The wind rushed past their ears as Carter, Sera, Lysara, and Ezra rode down the scorched hillside, the Codex bound tightly in Carter's grip. The skies were still dark, roiling with the aftershock of the Wyrm's return. Villages below had no idea that their world had just shifted.
They rode into the mist-covered marshlands of Velmora, a place Lysara said had once been called "The Cradle of Stars" before the Wyrm's rewriting burned its name from the maps and memories of men.
"We're heading to see a man named Alren," Lysara said, eyes on the barely visible trail. "He's known as the Cartographer of Broken Realms."
Ezra arched a brow. "A mapmaker? That's who you think can help us fight a reality-devouring wyrm?"
"Not just a mapmaker," Lysara replied. "He remembers lands that no longer exist. He maps what has been erased."
Sera looked up from the rear of the group, her thoughts troubled. "But if places were erased, how is he even still alive? How does he remember?"
"No one knows," Lysara said quietly. "That's why they call him broken."
They arrived by dusk at a small valley swallowed in fog. A crooked hut stood in the middle of twisted trees and flickering stones carved with ancient runes that glowed faintly at their presence.
Carter hesitated. "This place feels… like it shouldn't exist."
"Exactly," Lysara nodded.
As they approached the door, it creaked open before anyone could knock.
A hunched figure stood in the shadow of the doorway. His face was worn, as if time had carved grooves into it like a forgotten mountain. His left eye glowed blue, the other blind and gray.
"You brought the Codex," he rasped.
Ezra stepped in front of Carter protectively. "Who are you?"
"I am Alren. And I have waited through three realities for you to come."
He stepped aside, gesturing them in.
Inside, the walls were covered in maps—thousands of them. Some of places Carter had never heard of, others of places that flickered in his memory only as dreams. Floating islands. Cracked moons. Rivers that ran through fire.
Sera walked slowly past one of the maps. "These are… real?"
"They were," Alren said. "Before the Wyrm devoured them. Before the Rewriting."
Carter set the Codex down. "We need to know what's coming. Where he'll strike next. What names we must remember."
Alren's blue eye glowed brighter as he touched the Codex gently. "It's waking. Good. Then it's time you saw the truth."
He pulled a rolled parchment from under the floorboards and spread it out. The map showed their continent—but then he unfolded the hidden flaps. More continents, invisible to all known records, were revealed.
"This is what once was," Alren said. "And this—" he tapped a strange blackened hole near the center "—is where the Wyrm will return in full form. The Devouring Pit."
Carter leaned over it. "Can we get there?"
"You shouldn't want to," Alren said grimly. "But you must."
Before Carter could respond, the Codex pulsed.
The hut trembled.
The maps began to shimmer and burn at the edges.
"No!" Alren shouted. "He sees us! He sees the memories!"
A shadow burst through the ceiling—not a creature, but a tear in space, a gap of nothingness edged in fire. From it, a whisper poured out:
"Cartographer… you should have stayed silent."
The room began collapsing.
Carter grabbed the Codex. "We have to go—now!"
Alren didn't move. He clutched the burning map and shouted, "I will remember! Even if the world forgets—I WILL REMEMBER!"
The group dashed from the hut as it was swallowed in silence.
Outside, the sky turned red. A rift now pulsed over the ruins.
Carter looked back, breathless. "He gave us what we need… The next step."
Lysara held the charred fragment of the map Alren had pushed into her hands before the end. On it was a symbol—the Eye of Unseeing—and a location scribbled in faded ink:
"The Library That Hides Its Own Name."