Time passed differently in the Archive.
Ilen sat cross-legged on an island of black marble, floating between spiraling columns of forgotten souls. Each one was a book bound in material that wasn't quite paper and wasn't quite skin. Their titles shimmered in impossible ink—some unreadable, some screaming when looked at too long.
His arms still burned with faint symbols. The Echo was settled, but reactive—whispering strange truths and half-memories at random.
He hadn't slept since returning from Lareth Dorei. He wasn't even sure he could sleep. His body was not born, and so perhaps it had no need for rest.
Still, exhaustion pressed against his spirit like damp cloth.
Across the expanse, footsteps echoed.
Not the sound of the Archivist. This was something else—lighter, but precise. Intentional. Calculated.
A figure emerged from between two floating shelves, walking on air as if it were solid.
She looked human.
Young. Maybe nineteen in appearance. Clad in a robe the color of dried ink, adorned with fragmented glyphs that seemed to rearrange when he wasn't looking directly at them. Her eyes were mismatched—one gold, one completely black.
But it was the lack of a shadow that unsettled him most.
She walked without one.
"You're the Echo-Walker," she said, stopping several paces away.
Ilen stood slowly. "That's what they called me."
She tilted her head. "You severed a false city. Killed a dream. Did it scream?"
"…Yes."
A pause. She smiled faintly.
"Good."
Ilen narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"
The girl bowed slightly. "I am the Librarian Without a Name. A position, not a person."
He glanced around. "So you work for the Archivist?"
That earned a chuckle.
"No one works for the Archivist. Not truly. We survive near it. We serve beside it. But never under it. It has no master, no superior, and no interest in hierarchy."
Ilen looked down at his hands. "So what do you want from me?"
She took a step forward. "To warn you."
"Something is feeding off the rejections."
He went still.
"The unborn?" he asked. "I thought they were the threat."
She shook her head. "No. Most of them are just fragments. Echoes. Not complete enough to threaten the fabric. But something else is nesting among them. It didn't originate here. It came from outside the Archive—outside the possibility stream."
"A parasite," she said. "It calls itself the Womb-Eater."
Ilen's stomach turned.
"Is it… a distortion?"
"Worse. It doesn't create dreams. It consumes them. Distorted souls that almost become real—that's when it strikes. Feeds. And when it eats enough... it births itself."
"Births itself?"
She looked at him solemnly. "It's trying to use the Archive as a womb."
The phrase made his blood run cold.
The Archive… a womb for a soul that doesn't belong anywhere.
"Why are you telling me this now?" he asked. "The Archivist said nothing."
She shrugged. "The Archivist sees but does not interpret. It records. Catalogues. It's bound by function. I'm not."
Ilen frowned. "Then why don't you stop it?"
"I've tried," she said quietly. "Three distortions neutralized. One consumed before I could get there. I am no Echo-Walker. I lack the paradox inside you."
"You… are outside fate. That gives you reach. Influence. A chance to cut the parasite off before it becomes irreversible."
A silence.
"You're sending me to another distortion," Ilen said at last.
She nodded. "A new one bloomed an hour ago, real-time. Dangerous. No survivors inside yet. The Archive has only just stabilized the echo. I convinced the Archivist to hold the entry until you were briefed."
"You won't be alone," she added.
From the shadows stepped a tall man in a white suit with a sackcloth mask over his face, stitched with a perpetual grin. In one hand he held a cane; in the other, a lantern filled with shifting mist.
"This," the Librarian said, "is Dreamcatcher Uel."
The man gave a courteous bow. "I catch collapse before it becomes plague."
Ilen blinked. "You're… human?"
Uel chuckled behind the mask. "Not anymore. Used to be. Now I'm stitched into the Archive's emergency spine. I can smell soul-rot two doors away."
The Librarian produced a thin disc of obsidian and handed it to Ilen. It hummed in his palm.
"Your access key. One-time use. Will open a door to the new distortion. Name of the echo is Pale Harbor. Former fishing town. Entire population disappeared before birth. Dream memory coalesced last cycle."
Ilen turned the disc over. On the underside was a symbol he'd seen before in Cael's memories: a crooked fishhook crossed by a red line.
"I'll enter from the shore," Uel said. "You take the town center. Look for collapse signs. Don't interact with dream-forms more than necessary."
"And if I see the Womb-Eater?"
Uel paused.
"You run."
The door to Pale Harbor was carved into a shelf of books with no titles.
When Ilen inserted the disc, the wood split like lips opening in silent scream. Cold mist poured out, smelling of seawater and rust.
He stepped through.
The world shifted again.
He was standing on a wharf.
Salt air. No wind. The ocean was still. Too still.
Wooden boats bobbed gently in the harbor, their sails furled, ropes slack. The town was silent—but not empty. He could feel minds pressing against the fabric of reality.
Behind him, the sea stretched into fog. Ahead, a row of houses tilted like they were afraid to look at him directly.
He walked into the town square.
Every house had its windows open.
Every door hung ajar.
But no people.
No voices.
Only… breathing. Deep and slow. As if the town itself slept beneath its own skin.
He passed a storefront with a sign:
"Margel's Tackle & Dreambait"
Inside, dozens of small glass tanks lined the shelves. Each contained a fish—but not the same kind. These shimmered with light inside their bones. Eyes that blinked like human ones. Gills shaped like hands.
A note was pinned to the counter:
"They remember the ones who never caught them."
He stepped back.
That's when he heard the singing.
Low. Wordless. From a voice too large to belong to one person.
He turned a corner and saw them.
Dozens of people, floating several feet off the ground.
Their arms dangled.
Eyes closed.
Their skin was wrong—translucent, pulsing faintly with veins of silver.
Above them floated a massive womb-shaped construct made of weeping coral and dream-silk. It throbbed in time with the singing.
"Ilen."Uel's voice crackled through the mist like static.
"Confirming emergence. It's here. The Womb-Eater is building a seed-nest."
"Can you destroy it?" Ilen whispered.
"Not alone. You're closer to the anchor. You'll need to sever it from inside."
Ilen looked at the construct. Inside it, shapes moved—unborn things writhing in fluid that wasn't water.
He clenched his hands.
Symbols awakened beneath his skin.
You were never meant to be born…
But perhaps that made him the perfect abortion.