The Last Lie: by Hadia Awan

Written with Emotions

Prologue: The Art of Deception

Everybody lies.
Every truth begins as a well-dressed falsehood.
They say truth sets you on fire—but lies?
Lies are calm. Clean. Controlled.

They wear reason like a mask.
Whispered, not shouted. Sharp, not violent.
A lie, when told in a soft voice, rarely raises suspicion.
And those who have mastered it?
They’ll make you believe you were never fooled.

There was a study once:
A group was told a short tale.
A man dies. A woman lies.
They didn’t know it was fiction.
At the end, they were asked—
Do you believe this really happened?

And time, like always, became a tale.

Chapter 1: The Chains of Ink

He was just a mere pawn in a cruel game called life.
But what if the game had been played long before he was born?

The morning fog hadn’t lifted. It clung to the windows like breath on glass, veiling the stone courtyard in a half-woken dream. Zayan Kadeer sat alone in the lecture hall, hours before the others would arrive.

The walls groaned with age. His fingers tightened above the open page of a leather-bound journal—his fifth this month. Not because he had much to say, but because silence became unbearable.

He scratched a line across the page. Stopped. Stared.
The ink bled strangely. Like it already knew what came next.

His dark curls fell over his eyes, but he didn’t move. Just listened. The clock ticked—too loud, too slow. He’d checked it yesterday. And the day before. Always 8:12 when he entered this room.

He looked at the desk beside him. Carved initials. Fresh. But no one ever sat there.

He closed the journal. Got up. Left.

In the hall, portraits blinked when no one looked. Most of the time it was Sirius Black; he often came out of the portrait and then went back inside.

Chapter 2: A Flicker in the Frame

It happened again.

The same bell. The same birdsong. The same professor coughing at the third stair.

Zayan entered the hall and froze.

The desk beside the window—the one with the carved initials—was empty yesterday. It was empty last week. It was always empty.

Until now.

She was there. Again.

Same posture. Same notebook. Same ink drop blooming across her wrist like a bruise.

He sat behind her. Again.

Her hand traced the same shape onto her cover. Again.

And when the class ended, she stood at the same second, dropped the pen in the same rhythm, left without a sound—again.

He blinked.

Did he dream this already?

Or remember it?

The hallway outside was colder than usual. A boy brushed past him—smiling, waving, “See you next loop, Kadeer.”

Zayan stopped walking.

“…What did you say?”

But the boy was gone.

Chapter 3: The Question That Broke the Clock

He didn’t plan to speak to her.
Zayan wasn’t ready. He never was.

But that day—the air tasted different.
Too still. Too cold.

The lecture was ending. Her pen rolled off the desk. She didn’t reach for it.

He stood, slowly.
The journal in his hands buzzed warm, like static crawling over skin.

“Hey,” he said.
His voice cracked like a century-old lock.

She paused. Turned. Looked straight into him.
Not at. Into.

Her eyes were gray, not like clouds—no, like gravestones.
He forgot every word he had prepared.

Still, he asked, “Why don’t you ever talk?”

She opened her mouth. Just barely.
And time—shuddered.

The windows shattered inward without sound.
Ink bled from the blackboard like it had been stabbed.
The professor faded mid-sentence, as if reality changed its mind.

Zayan fell to his knees, ears ringing with an ancient silence.
Her lips moved.

But he didn’t hear the answer.

Because by the time he blinked—

 

Chapter 4: The World Ten Years Later

He was rich. And alone.

Bookshelves curled like dragons around him. A penthouse soaked in shadow and velvet silence.

On every screen, across every country—Zayan Kadeer was the name etched into minds like prophecy.

His novels sold for millions. They said he was cursed. A genius. Haunted. He never corrected them.

Because they were right.

In every book, she appeared. Ash-gray hair. Silence. Gravestone eyes. Always in the third row. Always the ink drop on her wrist.

But she was gone.

The university didn’t exist anymore. No one remembered it. No one remembered her.

No one but him.

And every night, he asked the mirror, “Why did I ask her?”

 

Chapter 5: The First Breach

The breach was not loud.
It began with a flicker.

Room 12B, west wing—
a wall blinked.
Not fell, not cracked—blinked,
as though reality forgot it was supposed to be there.

