Chapter 7 – The Keeper of Unwritten Ends
745 Words
The stars were quiet that night.
Not dead. Not gone. Just… quiet. Like they were holding their breath.
Elianna sat with her knees to her chest beside the dwindling fire, watching Leonardo sleep. He had curled up near her after hours of silence—worn out from running, from feeling, from the kind of remembering that breaks a person open.
Even in rest, he looked guarded. Like he knew this peace wasn’t made to last.
And he was right.
Because Elianna felt it before she saw it.
A cold shift in the air.
Like the ground had sighed… and something had finally stood up beneath it.
She turned toward the forest.
Beyond the trees, the shadows moved wrong.
She stood slowly, careful not to wake Leonardo. Her fingers trembled, but not from fear.
From recognition.
Something ancient was watching them.
Then it stepped into the clearing.
No footsteps. No rustle. Just presence.
It wore the shape of a man—tall, faceless, cloaked in something darker than night itself. The edges of its form flickered like torn film, like it had never fully settled into one shape.
Its voice came not from its mouth, but from the space around her.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Elianna felt her knees lock. Her voice came out dry. “What… are you?”
It tilted its head. “I am not of the past. Nor of the future. I am the seam that binds the threads.”
“I am the Keeper.”
She took a step back. “Of what?”
“Of stories. Of ends. Of what was meant to happen.”
Elianna felt her chest tighten. “And I wasn’t meant to find him?”
The Keeper didn’t move. But the wind did.
“You were meant to remember. Not to return.”
Elianna clenched her fists. “We didn’t ask for this. But I couldn’t leave it like that. He died never knowing. She was forced to forget. What kind of ending is that?”
“The kind that kept time from collapsing.”
She shook her head. “So what? You’re here to erase me? Pull me back?”
Silence.
Then—
“You’ve done more than remember. You’ve bled through the veil. Your soul touched what it should not. You’ve turned memory into existence.”
“And that’s wrong?”
“It is… unnatural.”
Elianna stepped forward, fury rising in her voice. “Love isn’t unnatural.”
“Love is not the threat,” the Keeper said. “Choice is.”
Behind her, Leonardo stirred.
“Elianna…?”
She turned, panicked. “Don’t move—”
But he was already standing.
And when his eyes met the Keeper’s, they didn’t hold fear.
Only recognition.
“You’ve come again,” Leonardo said quietly. “Just like the last time.”
Elianna looked between them. “You’ve seen it before?”
Leonardo nodded slowly. “In dreams. Before the war took me. Before the fever. I always saw it—standing over my bed. Watching. Waiting.”
The Keeper didn’t deny it.
“You were meant to fade. Like all lost stories. Like all undone lives.”
“You were not meant to reach her again.”
Leonardo stepped beside Elianna, shielding her. “But I did.”
The fire flickered violently.
The ground trembled beneath their feet.
The Keeper didn’t move—but the space between seconds did. Time stuttered. Elianna saw flickers of herself, standing in multiple realities—one in modern clothes, one in Celestina’s gown, one fading like smoke.
And all of them were afraid.
“You are unraveling everything,” the Keeper said. “And soon, there will be no thread left to follow.”
Leonardo gripped Elianna’s hand. “Then let it unravel. We deserve to exist.”
Elianna met the Keeper’s hollow gaze. “If this is the cost of remembering love… we’ll pay it.”
A pause.
Then, for the first time, the Keeper whispered—not as a warning, but as a truth.
“Then you must rewrite the end.
Or be buried by it.”
The Keeper vanished.
The air snapped back to silence.
Elianna dropped to her knees, gasping. Leonardo held her, whispering something steady into her ear.
But neither of them could deny it now:
This wasn’t just memory.
This was a war between what was and what could have been.
And if they didn’t finish the story…
Time would.
- Writer
