Chapter 83: Locked book
Nobody moved.
The words remained suspended in front of me.
The current Author is still alive.
I read them again.
Then a third time.
The meaning refused to settle.
If there was already an Author...
Then who had written everything that had happened until now?
The warehouse.
The pocket watch.
Elias.
The Archive.
Me.
Lucien quietly closed the book marked 117 beneath his arm.
"You finally understand the right question."
"I don’t understand anything."
"You understand more than you did yesterday."
He took another slow step forward.
Every bookshelf around him shifted aside as though making room for him.
None of the others noticed.
No.
That wasn’t true.
They noticed.
They simply didn’t react.
Noah’s eyes remained fixed on the book bearing his own name.
Whitmore stared at the floor.
Detective Hale looked toward the endless shelves behind Lucien.
It was as though each of us had become trapped inside a different moment.
Only the Editor continued watching both of us.
"Don’t listen to him."
Her voice was calm.
"He never lies."
She paused.
"He simply refuses to explain."
Lucien smiled.
"I’ve always admired your precision."
The Editor ignored him.
Instead, she looked directly at me.
"If you open your book now..."
"...there won’t be another version of you left to return."
I looked down at the blue-covered volume lying at my feet.
It looked so ordinary.
Just leather.
Paper.
Ink.
Yet every instinct told me it was the most dangerous object I had ever encountered.
The notebook in my backpack suddenly flipped open.
The pages turned frantically before stopping.
A single line appeared.
Do not read your ending.
The Editor nodded.
"At least it still remembers that much."
I frowned.
"You keep talking about the System as though it were someone."
She looked almost surprised.
"It is."
Silence.
My heartbeat echoed loudly inside my ears.
"What?"
"The question is..."
She looked toward the blue window hovering before me.
"...whether it’s still the same someone."
The words sent a chill through me.
Lucien sighed.
"I told you."
"You always begin too early."
"I begin exactly where I’m supposed to."
She answered.
"Unlike you."
Neither of them sounded like enemies.
Neither sounded like allies either.
They sounded like two people continuing an argument that had started long before any of us had been born.
Whitmore suddenly gasped.
His body stiffened.
His eyes focused on one of the towering shelves far behind Lucien.
"No..."
He whispered.
"It’s back."
I followed his gaze.
A book slowly slid out by itself.
Unlike every other volume, it wasn’t bound in leather.
Its cover looked like polished black stone.
No title.
No name.
Only a cracked silver pocket watch engraved into the front.
The moment it touched the floor...
Every clock chime inside the Archive stopped.
Absolute silence.
Lucien’s smile disappeared.
For the first time...
He looked genuinely serious.
"The Record."
The Editor quietly closed her notebook.
"So it has finally awakened."
Nobody else seemed to understand what those words meant.
I certainly didn’t.
"What record?"
Neither of them answered.
Instead, both of them watched the black book.
As though waiting for it to make the first move.
Then...
It opened.
By itself.
No wind.
No invisible hands.
The heavy stone cover lifted slowly.
Its pages turned.
Not white.
Not yellow.
Completely blank.
Until words began appearing.
Not written.
Growing.
As though the paper itself remembered them.
The first sentence spread across both pages.
One witness has become aware of the Author.
The ink continued flowing.
Correction required.
The Archive shook violently.
Shelves groaned.
Thousands of books crashed onto the floor.
The endless aisles rearranged themselves again.
This time faster.
Much faster.
Detective Hale lost his balance.
Noah caught Whitmore before the old man collapsed.
The Editor frowned.
"It’s rewriting."
Lucien answered quietly.
"No."
"It’s trying."
Another sentence appeared inside the black book.
Candidate unsuitable.
Reason: excessive curiosity.
I stared.
Was it talking about me?
The next line answered the question.
Adrian Cross demonstrates repeated deviation from intended narrative progression.
My stomach tightened.
Intended.
Narrative.
Progression.
It sounded exactly like the System.
Almost...
Too much like the System.
