The Blackthorn Codex
Episode 4 — Where Pacts Are Born
The mirror went dark.
And the Codex opened by itself, once again.
The room was silent. Too silent. It wasn't the absence of noise, but the absence of a world. As if the attic had ceased to exist anywhere but in the beating of the book.
Leander didn't touch the page. He no longer needed to. The text was etching itself into his memory before he even read it. As if the words existed first within him, and only then on the paper.
A date appeared. Tomorrow.
And a first name.
His own.
There was no longer any question of victims. The Codex was now writing itself for him.
He turned his head. The mirror was still vibrating on the floor. But the reflection was no longer his own, nor the child's. It showed a place. A ruined cloister, in the center of a misty valley, surrounded by upside-down trees whose roots dangled toward the sky. A lantern swayed there, suspended from nothing.
A voice, without a source, spoke in his throat.
"You must return to where you wrote your first pact."
Leander didn't understand. He had never been to this place. And yet, something in his blood was reacting. An old burn. A forgotten debt.
The attic faded away.
He found himself standing in the cloister of the mirror. The floor was wet. Not with water, but with ink. It clung to his shoes, slowly creeping up his legs like liquid leprosy. Headless statues lined the crumbling walls. Some were breathing.
In the center, an altar. Cracked. Blackened.
On the altar, a notebook.
Not the Codex. Another one.
Smaller. Bound in leather. And closed with a living silver thread, beating like a heart.
He approached. With each step, a word echoed in his head. A forgotten phrase. An oath he had never spoken aloud, but had once dreamed of.
When his fingers touched the notebook, he heard voices. The voices of children. Then of old people. Then of beings who had never had mouths.
They were singing.
A single sentence, endless.
"Remember the origin of the name."
The notebook opened effortlessly. Inside, a single page. A pact. Written in a language made of shifting glyphs, which his eyes understood but his mind refused to interpret. At the bottom, a signature: Léandre, written backward.
He wanted to step back. But his body was frozen. The altar held him, like a flesh magnet. A black liquid began to flow from the page. Slowly. It transformed into a hand.
Then a second.
And a child emerged.
The same one. But older. Or blurrier.
His eyes were no longer empty. They contained living writing, as if his pupils were made of the alphabet.
He placed his hand on the notebook.
"You don't remember," he said. "But you wrote to me."
"Who are you?" Léandre murmured.
"I am your pact. The one you signed so that others could live. You forgot. I came back to remind you."
The notebook closed by itself. The child became ink again, then wind, then nothing.
And the cloister cracked.
Shards of books began to rain from the sky. Pages torn out, scratched, burned. Some wept. Others screamed. There were names on them. There were prayers. There were lies.
A black wind scattered them.
Leander found himself back in the attic. But the house was no longer the same. Every wall was covered with handwritten pages. Some spoke. Others trembled. The mirror shone with a cold glow.
And in the center of the room, a table.
On the table: the Codex, open on a blank page.
And a quill stuck in his own arm.
Not blood.
Ink.
The Codex called to him. Silently. Wordlessly. But with an irrefutable force.
He understood.
He wasn't a prisoner of the book.
He had become the paper.
And in the shadows, a child's laughter was heard.
Not mocking. Not cruel.
A laugh... of relief.