Ilyas saw it.

He stepped through.

On the other side:
a hallway that did not exist on any university map.
Lit by candlelight. Smelling of ink and thunder.

He walked past doors with no numbers.
Heard whispers behind each one.

Snippets of Zayan’s novels—
spoken like prayers.

“She will remember the clocktower first.”
“Don’t let the river bleed again.”
“The professor was never real.”

At the end of the hall:
a door with his name on it.

He opened it.

Inside:
A mirror.
A desk.
A manuscript.

Titled: The Last Lie.

Written in his handwriting.

Dated ten years from now.

 

Chapter 6: The Books That Bleed

They called him a ghost with a pen. Zayan’s novels sold like holy scriptures. Each story spun around time, memory, gods fallen from grace, and the price of knowing too much. No one knew they were real.

Except one.

A girl in Prague wrote him a letter.

“How do you know what happened in 1923? That library. The ink smell. The marble with the half-burnt name. I dreamed it long before I read your book. Tell me—have you walked those halls too?”

He burned the letter.

But the Memory Keeper did not.

She read every page of his novels. Marked each recurring detail. Dates. Rooms. Symbols. And then… she found the university. In archives.

Old blueprints. Obscure references. A map of a place that shouldn’t exist.

She whispered to herself, “If this is real, then Zayan isn’t just a writer.”

And began her hunt.

Chapter 7: The Rise of the Subplot

Somewhere deep in the Time Loop University— a professor without a face teaches ancient philosophy. Students say he never blinks. He keeps a key around his neck made of white bone.

He once taught Lyra.

He now teaches someone else.

A boy named Ilyas.

Ilyas is unlike the others. He remembers dreams he shouldn’t. Knows Lyra’s name before hearing it. And sees Zayan’s face… in mirrors.

He finds a copy of Zayan’s earliest novel hidden in a forbidden wing. Reads it like a prophecy. And says to the faceless professor, “Why do I remember this?”

The professor replies, “Because you’re part of his punishment.”

The ground shifts. A clock ticks backward.

Zayan writes faster now. As if trying to stay ahead of the truth.

But the Memory Keeper is watching. And Ilyas is remembering.

The world tightens. Time, once a circle, begins to crack into pieces.

Chapter 8: The Echo Room

It started with a knock.

Zayan had returned—disguised by time travel, cloaked in the century-old corridors of the university that once caged him.

The corridors hadn’t changed. But the air? It smelled like memory and betrayal.

He walked into the Echo Room. A place said to repeat only the words you never spoke. Its walls dripped with whispers.

He stood at the center. Spoke nothing. Still, he heard—

“Why didn’t you stay?”

Lyra’s voice. From ten years ago. Or a hundred. Time was a liar here.

He clenched the ring she gave him. A simple band with no inscription. But it buzzed like electricity in his palm.

Suddenly, he heard another voice.

“You don’t belong here anymore.”

He turned.

Ilyas.

Holding the bone key.

His eyes weren’t questioning anymore. They were accusing.

Zayan didn’t answer. He walked away.

But behind him, Ilyas whispered—

“You left her in a broken loop.”

Chapter 9: The Memory Keeper’s List

The Memory Keeper—name unknown, face often hidden beneath a scarf— had three truths and seventeen notebooks.

Every truth was a lie once.

Truth 1: The Time Loop University was never supposed to exist.
She found its founder’s journal. He built it to trap gods in human lives, over and over, until they forgot who they were.

Truth 2: Lyra is not her real name.
She traced it through student records. In each cycle, she has a different name—but the same grief.

Truth 3: Zayan’s books are real events—coded memories.

And then she found the List.
Characters he’d written into novels. Cross-referenced with real-life students—students who had mysteriously vanished.

One name stood out:

Ilyas Mehr.
Age: 18.
Known location: Room 57, West Wing.
Status: Still inside the loop.

The Keeper closed her book, her voice barely audible:

“You were never writing fiction, Zayan.”

Then she bought a ticket. Back to the loop. To find him.

 

Chapter 10: The Book He Never Published

Zayan receives a mysterious envelope. No return address.
Inside: a manuscript.

Title: The First Lie I Ever Wrote

He didn’t write it in this lifetime.

