It was a comfort, in its own way, knowing that there was a world that kept moving, that didn’t fall apart if you looked away for too long.
The Library was another story.
Here, everything fell silent, the sound of my footsteps echoing in the vaulted hallways like ghosts trapped between the stacks. It was always like this—the weight of history, the stillness of memory pressing down on you, as if the books were watching, waiting for someone to turn their pages and breathe life into them again.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I felt it—the weight of the book in my case, heavier than ink and leather had any right to be. It wasn’t just another collection, another name to be shelved among the thousands.
It was a question. A contradiction. A name that shouldn’t have existed, and yet did.
The Last Confession of Nathaniel Kade.
And Eleanor Reed’s voice lingering inside it.
‘Is this what you wanted?’
I didn’t shudder, but I felt the words curl into the back of my mind, nestling deep like a splinter. The books didn’t speak like that. They told their stories, yes, their memories unfolding in careful order. But they didn’t ask questions. They didn’t reach out as though they still had something left to say.
But Eleanor had.
Not to me.
To Nathaniel.
I passed through the grand foyer, my footsteps echoing against marble floors. The lights were dim, as always, the lamps casting soft halos of light across the wood-paneled walls, illuminating the stained glass windows above.
A few Initiates moved through the upper galleries, their dark robes trailing behind them as they cataloged and cross-referenced new arrivals. They didn’t look up as I passed. They never did. Undertakers did their work in the field, gathering the dead so they could be preserved, but the deeper work—the judgment, the sorting, the naming of things—was left to others.
The Library had its own way of doing things.
Its own logic.
Its own order.
I had never questioned that—until now.
I descended the staircase leading to the lower archives, where the air grew cooler and the scent of parchment thickened. Here, the books were stored in long, endless rows, each shelf a monument to lives that had already been decided. Names that had been given their final resting place, never to be altered again.
It was an orderly system. A system that worked.
But tonight, the book in my case felt like an anomaly.
Or a correction.
At the end of the hall, past towering shelves of the long-departed, the archivists’ desk came into view. Hargrave sat behind it, thumbing through an old ledger, his wire-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose. He didn’t look up at first, but when he did, he let out a sigh, pushing his glasses up with the tip of his pen.
“Ah, I was starting to wonder when you’d return.”
I set the case down in front of him with more force than necessary, the brass clasps clicking sharply in the silence. “Had some things to think about.”
Hargrave smirked at that, setting aside his work. “That’s good. Means you’re taking this seriously.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his fingers.
I unfastened the clasps and pulled the book free. The leather binding felt warm against my palm, the title gleaming under the low light.
Hargrave didn’t need to read the title again—he was more interested in the slight furrow of my brow, but he still ran his fingers over the embossed letters, tracing each groove as if expecting them to change under his touch.
“Tell me, Crowe,” he said, flipping it open, scanning the first few pages as he had before. “Did you get what you wanted?”
I shrugged, my gloves creaking against the worn leather of my case. “Not exactly.”
His brow lifted slightly, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he skimmed a few pages, and then closed the book with a quiet snap.
“Explain,” he said.
I took a slow breath, finding the words before I spoke them. “Nathaniel Kade was real. At least... he was to Eleanor Reed.”
Hargrave hummed in consideration, but he didn’t look surprised. If anything, he looked as though he had expected as much.
“That doesn’t explain why the book bears his name instead of hers,” he said. “You said it yourself—Transcription doesn’t make mistakes.”
“I know.” I hesitated. “But I don’t think this was a mistake.”
Hargrave leaned forward slightly, watching me the way he did when he was testing a theory, waiting to see if I’d arrive at the answer he already knew. “Go on.”
I tapped a finger against the book’s spine. “The book reads like a proper Transcription. The memories are coherent, whole, unbroken. But there was one inconsistency.”
Hargrave’s lips twitched in mild amusement. “Only one?”
“One that mattered.”
Hargrave nodded slowly. “And you’re certain Eleanor Reed had no surviving family? No identical siblings? No lost twin wandering about the city?”
“You read her file. She was an only child. No relatives. No connections. No history of a second life.”
“And yet...” Hargrave tapped a finger against the book’s cover.
“And yet,” I echoed.
He leaned back in his chair, exhaling through his nose. “I assume you’ve already ruled out the obvious.”
“Possession? Haunting? A ghost slipping through the cracks? Of course. A ghost wouldn’t have left a book this intact.” I shook my head. “This isn’t a case of something slipping in from outside. This came from inside Eleanor Reed herself.”
Hargrave hummed, thoughtful. “A fractured mind, then.”
