Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 189: Ch187. The Professor’s Guide To The Library of The Unwritten

Chapter 189: Ch187. The Professor’s Guide To The Library of The Unwritten

The Professor smiled again, and this time it was both proud and sorrowful.

"Alright, Sarissa. Let’s start with what remains."

He gestured, and the air in front of her shimmered. A translucent image emerged, two overlapping shapes, flickering with color and meaning. One was shaped like a chess piece crowned with a thorned halo. The other was a jester’s mask cracked down the middle.

"These are your fragments." He said. "Alice and the Hatter, each representing core traits. Order through madness, and madness through clarity. Two sides of Wonderland’s most peculiar and inherent paradox."

Sarissa reached toward them instinctively, but stopped herself just short of touching.

"They’re inside you now." The Professor said gently. "But fragmented. You have to recontextualize them into your narrative, give them a home inside your Story, or they’ll pull you apart."

"And how do I do that?" She frowned ever so slightly.

"You ask yourself. What do they mean to you? Not to the world, not to the System. You. Why were they drawn to you? What do they want from you? What do you want from them."

Sarissa stared at the flickering fragments.

"I think... Alice saw I was lost, broken, and on the verge of giving up. She told me to make sense of the nonsense inside me. That I had to find my own logic, my own rules." She fell silent for a moment, and then her eyes widened as if struck by lightning. "Wait... That’s what the description of one of my Attributes said... The [Treasure’s Nature], it said that my nature was to question the nature of everything."

The image of the chess piece crowned with a halo of thorns pulsed once, vividly, and Sarissa felt as if it was pulsing in sync with her heart.

"And the Hatter?" The Professor asked.

"He laughed even when he bled." She whispered, recalling her fights against him, during has past regressions. "He said that the world doesn’t care about sanity, only sincerity. That madness was the true form of truth."

The jester’s mask pulsed this time, and Sarissa grimaced ever so slightly, as if feeling the pulse within her ached.

The Professor nodded with satisfaction.

"You’re already doing better than most. Those two are volatile, but they chose you for a reason. The way forward is to build a frame strong enough to contain them, and even still, release their full potential."

"A frame?" Sarissa looked puzzled.

"He means an identity. A sense of self." Miles understood before she did.

"Exactly." The Professor pointed at him with approval. "A Story doesn’t survive on spectacle alone. It needs spine, throughline. A narrative you can fall back on when everything else falls apart."

He raised his hand again, and the room shifted. Now they stood in a twilight field of silver grass, with hundreds of floating shards drifting past. Each shimmered with scenes, voices, and images.

Snippets of battles, quiet moments, triumphs, regrets.

"The Library of the Unwritten." He said softly. "You’re seeing it now."

Sarissa took a trembling breath. Her eyes widened as one shard drifted near, revealing her first fight with Miles, back when they were still friends under the same guild’s banner. Another passed behind it, her and Mara going through dark corridors within the belly of an impossible, breathing being.

"They’re all here?" She whispered.

"Every choice, every possibility. Even the ones you’re yet to make or never will."

"What happens if I touch one?" She turned.

"You experience it. Sometimes that helps, other times..." He trailed off.

Sarissa glanced at Miles, who gave her a slight nod.

She reached toward a fragment, and as her fingers brushed the surface, the world tilted.

***

She was on a rooftop. Rain fell in sheets, and she was fighting someone, or herself? A version of her with cold eyes and merciless purpose in her every motion. They traded blows, each strike ringing with thematic resonance. Each version trying to define which Story would win.

Then, she pulled back, staggering.

"Okay..." She panted heavily. "That was intense."

"You fought a ’What-if’." the Professor said. "A counter-narrative. If you had taken another path, that would have been you. And even though it felt just like a brief moment to you, you experienced it fully, didn’t you?"

"I hated her. But she was so sure." Sarissa closed her eyes.

"Certainty is seductive." The Professor smiled. "But it’s not always the truth. Keep that in mind."

They continued through the drifting Echoes, passing fragments of other stories. Some were violent, some beautiful, some tragic.

Sarissa was absorbing it all now, her mind adjusting to the strangeness, finding her footing.

"What happens next?"

"You write." The Professor retorted. "Not just with a pen, but with action. With decision, with commitment. Wonderland is wounded, and the rules are always bending to one’s will. If you want to fix it, you must claim your narrative before someone else writes it for you."

"Like the Master of Luna Sea."

"Exactly." The Professor’s face darkened. "That entity thrives on distortion, conflict, chaos and destruction that brings forward advance. He doesn’t kill Stories. He perverts them, twisting their meaning until they become weapons in and of themselves."

"Is there a way to fight him?" Miles stepped forward.

"Only with stronger Stories. Ones that remember why they began. Luna Sea can’t destroy conviction, because its own story has its foundation on the god of war and progress’s will of being. It only distracts you from it. That’s why Sarissa is the strongest weapon to fight him, even though you’re going to be the one to deal the blows." The Professor pointed at Miles, with a serious expression on his face.

Sarissa’s expression shifted, resolve settling like steel beneath her skin, just like when she chose to go to the Horizon.

"Then I’ll do it. I’ll become a Story strong enough to resist even him."

"Not alone." Miles added. "You’re not doing this alone again."

"Good. Now we begin the real work." The Professor smiled faintly.

The Library faded around them, and they were back in the warm chamber of the Professor’s sanctuary, the floating lights dimmed to a soft gold as he handed Sarissa a slim, blank journal.

"This is yours now. A Chronicle, its pages will fill as your Story grows. But only with the parts you choose to remember. Guard it well."

She took it with reverence, and for the first time since returning from the Horizon, she didn’t seem afraid.

Miles smiled.

"So... Does she get a desk and homework, or do we just throw her into metaphysical combat right away?"

"Oh, there will be assignments." The Professor said dryly. "Starting now. Sarissa, for your first task, you need to write your prologue. Not your past, not your trauma. Your prologue. Who you are now, and what you’re choosing to become."

"Not without me, no." Cheshire’s voice echoed through the walls as he summoned himself from Miles’ inventory, and it jumped onto Sarissa’s shoulder, his impossibly wide grin soft as he purred against her neck.

"I... Missed you too..." Sarissa murmured, barely above a whisper, and Miles covered his mouth to suppress a chuckle.

She sat down at the desk again, opened the Chronicle, and pressed the tip of her new pen to the page. The ink shimmered, waiting.

Miles walked up behind her and rested a hand on her shoulder as Cheshire kept there.

She began to write, and somewhere, deep in the Library, a new thread of light began to form.