The light of the portal faded.
Kikidori stumbled forward, boots crunching on something that wasn't sand anymore.
Glass.
The floor beneath him was a broken plain of shattered crystal, each piece reflecting stars that didn't exist. A wind passed through, cold and dry, humming with a strange rhythm—like breathing. The towers of the Celestial Castles hung above them now, impossibly far yet still casting their shadows across this strange world between worlds.
Miren walked ahead of him in silence.
Her bare feet didn't leave prints on the crystal ground. Her cloak, tattered and grey, shifted like smoke when it moved. The glyphs glowing along her forearms were dim now, as though she had forced their light inward, locked it down.
"You're not going to ask, are you?" she said without turning.
"About what?" Kikidori replied softly.
"Why I was erased. Why I'm still alive. Why my story was never allowed to end."
He hesitated.
"I figured you'd tell me when you were ready."
She stopped walking.
"Kind," she said, glancing back. "But naïve. In this world, kindness can be a type of cruelty."
She turned toward a jagged shard of black crystal, resting in the shape of a bench. She sat, knees drawn to her chest.
"The book I was given," she began slowly, "wasn't blank like yours. It was ancient. Covered in vines that bled ink when I touched them. Its title was written in a language I couldn't read. But when I opened it…"
Her eyes glassed over.
"I didn't get powers. I didn't get to choose my world. My book wasn't about me. It was about a man named Aveth, the Tyrant of Time—a warlord who conquered twenty-seven worlds by rewriting their histories backwards. My book was supposed to observe him. Record his rise. Nothing more."
"But you didn't want to observe," Kikidori said quietly.
"No," she whispered. "I wanted to save someone."
She clenched her hands. The glyphs glowed red for a moment before fading again.
"I broke the first law of the Archive. I wrote a name into the story—a girl who was supposed to die in chapter six. I saved her. I changed her fate." Her voice cracked. "She was my sister."
Kikidori's eyes widened.
"She survived. She even became a key player in the resistance that brought Aveth down. For a moment, I thought I'd done the right thing." Miren looked up. "But the Archive... it doesn't forgive. It doesn't forget."
She looked down at her hands.
"My book snapped shut on its own. My name vanished from the Author's Index. And the next time I opened the pages…" she reached slowly into the folds of her cloak and pulled out a thick, decaying volume.
It moaned.
The book was bound in flesh-gray leather. The spine had teeth. Literal teeth. Its cover was blank, except for one seared glyph: a circle with a line through it.
"No title," she said. "No genre. No protection."
Kikidori stepped forward cautiously. "It looks like mine."
"No," she said sharply. "Yours is still writing itself. Mine... is feeding on the past."
The book twitched in her lap.
"I've been trapped for 2,137 years," she continued. "First in a time loop, forced to relive the moment I rewrote fate. Then in silence. Then in the sand, as a prisoner hunted by the Bookborn—those masked enforcers you saw. I wasn't allowed to die. I wasn't allowed to live. Just... exist. As a cautionary tale."
Kikidori sat beside her.
"You didn't deserve that."
"I did," she whispered. "The Archive exists to observe fate, not edit it. We don't get to decide who lives or dies."
"Then what's the point?" Kikidori asked. "Why give us the power to write at all if we can't use it to change things for the better?"
Miren looked at him—truly looked at him—for the first time.
"That's what makes you different," she said. "You're not afraid of ink."
A pulse echoed through the space.
Both books opened at once—Miren's oozing smoke, Kikidori's gleaming with gold light.
A new line of text wrote itself across the sky above them:
> "Celestial Domain #07: Castle of Fragmented Choice is now open."
> Author Detected: Alessa Mournbright
Genre: Tragedy/Redemption
Realm Type: Interactive | Free Influence
Scriptweaving Level Recommended: 2.0+
Status: Chaotic Drift – Entry permitted
Miren's expression darkened.
"I've heard of that one," she said. "Everyone who enters leaves with their own story broken in half."
Kikidori stood slowly.
"I need to go."
She raised an eyebrow. "To prove something?"
"To understand," he replied. "If we're forced to watch, we should at least know what it costs."
Miren rose to her feet.
"I told you I'd walk one step behind," she said. "Let's see what this next castle is hiding."
As the new portal shimmered into being, Kikidori felt his Book pulse once more—this time not with warning, but with welcome.
And for the first time, a line appeared not on the page, but on his own skin, glowing like a tattoo beneath his wrist:
> "He who writes with care becomes the editor of lost souls."
The portal spat them out into a place unlike any Kikidori had ever seen.
The Castle of Fragmented Choice wasn't a castle in the usual sense. It was a sprawling fortress of impossible size—its walls made from fractured glass that reflected shattered timelines, corridors twisting in Escher-like spirals, and towers that bent the sky itself. The air was thick with whispers—echoes of decisions long past and futures ripped apart.
Miren's footsteps were steady, unafraid. She moved through the fractured hallways like a shadow familiar with every crack.
"This place…" Kikidori whispered, "It's huge. How do you even begin to—"
"I've been here," Miren interrupted, voice flat. "More times than I want to count. This castle isn't just big. It's a maze built on regret, pain, and impossible choices. Every hall holds a story that ended badly because someone had to lose."
Kikidori shivered.
They moved past a corridor where the floor was a mosaic of shattered dreams—broken swords, torn letters, half-finished paintings, and faces frozen mid-cry.
