## CHAPTER 16: _"The Scroll of Unmaking"_
The scroll unfurled without hands.
From the northern ridge of Elira's wall, the sky pulsed like a heartbeat. The scroll that the Archivist held—ancient, dripping with ink that smoked and hissed—floated midair. Its language was not Eliran, nor any known to men. It was written in memories, etched in lost time, meant to unravel the bones of creation itself.
Lysia stood on the highest terrace of the palace, her arms bound in threads of light conjured by the resistance mages. She could still feel the echo of the Archivist's command in her ribs: "Let the thirteenth be undone."
> "He's rewriting me," she whispered to Arien.
> "Not if I write you first," he said.
---
The scroll began to burn.
Not with fire, but with **absence**.
Every letter that dissolved didn't char—it vanished. Entire names in the old kingdom census were erased. Forgotten songs turned to silence mid-note. The archives in the palace library curled in on themselves as their oldest scrolls turned blank.
Lysia felt her memories tugged away.
She staggered.
> "My mother's voice," she whispered. "I—I can't remember how she sounded."
Orrin, now pale as snow, stepped forward with a staff crowned in blackwood.
> "We must seal the scroll again," he said. "Or it will undo the very idea of Elira."
> "It's more than magic now," Lysia said. "It's language. It's story. And he's not just unmaking the kingdom… he's unmaking *me*."
---
Down in the square, people chanted her name.
Lysia. Lysia. Lysia.
But the sound trembled, distorted. As if the Archivist's curse was stealing **belief**.
Walls cracked. Rivers halted mid-flow. Names were forgotten mid-sentence.
Even Arien found himself unable to say her full name.
> "Ly… Li… Lysia?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
Her name was slipping.
---
That night, Lysia entered the Dreamwell—an ancient pool buried beneath the palace. She stripped her crown, her robe, her titles—and stepped barefoot into the shimmering memory.
There, she saw every woman who had ever held the curse.
The First—who had swallowed a god's name.
The Seventh—who had kissed a burning tree to save her people.
The Tenth—who died in childbirth so her daughter might breathe free.
Their memories burned into her skin like ink.
> "You carry all of us," said the ghost of the Ninth. "But only you may write the end."
> "Then I will write it in blood," Lysia vowed.
She rose from the water, dripping memory. And power.
She didn't dress.
She let her scars show.
And each scar glowed like a page turned.
---
The next morning, Lysia stood on the same ridge as the Archivist. No guards. No spells.
Just her.
And him.
He smiled—cold, carved, precise.
> "What will you write, girl?" he asked.
> "My name," she replied.
> "It won't last."
> "It only has to outlast *you*."
She reached out—and her hand caught fire.
Not from rage.
But from memory.
From the First.
From her mother.
From every child of Elira who had loved in the dark.
And she wrote—onto the sky.
A single line.
> "We were not broken. We were bound. And now—we are becoming."
The scroll tore in half.
The Archivist screamed.
And Elira began to remember.
Not the pain.
The purpose.
And Lysia, once cursed, now wrote the truth into the wind:
The curse was never punishment.
It was **potential**.
---
The echoes of the broken scroll lingered in the clouds. Storms reversed. Forgotten fields bloomed. The names returned, not just in books—but in mouths. In lullabies. In prayer.
Children remembered their parents. Lovers remembered lost letters. Elira remembered *herself*.
But the Archivist was not gone.
He writhed on the ridge, eyes blind, voice twisted.
> "She rewrote the rewrite," he gasped.
He clutched a second scroll—a darker one.
> "There's always a draft…"
And with that, he vanished in a smear of black ink.
The war wasn't over.
Just paused.
Lysia collapsed, not from weakness—but from weight.
Arien caught her.
> "You remembered us," he whispered.
> "I had to," she said. "Because if I didn't… no one would."
And then she wept.
Not from grief.
From survival.
Because the story had lived.
And so had she.