A day had passed since the shrine burned its mark into Ashen’s shoulder.

The sigil still itched—not like a wound, but like a word he couldn’t remember. Every breath carried a sense of being watched, not by something outside, but within. The Witness had opened its second eye.

He didn’t know what it meant.

But Vaela did.

She walked ahead of him through the stone valley path, her scarf pulled low today. Not out of comfort. Out of respect.

“This place is old,” she said, voice flat. “Even the Veil won’t speak here.”

Ashen squinted. “Then why are we—?”

She held up a hand.

“Don’t ask questions here.”

The cliffs that loomed over them were carved with broken sentences, partial glyphs, fractured grammar—entire paragraphs chiseled into the rock, but all of it nonsensical. The language danced just out of comprehension. Like it had once made sense to someone.

“Where are we really?” Ashen whispered anyway.

Vaela exhaled through her teeth. “Miretongue. A city eaten by its own language.”

He blinked.

“Come again?”

“They say,” she said slowly, “that this was once a scriptorium for the early priests of the Pale Thought. They tried to write down everything.”

She stepped over a stone slab engraved with a word that flickered like heat haze.

“But one day... the words started writing back.”

They reached the hollow of a collapsed spire. Vaela slid inside first, her shadow stretching too far, too long, and disappearing in the curve of the ruin. Ashen followed, hand over his shoulder where the sigil still burned.

The moment he stepped in

He forgot his name.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

He opened his mouth to say something—nothing came.

“D-did—” he stammered, “what’s—what’s my—”

“Don’t fight it,” Vaela said sharply. “It passes.”

“Passes?!”

“You’re still holding onto ‘self.’ That’s not useful here.”

“But I—”

“Ashen.” Her voice snapped like a whip. “I need you to remember your second sigil. Witness. Breathe through it.”

He tried.

Something inside him clicked—a flutter. Not unlike blinking, but inward. And then:

I am Ashen Halweir. I remember my name.

He collapsed to one knee, panting. Cold sweat drenched his neck.

“What the hell is this place?”

Vaela crouched beside him, her hand on the hilt of her dagger—but not for protection. For resonance.

“The sigils were created as counterweights,” she said softly. “Not just for power. For balance. This city... it was an attempt to record truth. All of it. Every god’s whisper, every creature’s lie, every forgotten name.”

She looked at him, and for once, her eyes were not sharp.

They were scared.

“It drowned in meaning.”

At the heart of the spire lay a stone pedestal.On it, a single page—

floating. Unaged. 

Untouched by dust or time. 

The air around it shimmered.“Third sigil?” Ashen asked.

“No,” Vaela said. “A... cipher. The first.”

Ashen moved toward it slowly.

The moment his fingers brushed the page—
He saw himself standing in a field of bones.
A hundred versions of himself.
Each whispering a different truth.

One turned to him and smiled.

“You’re not the original,” it said.

“None of us are.”

He ripped his hand away.

But the damage was done.

A new mark bled on his hand—not a sigil. A rune. Smaller. Subtler. Like a seed.

Vaela cursed under her breath.

“That shouldn’t have happened yet.”

Ashen looked up, pale. “What was that?”

“A reflection.”

“Of what?”

“Possibility.”

Before he could reply, the stone floor beneath them shuddered. A deep tone rang through the ruin.

And a voice—not heard, but felt—echoed.

“Unauthorized memory detected.”

“Scrubbing sequence initiated.

From the shadows, figures emerged.

They were not men. 

Not ghosts.

They were sentences, wrapped in flesh. Words sculpted into bone. Their limbs ended in punctuation. They wept ink.

Ashen backed up.

“What the hell are those?!”

Vaela drew both blades.

“Librarians.”

“Run"

They sprinted through the narrowing hallways, chased by beings that left footprints shaped like quotes. The air twisted around them—words trying to erase reality as they ran.

Ashen turned a corner—and came face to face with a familiar man in a clean coat and burnt-shut eyes.

Ryn Velos.

“Hello again,” Ryn said calmly.

Ashen raised his fist—but Vaela screamed from behind, “Don’t! He’s not real!”

Ashen hesitated.

Ryn smiled wider. “Of course I’m real, boy. I’m just… written.”

Ashen blinked.

And then the Librarians fell on him.