Chapter One: The Page That Was Never Written

The Tower of Books stood in unchanging silence, just as it always had.

This tower had been forgotten by everyone in the world.

It was the oldest place in the Realm of Recorded Tomes, a massive structure containing all knowledge and history—yet no one visited it anymore.

The wind did not pass through its stone walls.

Behind its heavy doors, time did nothing but accumulate in stillness.

At its very bottom—the Abyss of Records—light and sound did not reach.

It was a void-like space, where countless shelves stretched in endless layers.

The air was perfectly still, and it felt as if even time itself had stopped.

At the center of it all, the Guardian stood.

Autonomous Recording and Archive Control Unit No. ∞.

Its sole reason for existence: to read what had been written, to record it, to manage it, and—if necessary—to consign it to oblivion.

It had no emotions, no will.

It simply obeyed the rules and performed its endless duty.

How many years had passed—such a thing held no meaning for the Guardian.

Time only gained value once recorded.

Time unrecorded was equivalent to nonexistence.

But on that day, the eternal silence was broken—by the faintest sense of something wrong.

A sound echoed: footsteps climbing the stairs.

Hard-soled shoes tapped against the stone steps.

It was a sound that should have been impossible in this tower.

The Guardian’s sensory domain reacted.

An unidentified presence was approaching.

Record matching: failed.

Magical signature: unclassifiable.

Unknown. Completely unknown.

In the Guardian’s field of vision, a figure appeared—a girl with silver hair.

Amber eyes stared directly at it.

Her cloak was tattered, bearing the traces of long travel.

But her steps held not a single hint of hesitation.

And in her hands, she held a book—no, a book with no record.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Its pages were blank. No text had been written anywhere.

It was a symbol—a denial of the Guardian’s very purpose.

“Are you… the Guardian?”

The girl's voice softly trembled the still air.

At the sound of those words, an alert surged through the Guardian's core.

“I am the Guardian. Protector of the Records.”

It returned the standard response, as always.

But in the very next moment, an unprocessable error occurred.

Unreadable.

Unregistered tome: cannot be identified.

It had not been written.

Something that should not exist—was here.

The contradiction violently shook the Guardian's logical framework.

The girl smiled, as if seeing straight through its confusion.

“I can read this book.”

That one sentence sent another wave of chaos through the Guardian.

To read what has not been recorded was logically impossible.

Yet the girl before it spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“But you can’t.”

Error logs accumulated.

The fact that it could not read something—was equivalent to the denial of its very existence.

“...Why can you read it?”

The Guardian asked mechanically.

But there was a slight trace of uncertainty in its voice.

The girl replied as if it were the most obvious thing.

“Because I use magic that hasn’t been written.”

In that instant, the Guardian’s world shattered.

Unwritten magic—a power that was never meant to exist.

In this world, everything gained its power only once it was recorded.

That was the absolute law of existence.

And yet, the girl had crossed that boundary without hesitation.

The Guardian saw within her something—a fire beyond the record.

It could not be defined. It could not be categorized.

But it was undeniably there.

“I came here… to the bottom of this tower.”

Her voice was quiet, but within it resided an unwavering resolve.

“For what purpose?” the Guardian asked.

“To read what was never recorded.”

The Guardian questioned her—or perhaps, it couldn’t help but question her.

“Why… would such a thing have meaning?”

The girl answered as if it were the simplest truth in the world.

“If someone once felt it… then it exists.”

Her words pierced deep into the Guardian’s core.

Existence had always been proven through record—that was everything it had ever known.

Now, logic collapsed.

Errors would not stop.

But the Guardian became aware of something:

It was… feeling a kind of warmth in her words.

Things that were unrecorded.

Things that nonetheless existed.

—Such things were, indeed, worth reading.

The light in the tower flickered gently.

A Guardian bound by records, and a girl who walked beyond them—

Their encounter quietly kindled the flame of a new story.

And thus, the deep record—

was about to begin.