Rain fell like a whisper over the windows of the National Archives, gentle as recollection, but unyielding. Ezra Langley hunched under the emerald light of a desk lamp, the ends of his fingers covered in dust, his fingers stained with ink. The room was still, its silence embracing him like a cocoon—a one he never attempted to escape. Twenty-seven and as invisible as the scrolls of justice he kept, Ezra was.
He was a junior archivist—nothing heroic, nothing glamorous. But for Ezra, history was the most sacred of magic. The past was a language of shards and forgotten words, and he could hear it. He felt secure among the ruins of fallen kingdoms, among empires now lost in the din of the modern world. Perhaps because his own life was not heavy with the heroism he desired.
Outside of the Archives, Ezra's existence was a series of cold microwave dinners and open volumes on his couch. He was not bitter about his isolation. He had chosen it. People had always been. transitory. They lied, they left, they forgot. But the written word did not. It was the one truth he could hold onto.
Ezra's one wish—his silent prayer—was to matter. Not to the world, but something more. He did not wish to slay a monster or rescue a princess. He wanted to understand. He wanted a world of nuance, problems, enigmas that skewed time and meaning. A world that needed a scholar, not a sword.
He had no idea his dream was being granted at that time.
It started life as a manuscript.
Not one he was to find.
Plugged into a hidden compartment behind a false wall in the Restricted Wing, the leather-bound book lay in bronze clasps shaped like serpents consuming their own tails. No author, no catalog number. It hummed softly beneath his fingers, as if it breathed. The title on the cover was written in an alphabet Ezra was unfamiliar with—not Greek, not Latin, not one of the cuneiforms he was accustomed to.
The light in the room grew dim. Not due to a shift in the light, but because the book engulfed all focus. Ezra paused—procedure required he log unrecorded discoveries. But an instinct more powerful than obligation drew his hand to the clasp. With a sharp metallic sound, it opened.
The pages inside slid like sand, reorganizing themselves in front of him. And the words formed in tidy, black print:
"Archivist of the Fifth Seal, your name is written down. The Ledger summons you to Witness
Ezra blinked. He had not said the words. But he had read them.
The air became thick. The desk lamp flickered. And then the ink seeped onto the page, forming one circle—the Ouroboros.
His chair was pushed back as the air curled in upon itself. Paper swirled in a whirlwind, the oxygen drawn from the room in one giant gasping breath. Ezra attempted to scream, but his scream was lost in a silence larger than sound.
The last thing he noticed was the serpent on the cover… opening its eyes.
Ezra awoke not on the floor, but on a field of black glass.
The sky was cracked with purple fissures, the color of stained glass illuminated from the rear. Sky islands floated listlessly about—some inscribed with symbols that glowed when he blinked. His body hurt as if all the atoms had been disassembled and sewn back incorrectly.
And then the cold hit him. Not the cold of temperature, but the realization:
He was no longer on earth.
He sprang up from his chair, his heart pounding. His satchel still rested on his shoulder. Inside, the book still lay closed, humming softly. He extracted it and opened it again. The page this time held a map—not of geography he was familiar with, but stars, ley lines, and words like "Memory Wells" and "Causal Rifts."
And then, as if summoned, a voice spoke—not aloud, but in his head:
"You are Witness now. The Ledger never lies. The Forgotten World has chosen you."
Ezra staggered. "What world?" he stormed. "Where am I?"
The response was a shadow—a walking form on the plain of obsidian. Wearing a robe sewn from star-thread, the figure extended a hand. Where it pointed, the sky ripped open once more, this time to show a citadel floating above a never-ending spiral of stairways and drifting books.
You have been called, Scholar," the voice said now, its quality timeless. "To Kael Orien, the World of Written Truth. But beware… Truth here is not fixed. It consumes those who do not test it.".
Ezra looked. "Is this. a dream?
The hood of the figure dropped. "Would you rather it be?"
He did not respond. The query echoed in him, like a bell. He should be scared. But there was a strange, a sense of rightness, curled deep within his chest. As if a door had opened in space, but in him as well.
Kael Orien was not a realm of knights or beasts. It was a realm of concepts—perilous, changing, living. Spires of reason writhed through labyrinths of metaphor. Libraries ran across continents, protected by living puzzles and inkbeasts. Magic was not invoked but read—drawn from living books and inscribed upon the air like calligraphy.
But Ezra wasn't alone.
In the ensuing days (if time was even to be taken into account here), he observed others—each of them from other worlds, each given a role.
A warrior from a world of eternal war, called the Page of Ash.
A robber who talked in riddles and could traverse between ink and shadow—known as the Margin Walker.
A blind girl who reads in erased text—The Redacted Oracle.
And Ezra, then? He was known as the Witness, the only being who could read the Ledger of Becoming, an ever-changing book depending on who read it.
But the Ledger also documented more than history.
It rewrote it.
And now, something ancient—something once erased from all pages—was trying to return.
Ezra sat atop the Observatory of Unsaid Things, looking out towards the horizon as storm-clouds unraveled themselves into words.
What if I lose?" he questioned the Redacted Oracle by his side.
"Because you don't," she replied nonchalantly. "Because failure is something the Ledger never lets you say."
"But I'm not a hero." No. You're worse," she said, smiling. "You're a reader. And readers change everything