They crossed the threshold at dusk.
There was no gate, no archway—only the shimmering edge of the world, like stepping through a page still drying with ink. Aurora went first, clutching the silver quill in her left hand and Lysander's trembling fingers in her right.
Beyond the Library of Unwritten Princes lay a wasteland of colorless frost. Not snow, not ice—but shattered memory, crushed under invisible weight, glimmering like diamond dust. Each step left a print that quickly vanished as the ground rewrote itself behind them.
This was the Glass Realm.
A place not found on any map. A kingdom that never fully existed and never truly disappeared. It lay between timelines—built from broken mirrors, unfinished endings, and tales that were cut from the final draft.
It was cold here, not from weather, but from absence.
Even the light felt secondhand.
Aurora's breath fogged. "Where are the people?"
Lysander's shadow gave no answer, but the man did. "They're here. Just not how you remember people."
Ahead, a city of spires twisted toward a gray sky. The architecture was inconsistent—castles that looked sewn together from different stories. One tower had stained-glass windows shaped like swans; another had battlements made of teeth. Some walls shimmered with frozen paintings mid-melt, scenes of hunts, coronations, and weeping queens—faces half-smeared, as though the canvas had forgotten them.
They walked in silence until they reached the gates.
Or what used to be gates.
They were shards now—great glass arches split like a cracked skull. Something had broken in… or out.
At the center of the city, a palace stood on a mirrored hill. It was upside-down, its spires hanging from the clouds like fangs, its reflection on the frozen lake below forming the illusion of wholeness.
The Glassheart Palace.
Aurora swallowed.
"This is where the Storysmith last walked."
Lysander winced as they crossed the lake, each step causing the mirror-ice to show flashes beneath—faces pressed against the other side, trapped in loops, laughing or screaming silently. Some looked like royalty. Others looked like her.
At the base of the palace doors stood a statue.
It was life-sized. A girl, eyes shut, fingers curled, mouth mid-scream.
"That's…" Aurora whispered.
"You," Lysander finished.
Not exactly. But close. The expression. The tilt of the shoulders. The same desperation she'd once worn in her sleep. And in her dreams.
A plaque at the base read:"She who tried to wake too soon."
The doors opened by themselves.
Inside was an echoing hall of silence.
Not absence of sound—but the presence of a silence so perfect it hurt. It devoured noise like a black hole devoured light. The moment they stepped inside, even their footsteps ceased to exist. No echo. No creak of floorboards. No whisper.
The throne room was a cathedral of mirror and bone.
Silver chandeliers hung from threads of spiderglass. Walls bore portraits of people with their faces blurred—except for one.
A man.
Black hair, a cruel smile, and eyes that glowed faintly blue.
The plaque beneath him read:
"The First Draft."
"The Storysmith," Lysander whispered. "That's him."
Aurora's reflection in the mirrored floor twitched—without her.
She froze.
"Did you see that?" she whispered.
Lysander turned. "See what?"
But before she could answer, the floor below them shattered, falling inward like a dropped teacup.
They plunged.
No scream escaped. The silence devoured even that.
Aurora fell through mirror after mirror—glass slicing through time and memory. She saw fragments: her mother holding her as a baby, a prince who never kissed her, Red running through a garden of glass roses, a young Cinderella holding a knife to a crown.
Then—darkness.
She landed in a library.
No. Not a library.
The Index.
A single book stood on a pedestal of thorns.
It pulsed with a heartbeat.
Boom.
Boom.
Aurora stood. Her reflection was gone. Lysander didn't fall with her. She was alone.
She reached for the book.
The heartbeat quickened.
Her fingers touched the cover—
And the book opened itself.
Inside were pages written in her own hand.
Stories she had never told. Stories she had lived only in dreams.
"You were the villain once.""You were the witch's daughter.""You were the one who cursed the spindle, not the one cursed by it."
"You wrote this tale from the inside out."
Aurora gasped.
A voice whispered beside her.
"Do you remember me now?"
She turned.
A man stepped from the shadows.
He wore her face.
No—he wore a mask of her face. A broken porcelain version.
"You're me," she breathed.
"I'm the version you tried to erase. The one you dreamed away. The one who liked the darkness."
His eyes flashed blue.
"I'm the chapter you buried. But this is the Glass Realm, little queen. And here… broken stories get their revenge."