Elias woke up to the sound of slow clapping. He had somehow passed out on the couch.
His head snapped up.
A woman was standing at the doorway—emerging from the shadows like she'd always been there, just waiting.
She looked exhausted. Like she hadn't slept in weeks. Months. Years.
But her eyes were sharp. Alert. Focused.
And she was grinning.
"Well, well, well." Her voice was rough, amused. "A new Custodian. Didn't think there'd be another one dumb enough to take the job."
Elias tried to stand. His legs gave out. He collapsed back to the floor, hissing in pain.
Soraya watched, tilting her head. "Ooh, rough first dive, huh? Let me guess—walked right into a manifestation without any training? Classic."
"Who—" Elias coughed, tasting iron. "Who the hell are you?"
She crouched a few feet away, arms resting on her knees. Still grinning. "Soraya Thorne. Though I doubt your grandfather mentioned me." Her eyes flicked to the notification still hovering in Elias's vision like she could see it. "Quest failed. Story consumed."
"I don't—what are you—"
"Talking about?" Soraya stood, brushing off her coat. "I'm talking about the fact that you just handed "It" a full course meal. Beauty and the Beast? Gone. Erased. Every character that ever lived in there, every word is now ash." She snapped her fingers. "Poof."
Elias stared at her, horror crawling up his spine. "I... I killed them?"
"Oh, don't flatter yourself. You didn't kill anyone." Soraya's grin widened. "It did. You just... failed to stop it." She said after a brief pause.
She was looking at him almost with pity but that emotion vanished as soon as it settled there.
She started pacing, but stopped, spinning around to face him.
Elias struggled to sit on the sofa as she came closer to him.
"See, here's the thing about stories, Custodian. They're fragile. Especially old ones. And when The .. It finds a core—a character or moment the entire story hinges on—it digs in. Corrupts it. Consumes it. And once the core's gone?" She made an explosion gesture with her hands. "Whole thing collapses."
Elias's voice was barely a whisper. "The Beast..."
"Was the core. Yeah." Soraya stopped pacing, looked down at him. "You thought you could take the corruption, which was cute, but you needed to purify it. Restore the Beast to his original form. Save the story." She shrugged. "You didn't. So it died. And now it is a little bit stronger."
Tears burned Elias's eyes. "I didn't know—I didn't know what to do—"
"Of course you didn't. You're untrained. Unprepared. And apparently, your grandfather kicked the bucket before teaching you jack shit." Soraya crouched again, closer this time. Her grin faded slightly. "Which brings me to my question, rookie."
She leaned in. Her eyes were bloodshot as she seemed like she was annoyed or something.
"Why the hell did you accept the role?"
Elias couldn't answer. He didn't have one.
Soraya studied him for a long moment. Then she sighed, standing again.
"You're gonna die, you know. Probably within the week. That's the average lifespan for untrained Custodians." She turned to leave. "Good luck with that."
"Wait—"
She paused.
Elias forced himself to his knees, clutching his ribs. "You—you know about this. About this thing. About how to fight it."
"Yup."
"Then help me."
Soraya laughed—sharp and bitter. "Help you? Kid, I've been laying low here for almost two centuries. I've outlasted quite a number of Custodians. You know why?" She looked back over her shoulder. "Because I don't stick my neck out without reason."
She started walking again.
"Wait—WAIT—" Elias tried to stand, collapsed. "Please. I don't— want more stories to die. Just tell me what to do. Please."
Soraya stopped at the edge of the shadows.
For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then, quietly:
"Your grandfather was an idiot for choosing you."
And she disappeared into the dark.
He stared at the spot where she'd been.
Then looked down at his branded forearm. The mark glowed faintly in the dim light.
Another notification appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CORRUPTION BREACH DETECTED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STORY: "LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD"
CORRUPTION LEVEL: 25% (MINIMAL)
TIER: LOW-GRADE STORY
TIME UNTIL TOTAL CORRUPTION: UNKNOWN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Another story was being devoured and he didn't know a thing about how to stop it.
Elias pressed his forehead to the floor and screamed into it.
Elias remained rooted to the sofa long after Soraya had left. She loathed him or was it his kind she did not like?
He swallowed, his throat tasting like sand. That was when he realized that he had not eaten for over twenty four hours now.
Every breath he took felt like swallowing glass. His ribs throbbed with each inhale from the pain he had sustained in the book. Although the pain from swallowing smoke and getting tossed around lessened when he came to; he still felt a deep grinding ache that made him want to stop breathing altogether. The burn on his arm had blistered worse, angry red welts that wept clear fluid when he tried to flex his fingers.
This is real, he thought distantly. This is actually real.
He stood up, trying to get his bearing when a rose petal fell on the floor beside him. It was scorched black and as he bent down to pick it up, he noticed that it still felt warm to the touch.
Physical proof.
He'd been inside a story. A story with actual people.
Guilt twisted in his stomach, sharp and nauseating.
You just handed 'It' a full-course meal, Soraya had said.
The notification still hovered at the edge of his vision, stubbornly persistent:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CORRUPTION BREACH DETECTED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ STORY: "LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD"
CORRUPTION LEVEL: 25% (MINIMAL)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He needed to do something about this story. But this time, he could not afford to go in without information. And as fate would have it, he was now the custodian of a library.
"Okay," Elias said to the empty cottage. His voice cracked. "Okay. Think. Think."
Soraya had said he was untrained. Unprepared. So he needed to fix that.
But she'd also said something else.
She'd survived. For centuries.
Which meant there had to be a way and she knew how.
Gritting his teeth as he fought back the pain, Elias pushed himself upright, his vision blurring. He leaned against the wall, breathing carefully through his nose until the dizziness passed.