Chapter 30 — The Cloaked Figure

The universe of the red strings shook, and all the strings shook as tightly as the viola string. Yusuf clutched the Codex against his chest, trembling. The splinter Rae discarded behind in scorn pulsed weakly in his pocket, with each heartbeat testing the danger before.

The Harvester lingered on the edge of tapestry reality, its shadow shape a great open maw distorted into human face. Never drew closer, but tiny shreds of him were being pulled away—pen smell, his brother's laugh ringing out, the touch of his dad's hand on his shoulder as a child. All fading like smoke.

And the robed figure appeared.

"Archivist," the figure spoke, low, muffled in threads. "You're late."

The faceless child stepped forward alongside Yusuf, breathing nearly in a whisper: "Don't trust him."

But Yusuf was inexcusably curious. The pose of the figure was familiar—on his shoulders, his setting of the head. As in a shadow of someone he knew.

"Who are you?" Yusuf growled.

The figure laughed, but cold. "A more pertinent question is: who are you beyond memories?"

The Harvester groaned, threads snapping beneath its weight. It stumbled toward the robed figure but staggered—obviously shaken. Nigh. reverent.

The Codex creaked in Yusuf's hands. A page cracked over with a bitter sound, writing curling itself onto the vellum:

False Scribe.

Yusuf's chest tightened. "You're re-writing the worlds."

“Rewriting?” The figure tilted his head, amused. “No. I’m saving them. One memory at a time. The Harvester understands balance. It devours only what festers. I—” his gloved hand brushed the nearest thread, and it turned black, then clean white “—I guide what remains.”

The faceless child trembled. “Lies. He carves history into cages. He doesn’t preserve—he rewrites.”

The man's hood crept, but not his head. "You've been patching up ghosts, Yusuf. Patching up shards. You think that qualifies you as an Archivist? No. That qualifies you as a child scribbling in the margin of something you don't understand."

Yusuf's fists were tight on the Codex. "So you are something.".

The voice of the figure softened, grew nearly gentle. "I am what your father was afraid you'd be. The one who remembers without love. The one who does, and not weeps."

Yusuf flinched as if struck. He remembered his father's words: Memory without love is but a catalog of names.

The Harvester trembled now, threads quivering like reeds in a hurricane. The hooded form did not blink.

Instead, he pointed at Yusuf. “You have something of mine. A shard. You’ll give it back, or this world will consume you.”

The shard burned hot in Yusuf’s pocket, refusing to be ignored. The Codex flared open, threads coiling like serpents around his arms.

And Yusuf realized with cold certainty—this wasn’t just another fracture.

This was war.

The Harvester shrieked. The threads screamed. The cloaked figure raised his hand.

And the world split apart.