The shelves around Nora start sliding, signaling a shift. Startled, Nora asks what is happening. Mrs Elm answers that it is time to begin, then explains that every decision branches into different outcomes and that the books are portals to the lives Nora could be living.

Pressed about her desires, Nora admits she did everything wrong. Mrs Elm, after a fleeting sneeze and vanishing tissue, stresses that within a lifetime actions can’t be reversed—but Nora has stepped outside normal life. The Midnight Library is an in-between state, neither life nor death nor dream, where possibilities can be explored.

The shelves halt, revealing at shoulder height a single gap holding one grey book among green volumes. Mrs Elm hands the unexpectedly heavy book to Nora but stops her from opening it without permission. She explains that every book here—except this one—is a version of Nora’s life beginning at midnight, Tuesday the twenty-eighth of April, some similar, others radically different.

The exception, the grey volume, is something Nora has authored without writing: the Book of Regrets. Mrs Elm calls it both the source of Nora’s problems and the answer to them, establishing the tool Nora will use to confront and navigate her alternate lives.