The word hung in the air without echo.
Choose.
Finn's mouth was dry. The sound wasn't a command, but neither was it a suggestion. It came without threat or comfort. It simply was. The kind of truth that didn't need to justify itself.
He stood at the edge of the pit, the dark well humming beneath him. Threads of potential still coiled up from below, thinner now, but no less vast. The scroll remained open in his hand, its gold mark glowing faintly in the cold air.
Behind him, the reader waited. She hadn't spoken since the scroll flared. Her hand hovered just above his shoulder, like she wanted to steady him but feared what it might cost.
"What happens if I choose wrong?" he asked quietly.
No answer.
He turned toward her. "What if every path leads to the same end?"
She met his gaze. "Then you're not choosing the end. You're choosing what becomes of you before it."
The scroll flickered.
A single line appeared beneath the gold mark.
This is not about fate.
This is about will.
Finn closed his eyes. The pit wasn't just a hole in the ground. It was a place where stories twisted back on themselves. He'd seen glimpses. Cities burning. His face carved into stone. Rook dead at his feet. The reader's hand, severed and used as a seal.
But in some visions, he saw peace. A garden. Laughter. No scroll at all.
He didn't know which was true. Or if truth even applied.
The scroll had never promised him honesty. Only reflection.
He took a breath.
And then he reached down and placed the scroll into the dark.
It did not fall.
The shadows took it. And the chamber shifted.
The hum stopped. The blue flames blinked once, then died.
Darkness.
But not silence.
Finn heard breathing. His own. The reader's. And then something else.
Footsteps.
He turned.
A shape emerged from the stairwell above. Robes. Mask. Silver-edged and faceless.
The mirrorteller.
She stepped into the room without sound. Her mirror face caught no light and gave no image.
"You gave it back," she said.
Finn didn't answer.
"You are not meant to hold it forever," she continued. "Only to open the path."
The reader stepped forward. "What happens now?"
The mirrorteller turned slightly, as if regarding her. "Now he walks it."
"To where?"
The scroll appeared again. Not in Finn's hands. Not in the room. It hovered in the air like a memory.
A new line wrote itself.
To the place where endings begin.
Finn's voice was quiet. "And what will I find there?"
The mirrorteller didn't answer.
But the scroll did.
Your name.
And beneath it, in smaller script:
Your last one.
Finn looked to the reader.
She nodded. "I'll go with you."
The mirrorteller stepped aside, and a hidden passage opened in the stone behind her.
No stairs. No torches.
Just a slope into black.
Finn took the first step.
He didn't know what name he would find.
But he would find it as himself.
The passage was not natural. It breathed. The air inside moved with a rhythm too regular to be wind. Each footstep echoed not against the walls, but back into the soles of his boots. Finn had the impression the place was watching.
The reader walked behind him, her fingers tracing the ridged walls. She didn't speak, but once she hummed, softly. A tune with no words.
They walked for what felt like an hour. Maybe more. Time inside the path had its own weight. When they reached a bend, the walls opened into a chamber faintly lit by strands of blue-white light hanging from the ceiling like moss.
Shapes loomed in the light. Tables. Chairs. Scroll cases shattered, scorched, or rotting. It looked like an old archive, one abandoned in a hurry. A place too sacred to clean, too dangerous to forget.
Finn paused. "This is"
"Where the first scrolls were born," the reader finished.
He stepped closer to one of the cases. The glass was fused to the frame, melted by heat not of fire but of will. Something inside had resisted erasure.
"I thought the scrolls were created by the Scriptorium," he said.
"They were interpreted by them. Not made."
He looked at her. "Then who made them?"
She touched the glass. "Those who refused to be written."
The room pulsed. A faint vibration beneath their feet. One of the scroll tubes rolled slightly.
Finn picked it up.
It was sealed in black wax, cracked and old. No thread. No name.
He opened it.
Inside was a single page. Blank.
But as he turned it toward the light, ink bloomed.
It wasn't a story. It was a question.
Do you still remember?
He felt dizzy. He didn't know if it was meant for him or someone else.
The reader took it from his hand. "This was someone's last chance."
Finn said nothing. He walked to the far end of the room where a large circular window opened into darkness. No city lights. No stars. Just an abyss that felt full of thought.
The scroll appeared again.
It hovered, unrolled, ink spilling across it.
One last time.
Finn stepped forward.
He read the words as they formed.
Not prophecy.
Not command.
Just this:
To walk forward is to write.
And to write is to become.
The scroll burned bright gold, then silver, then black.
Then it was gone.
Finn exhaled slowly. The reader stood beside him.
"Now what?" she asked.
He looked into the dark beyond the window.
And he smiled.
"Now we begin."