The book contains the origin of the Time Loop University,
the real names of gods hidden among humans,
and the greatest betrayal—his own.

At the end of the manuscript, a note:

“They are watching. Burn it before Chapter 14.”

He doesn’t.

Chapter 11: The Broadcast

A rogue student—Rayan, once a background blur, now a wildfire—
hacks the university’s central tower.

He connects it to every screen, every stream, every mind tuned to the system.

He reads from Zayan’s novels.
Line by line.
Each word tears through time like an old wound reopening.

“This is not a university.
It’s a prison of gods.
They’re trapped. Repeating pain.
Disguised as students.
Their memories erased and sold as fiction.”

The world panics.

Publishers collapse.
Readers riot.
Reality trembles.

Every Zayan line becomes prophecy.

Chapter 12: When the World Found Out

News headlines ignite:

Zayan Arooj: Fiction or Fallen God?

Lyra: Goddess or Ghost?

Time Loop University Under Siege—Protesters Storm Digital Gates

Books That Were Real—How the World Was Lied To

Lyra disappears. Again.

The university locks down.
Its walls ripple—time bending.
Hours bleed into years in seconds.

Zayan returns to the Echo Room.

He opens his palm.

The ring Lyra gave him glows like a wound refusing to close.

He whispers:

“You knew all along, didn’t you?”

Behind him, the Memory Keeper enters.

She hands him an archived file.

“The Fifth File.”

Chapter 13: The Fifth File

Zayan sits alone in the archives.

The final folder has no name.
Just a symbol.

A crescent moon.

The same one Lyra carved into every journal.
The same one branded onto his father’s will.

He opens it.

Inside:
A letter. A photograph. A DNA report.

And a birth record.

Not altered. Not forged.
Real. Official. Unmerciful.

“Twins. Lyra and Zayaan. Born minutes apart.”
“Separation initiated after maternal death. Father remained unaware.”
“Identity of Lyra erased for protection.”

The room doesn’t spin.
It collapses.

He touches the photo—a baby girl with a crescent moon pendant in her fist.
And beside her… himself.

His eyes. Her mouth. The same scar under their jaws.

Then the final page.

A blood test.

Filed under two names:

Zayaan Kadeer
Lyra Mehr

Result: 99.9% match. Siblings.

Chapter 14: The Breaking

She waited under the streetlamp.
Her breath fogged the cold.

He arrived—but didn’t step closer.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He handed her the file.

She flipped through. And froze.

Her hands began to tremble.

“No…”

He said nothing.

She dropped the file.
Pages scattered like feathers from a dying bird.

“Tell me this is some twisted lie.
Tell me this is just another mind game.”

Zayan closed his eyes.

“Maybe that’s why you were sent to the university.”

Silence.

Then she laughed.
Low. Broken. Hysterical.

“We were cursed from the beginning, weren’t we?”

“No,” he whispered.
“We were destined to destroy each other.”

“We all did.
But you were the only one who could rewrite the curse.”

Chapter 15: The Loop Begins to Unravel

A shadow looms over the university—
not darkness, but a soft gray, like the breath before dawn.

Students pause mid-step, tangled in threads of memory.

Some whisper names they never learned.
Others smile at strangers they almost remember.

Zayan writes with trembling hands.
Each word a fragile stitch holding time together.

But every line costs him.

First, the memory of his brother’s voice fades,
like music left too long in silence.

Then, the warmth of Lyra’s laughter
slips through his mind like light through a shuttered window.

Lyra watches him from the library balcony.

She doesn’t speak of love.

Only of hope.

“You forgot me, didn’t you?”
“But I knew it from the start.”

A promise whispered between heartbeats.

Chapter 16: The Quiet Before the Fall

Zayan stands alone in the courtyard.
The gray sky folds overhead.

He lets the pen fall.
The ink dries like forgotten tears.

His memories unravel like threads from a worn tapestry.
But in the empty spaces, something breathes:

Understanding.

Regret.

Grace.

Lyra appears beside him.
Her eyes hold all the stories they never told.

“Maybe,” she whispers,
“we don’t need to rewrite the past.”

“Maybe we just need to learn how to live with it.”

Zayan nods.

The loop is breaking.

But so are they.

And sometimes…
the most beautiful stories are the ones
written in the cracks.