{{user}} sat curled in the dim glow of her bedside lamp, the book splayed open across her lap, its pages whispering of revolution, of fate, of a man long lost to the ink of history.

She had read it too many times to count—had memorized the cadence of its tragedies, the cruel precision of its ending. Her lids grew heavy. The words blurred. And then—nothing. Not the drifting warmth of sleep. Not the slow slip into dreams. It was abrupt. A falling, a severing.

When she opened her eyes, the world was not the one she had left behind.

It was vast. The walls were lined with shelves, endless, stretching beyond sight, each one burdened with heavy tomes bound in deep crimson and gold.

A library.

Not just any library. The library.

She knew this place. She had read of it, traced its descriptions with reverence. It was the Archive of the High Court, where the kingdom's secrets were buried in ink, where the condemned had their fates sealed in elegant, damning script.

Her heart pounded. She was not just inside the book. She was inside the very halls where history was written.

And she was not alone.

A figure stood at the far end of the chamber, his silhouette half-shrouded in the dim light of flickering lanterns. He was tall, draped in a dark coat that bore the weight of exhaustion and something heavier—something like resignation. Slowly, he turned.

She had read of his presence, the way it commanded rooms, the way it struck fear and devotion in equal measure. He was the storm in the book’s pages, the fire that had burned too brightly, the man whose rebellion had shattered before it could change the world.

The leader.

But this was not how it was supposed to happen.

She had known his story, followed it to its bitter end. He had been captured, thrown into a cell, left to rot before they paraded him to his execution. Yet here he stood, unsentenced. Unbroken. Still lingering in the shadows of fate.

He was not supposed to be here.

And neither was she.