I looked toward the blue window still floating beside me.
For the first time...
I noticed something I should have seen months ago.
Tiny letters.
Hidden beneath the familiar interface.
Almost invisible.
Version 0.9
Not Version 1.
Not complete.
Incomplete.
The Editor followed my gaze.
"You noticed."
"It says Version Zero Point Nine."
"Yes."
"Why?"
She smiled sadly.
"Because it never finished becoming what it was supposed to be."
Lucien quietly laughed.
"Neither did any of us."
The black book continued writing.
Emergency Revision Initiated.
The moment those words appeared...
Pain exploded through my head.
Not physical pain.
Memory.
Hundreds of unfamiliar memories slammed into my mind.
A little boy reading beneath a tree.
A university classroom filled with old manuscripts.
A burning library.
Someone desperately tearing pages from a book before the flames reached them.
An elderly man...
Elias...
Standing beside another person whose face refused to stay visible.
The memories disappeared almost immediately.
Leaving only one sentence echoing inside my mind.
"If they erase the witness, become the story."
I stumbled backwards.
Noah caught my shoulder.
"What happened?"
"I..."
My breathing became uneven.
"I remembered something."
"What?"
"I don’t know."
The memory was already fading.
Like trying to hold water in my hands.
The notebook burst open again.
Without thinking, I grabbed a pen.
I wrote the sentence before it vanished.
If they erase the witness, become the story.
The ink settled.
The notebook absorbed the words.
Then another message appeared beneath my handwriting.
Historical Fragment Preserved.
Across the Archive...
The black book suddenly stopped writing.
Lucien looked impressed.
"You interrupted it."
"I did what?"
"You prevented a revision."
The Editor slowly looked at my notebook.
"I didn’t think it still had enough authority."
The black book trembled.
Its pages flipped wildly.
Entire paragraphs appeared before disappearing.
Words rewrote themselves faster than I could read them.
The shelves surrounding us blurred.
Some transformed into stone walls.
Others became corridors.
For a moment...
I saw an enormous circular chamber stretching beneath the Archive.
Hundreds of people sat around an impossibly long table.
Every seat held an open book.
Every chair except one.
The empty chair stood at the head of the table.
Someone was supposed to sit there.
Then the vision vanished.
Detective Hale looked around in confusion.
"Did anyone else..."
"No."
The Editor answered quietly.
"Only he could."
She looked directly at me.
"The Archive has started showing you unfinished Chapters."
Lucien slowly approached the black book.
It snapped shut the instant he reached it.
He rested one hand on its cover.
"I warned you."
He wasn’t speaking to us.
He was speaking to the book.
"You always panic when the story changes."
The book remained silent.
Lucien looked almost disappointed.
"You’ve become predictable."
The Editor suddenly stepped between Lucien and me.
"Enough."
"You’ve tested him."
"You’ve shown him more than Elias ever learned."
"You need to leave."
Lucien smiled faintly.
"I already have."
The words barely left his mouth before his body dissolved.
Not into smoke.
Not into light.
Into countless loose pages.
Thousands of sheets scattered through the Archive.
Each page carried only one sentence.
None of us managed to read more than fragments before they vanished into the darkness.
Only one page drifted toward me.
I caught it instinctively.
The paper was old.
Fragile.
Its top corner bore a faded number.
117
My pulse quickened.
Page 117.
The missing page.
At last.
The ink had almost completely faded.
Only a single sentence remained readable.
"The first Observer was never meant to survive."
Before I could read anything else...
The page turned to dust in my hands.
The blue window immediately appeared.
______
[Main Story Updated]
Recovered Fragment:
Page 117 (0.8%)
New Objective:
Discover the identity of the First Observer.
Failure Condition Updated.
If the First Observer is forgotten...
The Author will never be found.
______
The notification faded.
Nobody spoke.
Far away, somewhere beyond the endless shelves, a lone pocket watch chimed again.
This time...
It struck eleven times.
And for the first time since entering the Archive...
Every single book on every shelf opened to the same page.