The taxi ride to JFK felt like a funeral procession. Lena held the book-lined bag Mira had given her, though it did nothing to quiet the whispers coming from it.
At the airport check-in, the agent raised an eyebrow.
"Miss, your passport...?"
Lena's heart sank. But when she opened her wallet, the passport was there—though something had changed. Her photo was replaced with a black-and-white image of the gaunt figure, its lips stitched shut with thick, crude thread.
The agent didn't seem to notice.
"Window or aisle?"
Everything else was a blur. The transatlantic flight was surprisingly empty. As Lena sat down, the overhead bin clicked open on its own—and the book floated out, landing in the seat beside her.
The turbulence hit as soon as they left the coastline. The lights flickered. The plane dropped hard, and passengers screamed.
Lena grabbed the book.
"Stop this!"
Immediately, the shaking stopped. Flight attendants moved up the aisle like nothing had happened.
Then a message appeared on the book's pages:
Good. You're learning.
The book began flipping its own pages fast, revealing a timeline of all the Keepers who had come before her—their victories, their downfalls. Then came the future.
One possibility showed Lena taking the oath, gaining immortality—as long as she kept feeding the book.
Another showed her lifeless body lying in a Romanian forest, the book resting on her chest.
But the last one...
In the final image, she stood at a crumbling altar, flames of black fire consuming the book while the gaunt figure screamed.
Choose, the book demanded.
She shut it. That's when she finally understood. The book wasn't just cursed—it was a battlefield. The gaunt figure—the Last Witness—was trapped in an eternal fight with whatever force had bound it to the pages. And now Lena was part of that war.
As the plane descended into clouds, she caught her reflection in the window—it winked. This time, she winked back.
The moment the wheels hit the runway in Bucharest, every light on the plane went out. In the pitch black, something leaned close to her seat. Its breath smelled like old paper and graves.
"Welcome to the game," it whispered—in her grandfather's voice.
When the lights came back on, the book was gone. But Lena knew it hadn't vanished. It was waiting for her at the hotel. The real test was about to begin.
Her phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number appeared: coordinates, and one line of text:
The monastery waits. So does He.
As she stepped into the Romanian night, she noticed something strange—two shadows followed her. One was her own. The other was tall, unnaturally thin, and it carried something under its arm.
Something shaped like a book.
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