Chapter 190: Ch188. To write a Story...
As soon as her pen touched the parchment of her Chronicle, the world unraveled. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she didn’t see Cheshire, even though she knew he was there with her, and could feel Miles’ hand squeezing her shoulder gently.
In front of her stood the gates of the Library of the Unwritten. Her heart was drumming in her chest, and her throat was tight. There was a vast silence pressing in around her, deeper than any ocean trench, broken only by the creak of old hinges as the Professor pushed one of the massive doors open.
"Go on." His voice was gentle as he ushered Sarissa in. "She’ll be waiting."
Sarissa nodded and stepped into the dark.
The Library unfolded like a dream. Aisles and aisles of impossible height, each shelf stacked with tomes bound in leather, cloth, metal, and stranger materials still. The air smelled of ink, parchment, and something sweetly metallic.
It wasn’t lit in any conventional way. Rather, everything shimmered with a quiet glow, as though the stories themselves exhaled light, pulsing with an unseen heartbeat.
"This isn’t the same place I saw before." Sarissa murmured.
"What you saw before was its horizon’s reflection. This is the true, Library, where stories are stored before they’re told out loud by the world." The Professor’s cane – he sure as hell wasn’t carrying one before – tapped gently behind her.
A chill slipped down her spine. She tried summoning her blade, but it wasn’t there. No armor, no weapons, only herself.
"No, no, child." The Professor spoke softly, yet sternly. "The library doesn’t allow fiction to intrude."
The shelves rearranged themselves ahead of her with a whispering shuffle, forming a narrow corridor. At the end stood a lone table, lit by a pool of pale light, with a figure sitting there, hooded, their face shadowed.