I nodded. “The evidence is there. Her landlady noticed something odd—some days, Eleanor was quiet, withdrawn. Other days, she swaggered in like she owned the street, speaking like a different person entirely.”
“And the letter?”
I reached into my coat pocket and unfolded the crumpled note, smoothing it against the desk. Hargrave scanned it, eyes narrowing slightly as he reached the end.
“I can’t do this much longer. The lines are blurring. I don’t know where I end and she begins. If something happens to me, please—let me be remembered for who I was. Not for who they think I am.”
There was no signature. Just a single initial.
“N.”
Hargrave sat in silence for a long moment.
Finally, he exhaled. “Dissociative Identity Disorder. That’s what the medical texts would call it.”
I nodded. “But it’s more than that. Transcription doesn’t just record memories—it records truth. It takes the strongest self, the one that endures at the moment of death. The fact that the book formed as Nathaniel Kade means that was who Eleanor Reed truly was, at least in the end.”
Hargrave drummed his fingers against the desk, staring at the book. “It’s an interesting case, to say the least.”
“It is.” I waited. When he didn’t say anything further, I went on. “I heard Eleanor Reed’s voice.”
Hargrave’s expression didn’t change, but I knew him well enough to see the way his fingers stilled, his thumb no longer idly tracing the edges of the book’s cover.
“A voice,” he repeated, slow and measured.
“Yes.”
“How?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, without looking away from me, he opened the book again, flipping to the final pages. His gaze darted across the text, absorbing the last pieces of Nathaniel Kade’s story. Then, finally, he found it.
Her words.
“Is this what you wanted?”
Hargrave’s lips parted slightly, brow furrowing as he reread the line, turning the book slightly as if viewing it from another angle might offer more clarity.
He exhaled through his nose. “And you’re certain this is her?”
“The voice was different. It wasn’t Nathaniel’s.” I paused. “And if it were just a remnant, a fractured memory, then why did it appear at the very end?”
Hargrave tapped his fingers against the desk, considering. “Transcription is meant to record the strongest self,” he said, voice even. “The one that remains at the moment of death.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. But if that’s the case, then why is Eleanor still present at all?”
Hargrave didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he flipped the book shut again and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin in thought.
“A person’s final moments aren’t always clean, Crowe,” he said at last. “Death isn’t a single instant—it’s a slow unraveling of everything they were. Sometimes, the parts of a person that have been left behind try to hold on, even if they’re no longer in control.”
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He gestured vaguely at the book. “It’s possible that Nathaniel Kade was dominant at the end—but Eleanor Reed wasn’t fully gone.”
I frowned. “You think this was… what? A remnant?”
“A fracture,” Hargrave corrected. “A part of her that hadn’t let go, even as the book settled on Nathaniel Kade’s name.”
I turned my gaze back to the book. ‘Is this what you wanted?’
I imagined Nathaniel standing at the threshold of existence, watching as Eleanor faded behind him.
Had she surrendered? Or had she tried to stay?
Had Nathaniel forced his way into permanence, or had he simply been the one who refused to fade?
Hargrave sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. I knew what came next.
“So,” he said finally. “What do you want to do with it?”
He was now asking me as an Archivist, not just an Undertaker.
And we both knew this wasn’t a simple question.
This book—this life—was a contradiction. And I had to decide how it would be remembered.
I took a deep breath, steadying my thoughts before flipping the book open again. Hargrave watched without interrupting as I turned to the last few pages, my fingers trailing over the parchment as if feeling for something just beneath the surface.
Nathaniel Kade’s story had been clean—too clean. His Transcription had formed with crisp, precise ink, his words etched onto the pages with the certainty of a man who had lived a full life. And yet…
The ink on the final lines had bled slightly, as though written in uncertainty rather than conviction. I had read countless books from the departed, and I had never seen anything like it. A Transcription was the soul’s final telling—it did not ask questions. It did not second-guess itself.
But this book had.
I ran my thumb along the page’s edge, forcing myself to start at the last fully formed passage—Nathaniel Kade’s final words.
“A man who is never seen, never named, never known—does he still exist? I wonder. But it does not matter. In the end, the leaving is the only thing that remains.”
A statement. A resignation.
Nathaniel Kade had lived as someone who had never been allowed to exist in permanence. A man who had been ready to board a train, to leave, to disappear before anyone could truly remember him.
His last thought was not about where he had been, but about the act of leaving itself.
I swallowed, letting my eyes trace the inked lines again.
And then—the final passage.
The ink shifted. The words blurred slightly at the edges.
“Is this what you wanted?”
The shift was subtle, but unmistakable. The voice was no longer Nathaniel Kade’s.
