## CHAPTER 15: _"The Archivist Arrives"_
Snow fell for the first time in Elira in decades.
Not the gentle kind that kissed rooftops and called for warm cloaks—but sharp, black-flaked frost that whispered of death and undoing. The snowflakes hissed as they landed, melting into the stones with the scent of parchment and bone.
The Archivist had arrived.
A column of cloaked figures marched behind him, their footsteps silent, their eyes empty. Where they passed, crops wilted. Where they camped, dreams screamed. Even the birds veered from the sky, as if the air itself refused to bear witness.
He wore a crown of knotted roots and bone, and in his hand he held a scroll sealed in shadow—a rewritten prophecy, forbidden and alive. Rumors said it was made from the skin of fallen prophets, inked with the memory of curses never born.
He didn't walk like a conqueror.
He walked like an editor.
One who had found a story too defiant to let live.
---
At the palace, Lysia felt his presence before the bells rang.
She froze mid-step in the war chamber, nearly dropping a crystal vial used for map-reading.
> "He's here," she said, eyes going blank with the weight of knowing.
> "So soon?" Arien asked, crossing the room with urgency.
> "He doesn't need time. He already knows how the story ends."
She stood before the council. Her hair, now laced with white threads of magic, shimmered like moonlight trapped in smoke. The rune along her collarbone pulsed—burning cold instead of warm.
> "He calls himself the Archivist," she told them. "But what he wants is not history. It's ownership."
> "And how do you fight someone who rewrites reality?" Mara asked, her voice a mix of awe and dread.
Lysia looked out the window at the approaching storm.
> "We write back."
---
The first confrontation wasn't in war.
It was in dreams.
That night, Lysia found herself standing in a burning library, face to face with the Archivist himself. Books screamed. Flames danced in patterns—spelling out runes she recognized from her back.
> "You carry a curse that should've stayed buried," he said, voice like paper tearing.
> "And you walk with death like it's a leash," she replied.
> "Give it to me. Let the legacy end with your choice."
> "No," she said. "It ends with my will."
He reached for her heart—but it burned too bright to touch.
She woke with blood on her palms and smoke in her mouth.
> "He's trying to pull me apart," she gasped to Arien, who had been at her bedside. "But I'm stitched with love."
> "Then let love be the thread that cuts him."
---
The next morning, the skies turned red.
The Archivist stood at the outer wall of Elira. No army. Just his scroll. Just his curse. Behind him, the Bound began to appear—mages once shackled by Queen Altheira's rule, now free and hollow-eyed.
He read a single line aloud:
> "Let the thirteenth be undone."
And Lysia collapsed in the throne room, her veins lighting up with ancient symbols. Her heartbeat staggered, her breath left her.
But she didn't scream.
She rose.
Brighter.
Taller.
Her shadow, cast behind her, did not match her shape—it bore wings. A crown. And fire.
> "You tried to erase me," she whispered, voice layered with every woman who ever bore the curse. "But I was written in fire."
From the balcony, the city watched as she rose. Not as queen. Not as goddess. But as truth made flesh.
Elira howled with her.
Candles lit in every home.
Symbols were painted in ash on every door.
And the air pulsed with something older than magic: memory.
The real war had begun.
Not of swords.
But of stories.
Of who would write the last word.
And only one author would remain.
> "If they come for the heart… they better know how to bleed."