The first thing Ilen Merrow remembered was the absence of warmth.
No mother's arms.No breath of air.No sound.
Only stillness.A silence so complete it felt like a pressure on his chest.
He tried to scream, but his voice didn't exist. His mouth opened—he was sure of it—but no sound escaped. In fact, he wasn't even sure he had a mouth at all. He was floating in nothingness. Weightless. Voiceless. Thoughtless.
And then—a flicker.
A single golden thread of light in the void, quivering like it was alive. It twisted through the darkness, winding its way toward him with the grace of something ancient and knowing. The moment it touched him, pain rushed in.
Not the pain of injury—no.The pain of memory.
He saw flashes. A woman screaming. A midwife cursing. A temple bell tolling in mourning. A name written on a slip of paper and burned in incense. And then—blackness again.
"You were not born."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It wasn't cruel, nor kind—it was simply factual.
"You are a rejected soul. A failed incarnation. A discarded path. A zero."
Ilen's mind, now more aware, clung to the voice like a drowning man reaching for a hand. He wanted to ask why. He wanted to say I don't understand. But the voice continued before he could gather enough will to form a coherent question.
"And yet, you persist."
Suddenly, the void shattered like glass.
The pieces didn't fall. They simply vanished. And in their place stood a library.
But no library like he had ever imagined.
It stretched endlessly in all directions, its architecture a fever dream of spiraling staircases, floating platforms, and impossible geometries. Shelves twisted around pillars made of bone. Ladders leaned into the air, their tops never visible. And books—books by the millions—glowed faintly, humming with a kind of life he could feel.
Ilen stood at the center of it all, bare-footed and wearing nothing but a long gray tunic stitched with unfamiliar symbols. His body felt real now—weighty, grounded—but strangely new. He looked at his hands: pale, long-fingered, smooth. They trembled slightly.
A man stood before him.
Or perhaps not a man—something shaped like one. Tall, robed in layered parchment that moved like silk. Its face was obscured by a mask resembling a cracked hourglass, and where its eyes should've been, there were just two swirling pinpricks of starlight.
"You are in the Archive of the Unborn," the figure said. Its voice echoed with too many tones, like a choir speaking in unison. "You were never meant to wake. But something has changed."
Ilen opened his mouth. This time, he found words.
"Changed… how?"
The Archivist tilted its head. "Reality is… weakening. The barrier between possibility and actuality thins. Unborn souls stir. Some begin to whisper. Some begin to move. And one—you—has awakened."
"I was supposed to be born," Ilen murmured.
"No. You were scheduled, but rejected. A flawed vessel. A moment of hesitation. A tear in fate. You were filed as a loss—yet here you stand. Which means…"
The Archivist gestured, and a book floated into view. It hovered inches from Ilen's chest, pulsing with dim violet light. It had no title.
He reached out instinctively.
The moment his fingers touched the cover, he saw it: his life, or rather, the life he might have lived.
A small village. A single mother. Rain on a stone roof. A sickness in early childhood. A near-death. A survival. A curiosity about the stars. A brush with forbidden books. Arrest. Reeducation. Escape. Obsession. Discovery. And then… a door he was never meant to open.
But none of it happened. It had all been filed. Stored here.
"This is an Echo," the Archivist said. "One of countless. A fragment of what might have been. And you… are now eligible to walk its path."
Ilen's mouth went dry. "Walk it?"
"To borrow its thread. To learn its shape. To become more than a Zero."
The Archivist turned, robes whispering across the floor, and led Ilen toward a vast circular platform etched with shifting runes. As they walked, Ilen saw more figures moving through the Archive—some floating like ghosts, others crawling on hands and knees, mumbling names, memories, regrets.
"Who are they?" he asked.
"Lost souls," the Archivist replied. "Some came close to birth. Others were denied by force—rituals, trauma, even murder. Many do not awaken with clarity. Some never do. Most… decay."
They reached the center of the platform. The air here was colder. Hungrier.
The Archivist turned to him again.
"You are not a guest, Ilen Merrow. You are not even a resident. You are a paradox. And paradoxes… are dangerous."
Ilen didn't flinch. "Then why not erase me?"
"Because we are desperate."
That gave him pause.
The Archivist raised one long, parchment-wrapped finger and traced a symbol in the air. It glowed for a moment before dissolving.
"All records show a convergence is coming. Birth and death will cease to be endpoints. The line between what is and what might have been will blur. The world of the living is being haunted by its own possibilities. If they break through—"
The figure stopped. No need to finish.
"I've seen signs already," it continued. "Cities dreaming of unborn gods. Temples forming around souls that never existed. People speaking in languages no one taught them. It is spreading."
"And I'm supposed to stop it?" Ilen asked. "I'm nothing. I wasn't even born."
"That is precisely why you are suited for this. You are unanchored. You belong to no fate. No timeline. No prophecy. You can enter distortions without breaking the world."
The Archivist raised its hand again, and the book—the Echo—opened.
Inside were words he couldn't read, yet understood. Concepts burned into language. Half-memories. Sensations of walking paths he never took.
"Accept this Echo," the Archivist said, "and begin your first Path."
"What if I say no?"
"Then you will decay. Slowly. Painfully. Your awareness will fray until you are no different from the others who wander this place, whispering fragments to no one. Your potential will rot. And you will become... archive."
The choice was an illusion. But perhaps even illusions held power in this place.
Ilen stepped forward and placed both hands on the open book.
The moment he did, his mind split open.
Light, sound, and pain surged through him as the Echo forced itself into the empty spaces of his soul. He screamed—not in his throat, but in his spirit—as the weight of an unrealized life was stitched onto his existence.
He saw himself—a boy named Cael Derren. A failed scholar. A heretic. A seeker of truths best left buried.
He fell to his knees as the memories faded and settled.
The Archivist stood over him.
"First Echo acquired: The Unblessed Seeker."
Symbols blazed to life on the platform. Ilen's tunic changed, the symbols stitched into it reshaping to resemble Cael's forgotten sigils. He felt them resonate inside his skin.
"Your next task awaits," the Archivist said. "There is a city waking from a dream it should never have had. Find the distortion. Follow its thread. Sever it if necessary."
"And if I fail?" Ilen asked.
The Archivist tilted its head.
"Then the unborn will be born wrong."
The lights dimmed. The shelves whispered.
And the Archive waited.