"Why come here again?" Kikidori asked, watching her carefully.
Miren didn't answer.
Instead, they reached a grand hall where the ceiling stretched into infinity, stars twinkling overhead.
At the center sat a lone figure, cloaked in robes woven from midnight and sorrow.
A young woman with pale eyes and fingers stained with ink.
She looked up slowly as Kikidori approached.
"I am Alessa Mournbright," she said softly. "Author of this castle. Keeper of its tragedies."
Kikidori swallowed, stepping forward.
"Is… being an Author like a gift? A power?"
Alessa shook her head bitterly.
"Hell," she said plainly. "To write here is to live every tragedy again—to feel every choice tear you apart. To carry the pain of millions who have lost. There is no peace. No rest. Only the endless weight of the stories that refuse to end."
Her voice cracked. "Every night, I bleed ink. Every dawn, I wake with more regrets than hope."
Kikidori stared at her, unsure what to say.
Before he could speak, a sudden thunder tore through the hall.
The air shimmered as a sharp wind sliced past them—so cold, so fast, it left frost on the walls.
Without warning, the Castle of Fragmented Choice groaned.
A massive fracture split through the heart of the castle, like a jagged scar from the heavens.
Stone, glass, and shadow cracked in half.
From the newly created rift stepped four figures, their presence electric and terrifying.
They were the Void Blades—a feared faction of swordsmen who wielded weapons rumored to cut through not just flesh, but reality itself.
The first, tall and lean with hair like silver flames, held a greatsword that shimmered with dark matter. His eyes glowed cold.
"Vareth, the Rift Reaper," the wind seemed to whisper.
The second was shorter, with a mask of bone covering his face. His twin sabers hummed with violet lightning.
"Kairos, the Temporal Slash."
The third, a woman with eyes of molten gold, wielded a scythe that dripped shadows like liquid night.
"Lyra, the Dusk Harvester."
And last, a massive figure whose sword was forged from shattered stars, each step causing the ground to tremble.
"Gorran, the Starbreaker."
Their presence made the fractured halls pulse with dread.
Alessa stood, facing them with hollow eyes.
"They've come," she said quietly. "The Void Blades don't care for Authors. They cut through castles like this to claim the power buried inside."
Kikidori gripped the Book with No Name tightly.
Miren stepped beside him, eyes blazing.
"This is going to be hell," she said. "And we're the ones trapped inside it."
The Castle of Fragmented Choice shook as the Void Blades descended.
Miren moved first.
With a flick of her wrist, her book snapped open mid-air, glyphs dancing across the pages like lightning. A veil of mirrored ink burst upward, catching Kairos' twin sabers in mid-swing.
But the blow still cracked the floor beneath them.
"He's fast," she grunted, twisting to parry Lyra's scythe with a blast of raw Scriptweaving energy. "And she's not even trying yet."
Kikidori staggered backward, his book pulsing wildly, a new line scrawling across the page:
> "The Author faces those who were never meant to be read."
Then Vareth was there—Reaper of Rifts, blade held like the final punctuation at the end of existence.
Kikidori didn't think. His book opened, and a massive page flared up between them like a shield. Vareth's greatsword crashed into it, splitting the sentence down the middle.
Kikidori's knees buckled.
"Not good enough," Vareth muttered, lifting his blade for a finishing arc.
But then—Miren.
A scream.
A blinding flash of glyphlight. Her cloak flared out like wings made of stormclouds. Her hand gripped Vareth's wrist.
"I wrote my own fate once," she growled, "and I'll write yours."
Her book flared with ancient power. The castle responded. Walls screamed. Ceilings bent.
But the Void Blades laughed.
"You're still playing with words," Gorran boomed, lifting his star-forged sword. "We wield reality."
He brought his blade down—
—And the castle cracked.
Not just stone. Not just sky.
The world split.
A tear opened in the air itself—chaotic, swirling, hungry.
"No—!" Alessa shouted from behind, "You'll collapse the—"
And then Kikidori fell.
Miren's hand grabbed his for a heartbeat—then the pull was too strong.
They plummeted through the void, light and ink and broken timelines spinning around them like galaxies.
Something else fell, too.
A blade.
Not just any blade—but Kairos' saber, flung from his hand when Miren's glyphs tore through his grip.
It spun beside Kikidori in slow motion, humming with time-magic and echoing futures undone.
He reached for it.
Grabbed it.
And then—
BOOM.
They crashed into something solid. Grass. Stone. Earth. Heat.
A new sky stretched above them.
Amber suns. Floating islands. Mountains that howled.
And in the distance, a roar that shook the clouds.
---
Miren coughed, pulling herself from the crater beside him. "Where are we—?"
Then the air trembled.
A shadow passed over them.
They turned.
Towering above the jungle trees, wings spread like thunderclouds, stood a beast out of legend.
A Mythrexian Soulmaw. Half-dragon, half-phantom. Its eyes were burning moons.
It had a crown of horns and a mouth full of shifting glyphs.
"Run?" Kikidori asked.
Miren's eyes narrowed. "No."
Then she saw the blade in his hand.
And her face changed.
"You kept that?"
Kikidori rose slowly, holding the blade backward in unfamiliar hands. "Didn't mean to. But… I think it chose me."
The Soulmaw shrieked.
Trees caught fire.
And the real battle had only just begun.
The end Of chapter 3