Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 190: Ch188. To write a Story...

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.

Sarissa approached slowly, and the figure raised its head.

It was her own face, only older.

Scarred, darker eyes, rimmed with something deeper than sorrow.

Rage? Knowledge?

"Took you long enough..." The other Sarissa said. Her voice was the same and not. Rougher, tired. "Sit."

Sarissa obeyed, her pulse heavy like hammer against blade in an anvil.

"What is this?" Her voice was steady, but there was a hesitant edge to it that did not escape the other Sarissa.

"A fork." The elder Sarissa retorted. She reached into her cloak and placed a dagger on the table. Its blade shimmered like starlight, but flickered at the edges. It didn’t look like it was produced by the system.

It was a weapon made of potential.

"That doesn’t help."

"You came here to learn what you must become. I came to remind you what you must leave behind."

"If you’re me, then you know I don’t like riddles." Sarissa narrowed her eyes.

"Good. Then listen." The elder Sarissa smiled, humorless.

She gestured, and the library around them seemed to shift again. A thousand tiny motes of light rose like fireflies, forming scenes in midair.

Images of battles, broken cities, Mara bleeding in the Forge, Miles screaming as flames devoured the world.

"These are endings." The older Sarissa’s tone was emotionless, dead like a fish lost in the shore. "They are the most likely futures, and all of them begin here. With you."

"That’s not fair."

"If you know the system, then you know it’s never meant to be."

"Then I reject them." Sarissa stood.

"You can’t."

"Watch me." Sarissa rose to her feet.

There was a brief pause, and then the elder version of her rose as well, her eyes bright with some quiet fury.

"That’s what I said, too, the first time. The Professor told me a story, showed me a path, and I thought I could just change it with willpower. But we are not authors here, we are but mere vessels of the Stories."

"No."

"Yes."

They locked eyes, and the standoff felt like staring into a mirror made of knives.

"What do you want from me?" Sarissa asked finally.

"To warn you. To offer you this." She pushed the dagger forward.

"A key?"

"A weapon. A choice."

Sarissa stared at the blade. It shimmered like the echoes around them, shaped not by forge or spell, but by intent. She knew, without being told, that it would work only once. That it could sever a thread. Or bind one.

"You’re not telling me everything."

"Of course not. Truths are stories too. They must unfold." The elder Sarissa laughed bitterly.

Sarissa took the dagger, and it felt heavier than it looked in her hand.

The moment her fingers closed around it, the entire library shifted. No longer shelves, no longer tomes.

Only glass.

She stood within a dome of mirrors, each pane reflecting a version of her life.

A Sarissa who became queen of a shattered realm, one who died by Alice’s hands, another who walked alone through a black desert until even her name eroded.

She turned around, and the elder Sarissa was gone.

In her place, there was only the Professor.

"Do you understand now?" He asked.

"I understand that I’m terrified." Her voice trembled ever so slightly.

"Good." The Professor smirked innocently. "That means you’re awake."

He offered his hand, and she took it.

They stepped through a frame of light and found themselves back in the corridor, but the library behind them did not vanish. It whispered in a constant undertone to her heartbeat.

But around her, the world snapped.

***

Sarissa gasped, clutching her chest. Her back was drenched in cold sweat, and her hand ached, like something sharp had dug into her palm.

The dagger.

It had come through?

"Hey. Hey, you okay?" Miles squeezed her shoulder a bit tighter, but still gently enough.

She blinked at him. He looked pale, tired, but real.

"Yes." She whispered. "But we don’t have much time."

"You brought something back." He glanced at her hand.

"A piece of one of my Stories."

"Then we’d better find out a good use for it." Miles exhaled.

"I think I already know what I must do with it." Sarissa nodded, her gaze hardening.

She extended her hand, and the blade appeared as if it was summoned from her inventory, but not. It materialized from a storm of luminous sparks, but still, it felt different.

"Okay, then." Miles looked at the dagger, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. "What do you have to do with it?"

Sarissa’s lips became a straight line, and her eyes were darkened by grim resolve.

"I must kill myself."