The heartbeat echoed through the Library of Unwritten Princes like a war drum in slow motion. One thump. A pause. Another.
Aurora didn't breathe.
The candles that had gone out began to flicker back to life—only they weren't candles anymore. They were eyes.
Dozens of them. Some wide and white, others slitted like cats, some hollow with nothing behind them at all. They floated across the spiral of the library, watching her. Watching the Index.
The name was still wet on the page.
Lysander.
And beneath it… letters began to form on their own, as though the page had waited too long to speak and now couldn't stop. Sentences bloomed in dark silver ink.
"He was never meant to be a prince. But he was always meant to bleed like one."
"A shadow of a man carved out of someone else's mistake. He dreamed too deeply and remembered too much."
"He was chosen. Not by fate. Not by prophecy. But by someone who dared to rewrite the rules."
Aurora stepped back.
The name was alive now. The story was stitching itself together in real time.
A gust of wind swept through the shelves, scattering ash and loose pages. Books shook. Chains rattled somewhere in the abyss. The Keeper—who had given her the quill—didn't move. He watched with unreadable eyes, his lips sealed shut.
And then—
A mirror cracked.
High above them, on the far wall of the library, a giant mirror—once black and smooth—fractured in the center with a high, musical ting. The crack split into veins, forming a shape.
A silhouette.
A man's.
Aurora's heart stuttered.
From the mirror, Lysander stepped out.
His robes were torn and ink-stained. His eyes shimmered with recognition—then confusion. He looked around, dazed, one hand pressed to his chest where the story had written him back into existence.
"Aurora?" His voice was hoarse. "Where… where am I?"
She ran to him. For a second, just one, there was relief. His body was real. Warm. His pulse beat beneath her fingers.
But something was wrong.
His shadow moved on its own.
When he turned his head, it didn't follow immediately. It lagged. Like it remembered being separate.
The Keeper approached, quiet as paper.
"He's back," he said. "But not entirely."
Aurora looked at the mirror.
The crack was still open.
"Did I bring back only part of him?"
"No," said the Keeper. "You brought back all of him. But something else came with him."
The eyes floating above flickered. One by one, they began to shut. As if whatever they were watching for had already arrived.
And behind the shelves—a second heartbeat.
Deeper. Slower. Colder.
"He wasn't the only one trapped in the unfinished pages," whispered the Keeper. "And your quill didn't just write his story. It opened the library's locks."
Lysander looked at his hands, then at Aurora. "I can hear things. Voices. Scratching on the other side of my mind."
"It's the one who wrote you the first time," the Keeper said, his face growing pale. "Before you were erased. He remembers what you were meant to be."
A long silence.
Aurora spoke, her voice low. "And what was that?"
"A villain."
A flicker of movement—Lysander flinched.
Not from fear. From memory.
"He's waking up inside me," Lysander whispered. "I can feel his story uncoiling like a snake."
Aurora clutched the quill tighter. Her hand trembled. "Then we rewrite it again."
But the Keeper shook his head.
"You can only rewrite what you own. And this—this story belongs to someone else now. Someone ancient. A Storysmith."
"The Storysmith?" Aurora asked.
"One of the first authors. The ones who carved the rules of fairy tales into the bones of reality. They don't like edits."
The shadow behind Lysander lengthened.
A whisper brushed against the back of Aurora's mind.
"Undo what was done, and you'll unmake more than you think."
The Keeper raised his hand, summoning a floating book from the shelves.
"There's still a way. One more Index. The original. Hidden in the Glass Realm. If you reach it, you can trace the Storysmith's mark, find their true name."
"And if we can find their name…" Aurora began.
"Then you can unbind the story from Lysander."
Lysander swallowed, his shadow trembling beneath him.
"And if we can't?"
The Keeper didn't answer.
The eyes had all vanished.
The library was silent again.
Except for the second heartbeat.
Growing louder.