midway. Names that were meant to be remembered, but were cut from their own tales.
This was the Library of Unwritten Princes.
And it was guarded.
At the center of the spiral stood a man with hair like raven feathers and eyes like mirror shards. His robes were stitched with rejection letters and erased lines.
He held no weapon.
Only a book that had no title.
"Another survivor," he said, without turning. "Or another editor?"
Aurora stepped forward carefully. "I'm neither. I came from the tower. I ended the curse."
The man turned. His face was handsome, but forgettable—deliberately so. Like a placeholder character the story never had time to flesh out.
"Then you've already begun to write your own legend," he said. "And legends are dangerous here."
Aurora eyed the shelves. "Why are they all… princes?"
"Because the world only remembered their counterparts. The heroines. The tragedies. The girls who slept, bled, burned, or rose. But we—" he gestured at the books "—we were never written long enough to matter."
He held up his book.
It was blank.
"No one ever finished my name."
Aurora stepped closer. "What happens to you all?"
"We wait," he said, "in case someone remembers. Sometimes, one of us is rewritten—given a new name, a borrowed fate. But most of us just… fade."
He looked at her like she was a light he'd forgotten to believe in.
"You rewrote your ending. That means you have ink. Power. Choice."
Aurora shook her head. "I barely survived my own story."
"Exactly," he said. "Which means you know what it means to be forgotten."
Silence stretched between them.
The man turned and walked to the center pedestal of the library.
"This is the Index. If you write a name into the Index, they are remembered. Brought back. But only if their story has room for them now."
He handed her a quill made of ice.
"Would you like to try?"
Aurora stared at the blank Index page. Her hands trembled. She thought of Lysander. Of his ink-dusted eyes, his fading smile.
"What if I write someone who never existed?"
"Then you create them."
"And what if I write someone who should have stayed forgotten?"
"Then you bear the consequence."
She paused. Then leaned forward.
The first name she wrote was his.
Lysander.
The moment the ink touched the page, the candles blew out.
Somewhere above, a clock began to tick for the first time in a hundred years.
And in the shadows between the shelves, a heartbeat stirred.