Lord of Mysteries: The Dream That Waits

The Archive trembled.

Klein and Yeaia moved swiftly through the labyrinthine corridors of unwritten stories, the air around them shifting—not in space, but in certainty. Reality itself seemed unstable here, flickering between what was and what should never have been.

The moment Yeaia had smudged away the inked words of the Scribe That Erases, the Archive had reacted. Shelves shifted, books rearranged themselves, and the stone beneath their feet groaned as if struggling to hold onto its form.

Klein didn't miss the way Yeaia's fingers twitched—how their body seemed to fade in and out, as though whatever had been trying to erase them wasn't done yet.

"We need to go faster," Klein murmured, gripping his cane tightly.

"Working on it," Yeaia replied, voice tight.

The hallway ahead of them warped—a new passageway appearing where none had been before. A trick. The Archive was changing, attempting to keep them inside.

Klein didn't hesitate. He reached into the folds of his coat and retrieved a bookmark—not an ordinary one, but a fragment of a reality that had once been written and then lost.

He pressed it against the air.

A doorway formed.

Yeaia stepped through first, their figure flickering between solid and translucent. Klein followed, feeling the heavy pull of the Archive trying to drag him back—like an unfinished sentence demanding completion.

Then—

They were out.

The moment they crossed the threshold, the oppressive weight lifted. Klein inhaled sharply, taking in the surroundings. The sky was gray, the streets damp with recent rain, and the faint scent of ink and old paper still clung to them.

Back in the real world.

Or at least, what counted as real.

Yeaia exhaled slowly, rolling their shoulders as if shaking off the lingering influence of the Archive. "That was worse than last time."

Klein adjusted his glove, scanning the area. "It's getting more aggressive."

"Or more desperate."

Yeaia's gaze flickered with something unreadable. They had always been half-real, a presence that drifted at the edges of certainty. But now… Klein could feel it more clearly than before. The world itself was debating their existence.

They had barely left the Archive, but the battle was far from over.

Klein's fingers curled slightly around his cane. The name The Book That Was Never Meant to Be was still burning in his thoughts. Something had gone beyond fate, beyond prophecy, beyond even the divine influence of the Outer Deities.

This was no longer about whether Yeaia should have existed.

This was about rewriting the very concept of existence itself.

And that meant there was one place they needed to go next.

One place that might hold the answer.

Yeaia turned to him, their red and silver eyes flickering with understanding. "The Visionary's Vault."

Klein nodded.

If there was a record of a book that should never have been written—if someone had dared to edit reality itself—then there was only one being who might have seen it happen.

The Visionary.

And the only way to reach them?

They had to find a way into the Sefirot of Illusions.

—

End of Chapter 57

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