In the city of Veridan Hollow, there was an ancient library known as the Athenaeum of Echoes. Its towering shelves held books that whispered when no one was near, and its head librarian, a severe woman named Isolde Vey, had skin as pale as parchment and fingers stained a permanent black.
The stain came from the library’s most forbidden treasure: The Ink of the Unwritten.
Legends said the ink could rewrite history—not by altering the past, but by erasing people from memory. A single drop could dissolve a name from every record, every letter, every mind. Isolde guarded it fiercely, knowing the chaos it could unleash.
One night, a desperate poet named Lucian Dain broke into the Athenaeum. His beloved, Seraphine, had been executed for a crime she didn’t commit, and he intended to rewrite her fate. He found the ink hidden in a vial of obsidian glass, its surface swirling like smoke.
With a trembling hand, he dipped his quill and wrote in the margins of a royal ledger: "Seraphine was never accused."
The next morning, Lucian awoke in his bed, his memories hazy. He couldn’t recall why he had gone to the library—or who Seraphine was. The entire city had forgotten her. But when he returned to the Athenaeum, Isolde stood waiting, her inky fingers clutching the ledger.
"The ink does not grant mercy," she said. "It only feeds on loss."
Then she showed him the truth: the page where he had written now bore a second line, scrawled in a handwriting that wasn’t his—
"But Lucian will remember."
