Page 26 of Hex and the Dragon
"Those are lies," Ivy said, though she could feel the Chronicle's influence trying to resurrect the appeal of those impossible visions. "Beautiful lies designed to make surrender seem attractive."
They are possibilities. Potentials that become reality when individual consciousness is properly integrated into a larger design. Your love for each other demonstrates this perfectly—separately, you are flawed and dangerous. Together, you create something greater than the sum of your parts.
"Our love isn't integration," Dorian said with fierce intensity. "It's partnership. Choice freely made and constantly renewed."
And what happens when that choice leads to tragedy? When your dragon fire burns too bright and incinerates the woman you love? When her bibliomancy rewrites you out of existence in a moment of passion? Will your commitment to free will comfort you then?
The Chronicle's words hit with surgical precision, targeting the exact fears they'd been struggling with since the twisted visions of the previous night. Ivy felt doubt creeping back into her mind despite everything they'd learned about the fragment's manipulative nature.
"It's using our bond as an anchor," Aerin said suddenly, her violet eyes bright with understanding. "Not just emotionally, but magically. The stronger your connection becomes, the morestable a platform it provides for the Chronicle's reality-warping abilities."
"Which is why it wants us together," Ivy said, pieces falling into place. "Not to corrupt us individually, but to use our partnership as a foundation for rewriting reality itself."
Your bond provides perfect stability,the Chronicle confirmed.Bibliomancy to reshape the fundamental structure of existence, dragon fire to destroy the barriers between realities, and emotional connection to anchor the changes permanently. Through you, I can extend my influence beyond this single dimension.
"Across multiple realities," Nico said with dawning horror. "Not just collecting communities from this world, but spreading across parallel dimensions, alternate timelines, every possible version of existence."
Every reality deserves the gift of perfection. Every dimension should be freed from the chaos of individual will. Through your partnership, I can offer that gift to infinite worlds.
The magnitude of the Chronicle's ambition hit them like a physical blow. It wasn't just seeking to control their community or even their world—it wanted to systematically "perfect" every possible reality, turning the entire multiverse into its personal collection of preserved specimens.
"How do we stop something like that?" Mara asked quietly.
"Dragon fire," Aerin said with sudden certainty. "It's one of the few forces that can burn through reality-warping magic because it operates on fundamental principles of creation and destruction. The Chronicle needs to either corrupt Dorian or eliminate him entirely."
"Which is why it's been targeting our relationship," Dorian said with understanding. "Making us afraid of our own connection so I won't be able to use my fire effectively."
Your fire is indeed troublesome,the Chronicle admitted with the first hint of genuine concern they'd heard from it.Uncontrolled, it could disrupt my carefully constructed realities. Properly directed, it could anchor them permanently. Hence the choice I offer—partnership or elimination.
"And if we refuse both?" Ivy asked, though she already suspected the answer.
Then I will demonstrate what resistance costs. Your community has six hours remaining before my patience expires. Choose wisely—your decision affects not just this world, but every world that could ever be.
As if to emphasize its point, the Chronicle's influence pulsed outward like a wave, and through the library windows they could see more communities in the distance beginning to shimmer with the same unnatural luminescence that marked the fragment's presence.
The infection was spreading beyond Mistwhisper Falls, and they were running out of time to find a cure.
"Six hours," Griff said grimly. "To save not just our community, but potentially every reality that exists."
"No pressure," Dorian said, his amber eyes blazed with dragon fire and fiery determination.
Ivy looked around at her friends—tired, frightened, but still fighting despite impossible odds. They might not have unlimited knowledge or perfect power, but they had something the Chronicle could never understand or replicate.
They had choice. And sometimes, choice was enough.
"Then we'd better get to work," she said, opening the Chronicle to its deepest secrets. "Let's figure out how to burn down a collection of perfect worlds."
The real research was just beginning.
ELEVEN
IVY
The attack began not with violence but with beauty so profound it made reality itself seem pale and inadequate by comparison. As the afternoon sun slanted through the library windows, the Chronicle's pages suddenly blazed with light that transformed the entire archive room into something that existed beyond the boundaries of normal space and time.
Ivy found herself standing in a vast university library that stretched beyond horizons, its soaring architecture a perfect blend of classical elegance and impossible geometry. Every book that had ever been written filled the endless shelves, along with volumes that existed only in theoretical possibility—the works that could have been created if circumstances had been different, if brilliant minds had lived longer, if knowledge had developed along alternate paths.
But this wasn't the seductive vision the Chronicle had shown her before. This was complete, detailed, overwhelmingly real in every sensory dimension. She could smell the aged leather of ancient bindings, feel the weight of parchment beneath her fingers, hear the whispered conversations of scholars working at distant reading tables. Students approached her withgenuine reverence, seeking guidance on research that could cure diseases, prevent wars, solve the fundamental mysteries of existence itself.
