A scream ripped through the forest—raw, human, and terrifyingly real.
Mira.
Lena bolted toward the sound. But the Last Witness moved quicker. Its long fingers snagged her wrist, sharp bone-quills pricking her skin.
Her blood hit the book's pages—and turned black.
"She lied to you," the Witness hissed. "Just like the monk. Just like your grandfather."
The ruins began to shake. Cracks split open at the altar. Skeletal hands clawed upward, dragging with them the monk's ghost.
His lips were sewn shut with black thread. His eyes dripped ink.
Buzz.
Lena's phone. Another message from Alistair Voss:
"The only way out is through the worst memory. Let it consume you."
A cold wind whipped around her. Trees bent like they were bowing. Their twisted limbs formed an arch.
The forest vanished.
Replaced by a memory.
---
LENA'S WORST MEMORY:
The night her mother confessed the truth about Alistair Voss.
"He wasn't just a scholar," she whispered, clutching a whiskey glass. "He was a murderer. That book made him choose—your grandmother's name or mine."
Now Lena saw her grandfather—standing over two bodies. The book was open in his hands.
He looked... relieved.
"I saved you," he told her mother. "The book takes, but it gives too."
The scene shifted.
Those bodies?
They weren't her grandmother and mother.
They were Lena and Mira.
---
The vision shattered.
Lena dropped to her knees, gasping. The Witness loomed, its needle-teeth glinting.
"See?" it crooned. "The book doesn't just record history. It rewrites it."
The monk's ghost screamed silently behind his stitched lips. He pointed—first at the book, then his mouth.
Burn the liar's tongue.
Lena understood.
He hadn't cut out his tongue to hide the god's name.
He'd burned it—so the book couldn't speak through him.
Then:
Mira staggered into the clearing. Bloody. Shaking. Alive. She held a rusted knife and a torn page.
"Lena," she gasped, "it's not about sacrificing others... it's about sacrificing the lie."
The Witness shrieked. The book flailed its pages like broken wings.
Mira handed.
A passage from the monk's journal:
"The last Keeper must burn the book with their own hands... and their own voice."
Lena's blood turned to ice.
Sacrifice your voice. Sacrifice the lie.
The Witness lunged.
Lena grabbed the book. The knife.
And stabbed it.
Black ooze burst out. The Witness screamed, glitching like a dying flame. The monk's stitches tore open—releasing every name the book had ever taken.
The forest cracked. The altar crumbled. The book howled in Lena's hands.
"Now!" Mira screamed. "Speak its name!"
But Lena couldn't.
Because the final sacrifice wasn't her voice.
It was the truth.
And the truth was…
She wanted the power.
The book fell quiet. The Witness stopped moving.
In that dead silence, one last page turned.
A single word glowed on the parchment:
"Keeper."
---