Echoes of the Unwritten

"Not all who vanish are lost. Some simply slip between the pages of existence, waiting for the right moment to be written back in."

Viraj’s eyes snapped open.

For a brief, disorienting moment, he felt nothing. No ground beneath him, no air around him. Just an empty, floating sensation, as if he had become detached from reality itself.

Then—gravity returned.

He landed hard on something that felt like stone, yet not quite solid. The impact sent a shock through his body, but he ignored the pain and forced himself to his feet.

Lucius groaned somewhere behind him. “Okay… I hate everything about time travel.”

The alternate Viraj sat up with a smirk. “You’ll get used to it.”

Viraj barely heard them. His focus was locked on their surroundings.

They were somewhere else now.

The temple they had been racing toward was gone. So was the void, the Path to Nowhere, even the remains of the Forgotten Gatekeeper.

Instead, they stood in a vast, endless library.

Shelves stretched infinitely in every direction, towering high above and plunging deep below. Books floated in midair, pages flipping on their own. Strange, shifting symbols glowed softly along the spines, morphing and rearranging every few seconds.

Lucius turned in a slow circle. “Alright. This is new.”

Viraj exhaled. He had read about this place before. He just never thought he’d see it.

“The Library of the Unwritten.”

His alternate self nodded. “The place where all erased timelines go.”

Lucius frowned. “Wait, so you’re saying this is a library of things that never happened?”

Viraj walked toward a shelf, brushing his fingers against one of the books. The moment he touched it, a wave of images rushed through his mind—visions of a world that had been, but no longer was.

He pulled back quickly. “Not just erased things. Unwritten things. Possibilities that were never realized. Futures that never came to be.”

Lucius gave a nervous laugh. “Yeah, okay, that’s not horrifying at all.”

Viraj wasn’t listening anymore. His focus was on one thing.

Aditi.

If this was the place where lost timelines ended up, then she had to be here.

He turned sharply. “We need to move.”

Lucius threw up his hands. “Great! But move where? There’s no sign that Aditi is—”

A whisper cut through the air.

It wasn’t a voice in the normal sense. It was a memory of a voice, carried through the space between time.

And it said one thing:

"Viraj…"

His blood ran cold.

Because it wasn’t just any whisper.

It was her.

Without another word, he ran.

They moved deeper into the library, navigating twisting corridors of forgotten stories and discarded fates. The whisper came again, this time clearer.

“Viraj… I’m here.”

Lucius shuddered. “Okay, I take back everything. This place is worse than the time ghost.”

Viraj didn’t respond. His heart was pounding. She was close.

Then—he saw it.

At the far end of the library, bathed in soft, shifting light, was a massive, closed book. It was different from the others. Larger, bound in deep silver threads, locked shut with something that looked suspiciously like a piece of the universe itself.

Viraj’s hands clenched.

He knew what this was.

The Chrono Codex.

And trapped inside it… was Aditi.

The realization hit him like a shockwave. He took a step forward, but the moment he did—

The entire library shuddered.

And a new voice filled the air.

“You should not have come here.”

The temperature dropped instantly. The books flickered, their symbols distorting. The entire library seemed to breathe, and from the shadows… something else began to emerge.

Viraj’s pulse spiked.

Because he recognized that voice, too.

And if he was right—this battle wasn’t over yet.

"Some stories refuse to stay untold. And some doors, once opened, cannot be closed again."

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