Rain soaked the old streets of Prague as Lena stumbled through the night. Mira's bloodstained notebook was clenched in her hands. It wasn't just a notebook now—it felt alive, like a second heart thudding in her coat pocket.
"To kill the book, you must become it."
Mira had scrawled those words near the end, the ink running from the rain. Beside them was a drawing: a dagger—the monk's dagger. Its blade Its handle was wrapped in black thread, the same kind used to sew shut the Witness's mouth.
Mira's notes said the dagger was hidden under an old church: Kostel sv. Cyrila a Metoděje. A place where the shadows didn't behave.
---
THE CHURCH OF WHISPERS
The doors creaked open before Lena could touch them.
Inside, the air was thick—stone, wax, and something older. It smelled like forgotten prayers. The pews were empty, but the candles flickered too much. Too many shadows danced on the walls.
One shadow didn't belong.
It sat in the last pew. Tall. Thin. Twisted. But there was no person to cast it.
"You're late," said the Last Witness.
Its voice didn't come from one place—it echoed through the rafters, the confessional booth, even from inside Lena's bones. The book in her pocket twitched, its pages fluttering like something trapped.
The Witness pointed toward the altar. "Under the white stone. That's where it is."
Lena didn't move. "Why are you helping me?"
The Witness's stitched mouth curled. "I'm not."
Then it vanished.
---
THE CRYPT OF THE FIRST KEEPER
The altar stone moved too easily. Beneath it, a narrow staircase spiraled down into the dark. Cobwebs clung to every step. The deeper Lena went, the colder it grew—not just chilly, but hollow, like warmth had never existed.
At the bottom, there was a single coffin.
No, not a coffin.
A reliquary.
Its glass lid was fogged with age, but she could make out a figure inside—a monk's skeleton in crumbling robes, mouth stretched in a silent scream.
In its hands—
The dagger.
Lena's heart pounded as she reached for it.
The moment her fingers touched the hilt, the monk's eyes snapped open.
Black, swirling voids stared into her.
Its jaw moved.
"You should have let me sleep."
---
THE FIRST KEEPER'S WARNING
A vision hit like a blade to the chest:
- The monk, young and shaking, writing with a quill dipped in dark ink.
- A shadow rising off the page. Hungry. Too tall. Its mouth sealed with thread.
- The monk stabbing the book. A scream breaking the night—
Then the vision tore apart.
Lena gasped, back in the crypt. The dagger pulsed in her hand, its blade humming.
The monk's bones collapsed into dust. His whisper lingered in the cold air:
"It wants a story. Give it a better one."
The book in her pocket screamed.
---
THE BOOK FIGHTS BACK
The stairs were gone.
The walls breathed—like lungs, tightening around her. The shadows moved like hands now, writing in rust-colored streaks across the stone.
Lena. Lena. Lena.
The Witness stood in the middle of it all. Its stitches had burst open, black ink spilling from its mouth.
"You can't destroy me," it said, smiling. "I am you. I'm the ink in your veins. I'm the voice in your head. The last thought before the dark."
Lena gripped the dagger tighter.
The book tore from her pocket. Its pages flapped like wings. Its spine cracked open—
A mouth.
Teeth like needles. A parchment tongue.
It screamed one word:
"KEEPER!"
---
THE CHOICE
The dagger burned in her palm.
She remembered the monk's words:
Give it a better story.
She knew what to do.
She didn't stab the book.
She stabbed herself.
The Witness stopped laughing.
"No. You wouldn't—"
But she did.
---
THE NEW STORY
Pain.
Then—nothing.
No crypt. No Witness.
Just Lena standing in a vast, endless library. The dagger was still in her chest. No blood—just ink flowing from the wound, twisting into words in the air:
"Once upon a time, a girl became the monster to kill a worse one."
The book lay open at her feet. Blank.
Waiting.
The Witness's voice, quiet now, trembled from somewhere far away:
"What have you done?"
Lena smiled.
"I rewrote the ending."
---