The Scriptorium was unlike any place Mary had ever seen. It was not built—it was written.
The walls were parchment, the ceiling ink, the very air made of whispering runes that fluttered and vanished before the eye could fully grasp them. Books hovered in midair like stars suspended in orbit around a great central monument—an obelisk of living script that pulsed with impossible energy.
It stood a hundred feet tall, slowly rotating, shedding pages like leaves in an eternal autumn. Each page fluttered downward, only to be caught mid-fall by invisible hands and returned to its surface, rewritten with a different story.
Loosie stepped in first and froze. "This is it?"
Lela nodded slowly, awe on her face. "The Scriptorium. The place where the Codex was born… or where it came to rest."
Mary felt it in her blood—the thrum of ancient power. It responded to her presence. She reached into her coat, withdrawing the fragment of the Codex she had torn free back in the ruined monastery of San'driel. It vibrated in her palm like a living heartbeat.
The moment the fragment was fully exposed, the central obelisk reacted. A pulse of light swept out from it, and the hovering books aligned into concentric rings. Glyphs from every language—known and forgotten—shivered into focus on the walls.
Then, the obelisk spoke.
Not aloud.
Not even telepathically.
It simply entered them.
All three dropped to their knees as entire centuries of thought flooded their minds. Memories not their own. Lives they'd never lived. Wars they had never fought but somehow remembered.
Mary gasped. "It's… showing us everything. The Codex is the collective memory of the multiverse."
Loosie groaned, clutching her temples. "I don't want anyone else's trauma, thanks."
Lela's eyes widened. "It's not trauma—it's selection. It's filtering for the one who can withstand it. The one who can write the final passage."
Mary stood slowly, her body trembling. "It's choosing an Author."
As if in response, one of the rings of floating books broke formation. A single volume—a pale violet tome with no title—drifted toward her. It opened to a blank page.
The runes around them fell silent.
Mary took the book.
And wrote.
With no ink. No pen. Only thought. Her hand hovered over the page and the letters burned themselves into the parchment.
"I am Mary of Hollowvale. Vampire, scholar, wielder of the fractured Codex. And I do not seek to control reality—I seek to uncover it."
As the final word etched itself, the book glowed brightly. A passage opened in the obelisk.
Behind it: stairs.
Downward.
Lela whispered, "Of course. The answers are always deeper."
The three descended.
The stairs took them below the Scriptorium into a hollow chamber where the air was thick and warm, like breath inside a creature's lungs. The walls here were not made of text but bone—rib-like structures that curved inward as though they walked inside the fossil of something titanic.
At the chamber's heart sat a throne.
Empty.
Until Mary stepped forward.
The moment her foot crossed the bone threshold, the throne ignited—first in ghostly fire, then in shadow.
And then he appeared.
Not a man. Not a god. Something older.
The First Author.
His form was translucent, built of ink and threadbare flesh, as if every word ever written had been bound into his bones.
"I wondered," he said, voice like a thousand pages flipping in the wind, "how long it would take for a vampire to survive the Mirror and find me. You're the fifth."
Mary straightened. "What happened to the others?"
"They wrote badly," he said, smiling. "They tried to correct the Codex. To remove what they didn't like. History does not suffer editors."
Lela stepped forward. "Then what does it want?"
The First Author turned toward her. "Witnesses."
Loosie narrowed her eyes. "You mean all this was never about saving the world? Not about closing the Final Page?"
"No," he replied. "It was about remembering it. The Codex does not fix things. It records them. And when enough truth has been remembered… it chooses whether that world is worth saving."
Mary felt her throat dry. "And if it's not?"
The First Author's eyes turned completely black. "It ends."
He stepped closer, one hand reaching out to her. "But you are different. You wrote honestly. The Codex is not interested in heroes. It wants truth."
Mary's grip tightened around her book. "Then tell me the truth. What is the Final Page?"
The chamber fell silent.
Then, the throne responded.
From beneath it, a slab of stone rose, bearing a book unlike the others. It was bound in scales and sealed with seven chains.
The Final Page was not a page.
It was a creature.
Something sleeping.
Breathing.
Waiting to be read.
The First Author's expression grew grim. "It is the first story ever told—and the last that will ever be written. It contains the name of the thing that lives between realities. If spoken aloud… it will awaken."
Lela recoiled. "You're talking about the Unmaker."
Loosie swore. "So this was all a setup. The Codex was never salvation—it was a lock."
Mary said nothing.
Because she understood.
It was both.
And now… she had the key.
The First Author knelt before her and offered the chained tome.
"You are the final Author, Mary of Hollowvale. You must decide. Will you write the end? Or will you burn the Codex and silence it forever?"
She didn't take it.
Not yet.
Because the moment her fingers touched that book, her choice would become real.
Behind her, Loosie whispered, "Whatever you decide… we're with you."
Lela nodded. "Even if it means watching the world die."
Mary turned toward the Codex. Toward the end of all things.
She touched the cover.
And it breathed.