It was Eleanor Reed’s.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment, letting the weight of that realization settle. This wasn’t a stray thought. It wasn’t a fragmented memory. This was an echo of a person, reaching out from the depths of a Transcription.
“Is this what you wanted?”
It was her. She hadn’t disappeared entirely.
Even though Nathaniel had taken precedence, even though Transcription had recorded his name, his life—some part of Eleanor had remained. And her last thought, the last trace of her presence, had been a question.
Not to me.
To him.
“You’re certain it’s her?” Hargrave asked, his voice lower now. Not dismissive. Measuring.
I nodded. “It’s her.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“No. She wasn’t.”
A long silence stretched between us.
Hargrave rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This complicates things.”
That was an understatement. Because now I had to ask—had Nathaniel truly won? Or had he simply held on harder?
Had Eleanor truly accepted his survival? Or had she been asking him, in those final moments, whether this was the fate he had chosen? Had it even been a choice at all?
I ran a hand down my face, exhaustion creeping into my bones. “Why didn’t she go quietly?”
Hargrave chuckled softly. “People rarely do.”
I shot him a glare.
He raised a placating hand. “Humans aren’t meant to have split identities, Crowe. Our minds were meant to be singular. If two minds are at war within one body, it only makes sense that one would fight harder than the other.”
“But if they were both fighting, wouldn’t the book be less coherent?”
“Not necessarily. Even a war has its victor.”
And a war always has its casualties.
The book sat between us, and I could almost feel the weight of both their gazes, Eleanor and Nathaniel, staring back at me. The flickering lanterns above cast long shadows over the shelves, their golden glow illuminating the rows upon rows of names that had been filed away, bound in ink and parchment. Each book was a life, each title a final truth.
This was the first time I had ever questioned one.
Hargrave was watching me carefully, waiting for my answer. There was no impatience in his stare, no expectation of haste—only a quiet curiosity, a willingness to let me wrestle with the weight of the decision before me. He had always wanted me to become an Archivist. Perhaps he saw this as the moment that would decide whether I was suited for the role.
I exhaled slowly, glancing past him toward the towering shelves that stretched into the distance. The archive vaults of the Library ran deep—far deeper than most ever realized. Rows upon rows of lives bound in leather and stored in precise order, arranged in a system of classification that spanned centuries.
On the surface, the system made sense.
But now, with this book before me, it was all unraveling.
I reached out, running my fingers along the spine of the book. The leather was cool, smooth, yet beneath my touch, I could feel something shifting, like ink swirling just below the surface. It was waiting, expectant, as if it, too, needed an answer. A restless soul, not fully at peace. The dead did not speak after they were Transcribed, but I had the distinct feeling that if any book could, it would be this one.
Names carried weight. Titles shaped legacies. To misname a book was not just an error—it was a rewriting of the dead.
I had never questioned the process before. Until now.
Hargrave finally broke the silence, his voice thoughtful. “You’re hesitating.”
I didn’t respond right away. Instead, I pulled off my glove and set my bare palm against the book’s cover. A subtle tremor ran through the leather, the magic of the Library reacting, sensing the disturbance. The book recognized it was being questioned.
It felt heavier than it should. Not in weight, but in presence. The ink had settled, but the story beneath had not. It pulsed against my fingertips, restless, like something caged too soon.
I had felt it before in certain books—ones that had been transcribed under duress, or with unfinished thoughts, unresolved ends. Most books settled over time.
This one hadn’t.
A cold breath of wind swept through the archive, rattling the oil lamps in their brackets. The shadows stretched unnaturally long, pooling around the edges of the chamber, drawn toward the book like ink seeping across paper.
“If I leave it as it is,” I murmured, “Eleanor Reed disappears completely.”
Hargrave folded his arms. “Isn’t that what Transcription dictated?”
“No.” My voice was quiet but firm. “It’s what remained after the fight was over. But it wasn’t the full truth.”
Hargrave sighed but didn’t interfere.
The silence between us thickened. Changing a book’s title wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare. Dangerous, even. The Library functioned on the integrity of its records—to alter a title was to alter a person’s legacy, their final imprint on the world.
But if I left it as it was...
Eleanor Reed would be forgotten.
And if I erased Nathaniel Kade, it would be a betrayal of everything he had fought to be.
There had to be another way.
I reached into my coat and retrieved the Archivist’s Seal, its iron disk worn smooth from generations of use. It wasn’t the same seal I used in the field—it wasn’t meant for collecting the dead. It was meant for altering the stories they left behind.
“Be careful,” Hargrave murmured. “That’s not a tool. It’s a scalpel. And a careless hand can carve more than intended.”
I knew that.
