The Blackthorn Codex
> Destiny is not dictated, it is written.
And tonight, Léandre would begin to write.
The pages of the Codex still trembled, but now with a different urgency.
Not a book.
A creature.
A silent voice whispering to him:
"Write yourself before I erase you."
Around him, the attic walls seemed to dissolve, replaced by a void where time no longer had a hold.
Fragments of memories, scattered and floating, clashed in the darkness, blurred images of a life slipping away.
He reached out, trying to capture these moments slipping through his fingers, but they slipped away with every touch.
Then, in the midst of this emptiness, a faint light appeared, outlining the outline of a familiar yet foreign silhouette. It was him—or at least what he could have been.
His eyes were bottomless abysses, his features bearing the weight of a story never lived.
Wordlessly, the figure held out an ancient parchment, the words of which wrote themselves, as if animated by a will of their own.
Leander knew then that this chapter was a test, a challenge posed by the Codex itself.
If he didn't make his story his own, if he refused to write his own truth, he would be forever trapped on this blank page, forgotten by time and by himself.
He took a deep breath, the quill trembling between his fingers.
Destiny isn't dictated, it's written.
And tonight, Leander was going to begin to write.
---
But the moment the quill touched the page, it sank.
Not into the paper.
Into something older, vaster, as if she had pierced the skin of a buried world.
A crack was heard.
The light flickered.
The attic was no longer the attic.
Leander now stood in an empty amphitheater, carved out of the stone, beneath a vault of ink.
In the center, a table.
On the table, the Codex. Or a fragment of the Codex. It seemed to be breathing.
Around him, the stands were populated by motionless forms.
Hooded figures, frozen in a sepulchral silence.
One of them spoke without moving:
"You can only write with the ink of your forgetting."
"As long as you remember, you remain on the surface."
"Dive."
He felt the quill in his hand vibrate.
It was getting heavier. It was filling with something—a thick, black, warm liquid.
Blood? No.
Memory ink.
He placed the tip on the page, and this time, the words came.
They weren't dictated.
They didn't tell.
They revealed.
> "I wasn't born.
I am what remains when you erase all the others."
The figures in the circle nodded as one.
"You've started," said the Voice.
But Leander understood. This wasn't the beginning.
This was an act of invocation.
And something—or someone—was already responding from the other side of the page.