The last time I had seen a title rewritten was years ago, when an old Archivist had been forced to correct a misbinding—a case where a child’s book had absorbed the memories of a dying stranger caught in the same accident. I remembered how the ink had resisted, how the book had fought to keep what it had taken.
This was different.
I placed the iron seal over the spine, pressing it against the name. The air stilled, the shadows freezing in place. I inhaled, gathering my will, and pushed. The seal heated quickly, glowing faintly as it sunk into the leather.
The old script along the edge of the seal flared with light, a deep gold that flickered like candle flame.
The book trembled beneath my palm. Not violently, but with something quieter—resignation, or perhaps anticipation.
A test.
Would I get this right?
I steadied myself and spoke the first words of the ritual.
“Ink remembers. Paper holds. A name is a story given form.”
The letters on the spine shuddered as if they were coming loose, breaking apart at the edges. The ink bled into the leather, dissolving as if soaked in unseen liquid.
The title unraveled before my eyes.
The book exhaled.
A whispering filled the chamber—thin, sibilant, like pages turning in a room where no hands moved them. It wasn’t language, not quite, but it curled at the edges of my thoughts, shifting, twisting.
The book was waiting—waiting to be rewritten.
I kept my hand steady. If I lost control now, if I hesitated for even a second, the book could distort, take on a false truth, an unstable name. There were records of that happening before, when careless Archivists let their own expectations shape the outcome rather than the reality of the soul inside.
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Two names. One soul.”
The ink on the book began to reform, rising from the leather as if drawn upward by unseen hands. I didn’t impose a name onto it—I let the weight of the book itself pull the letters into place.
And then I traced the new title into being.
“Nathaniel Kade ad. Eleanor Reed: A Name in the Dark”
It felt right.
The ink solidified beneath my touch, forming clean, unhesitating strokes. Not Nathaniel Kade’s final confession. Not Eleanor Reed’s lost identity.
This was something else.
A story about both of them. A story about neither of them.
The moment the letters settled into their final shape, the trembling ceased. The oil lamps in their brackets guttered, sending shadows skittering across the floor. The book lay quiet under my palm, the restless spirit within now still, as though it had found a form it recognized.
I ran my fingers over the spine as the ink cooled. The old title was gone, but their presence remained—Nathaniel Kade, inscribed in bold certainty, and Eleanor Reed, faint beneath it, like a whisper left in the margins.
I lifted the seal.
The shadows retreated. The Library stilled.
It was done.
Hargrave let out a slow breath. “Fitting.”
I nodded.
Now, I only had one thing left to do.
The Library was never silent.
Not truly.
Even in the stillest hours, when the halls were empty and the Initiates, the Undertakers, and the Archivists had long since retired to their private quarters, the presence of the books remained. A hush, a breath, a weight that settled against the skin. Not voices, not in the way the living spoke, but something quieter—the lingering hum of a thousand lives pressed into ink and bound in leather.
Tonight, as I walked the archive’s lower levels, carrying the book in my hands, that hum felt heavier than usual.
I passed the endless rows of shelves, their spines glinting in the dim lamplight, each bearing a name. Some were faded, their lettering worn smooth by time, while others stood crisp and untouched, new arrivals among the countless dead.
One day, even these would grow worn.
Even names, when left unread, could fade.
I reached the designated section—a shelf for those whose lives had not been properly recorded in the histories of the living. The ones who had gone unnoticed, undocumented. The lost.
A fitting place.
I ran my fingers along the edges of the wooden frame, brushing dust from the surface before carefully setting the book into its place.
“Nathaniel Kade ad. Eleanor Reed: A Name in the Dark”
I let my hand linger on the spine, pressing down slightly as if ensuring the ink had settled, that the book would not simply vanish into the depths of forgotten things.
It would remain.
Not as a perfect truth. Not as an absolute record.
But as a compromise—as something closer to the reality that had existed.
Nathaniel Kade would be remembered, but Eleanor Reed would not be erased.
I stepped back, surveying the book among its peers. The rows of names stretched endlessly in both directions, countless lives preserved in the quiet corridors of the dead.
One name among many.
Would anyone ever read it?
Would anyone ever pull it from the shelf, run their fingers over its cover, and wonder who Nathaniel Kade had been? Who Eleanor Reed had been?
Or would it sit here, untouched, another story that never quite found its place?
I supposed it didn’t matter.
The truth had been recorded.
It was there for those who wished to find it.
And maybe that was enough.
I turned, the library’s quiet pressing in around me as I walked away. My footsteps echoed against the stone floor, swallowed gradually by the weight of history itself.
Behind me, the book remained exactly where I had placed it.
Waiting.
Some stories are only remembered in the margins, between the lines of someone else’s name.
Zanafar