“Do not blink. Do not answer questions phrased in the second person. Do not listen to its third sentence.”

-Vaela, whispering ancient traveler's warnings, long before Miretongue.

The Curator stood like punctuation at the end of the world.

Still. Inevitable. Watching.

Ashen didn’t run.
He couldn’t.

Something deeper than fear held him there, a quiet, coiled recognition, like seeing your own reflection blink when you didn’t.

Its voice was a sound between thoughts:

“Have you ever erased something... and known it was never yours to remove?”

The question bit into Ashen's spine. The wind stopped.
Then the second sentence came.

“Witness Halweir. This cell is noncompliant. We will proceed to calibration.”

Ashen took one step back
-and the third sentence nearly slipped through.

But Vaela screamed, cutting the air in two.

“Cover your ears!”

Ashen stumbled, slapping his palms over his skull just in time. The third sentence arrived, unseen, unheard-
-and even then, it tasted like forgetting something you’d never learned.

The ruin around them cracked.

Not shattered. Not broke.
Cracked like paper burns when you fold it wrong.

Vaela dragged him behind a half-fallen arch covered in ink-thorns. Her breath was ragged, her grip tighter than it should be for someone so injured.

“She’s not here for you,” Vaela whispered. “She’s here for what saw you in the Archive.”

Ashen shivered. “Ryn?”

Vaela looked at him.
“No. The thing that pretended to be Ryn. That version was... left behind. But it wasn’t dead.”

Ashen’s head throbbed. “What was it?”

“A fragment,” she whispered, “from a story that was deleted.”

From the far side of the ruin, The Curator began to hum.

The sound was geometric. Like someone folding stairs.

Ashen peered through a crack. “What is she doing?”

“Searching.”

“For?”

Vaela swallowed. “The sentence you almost heard. If you had... she’d carve it out of this place. Out of us. Make it like it was never spoken.”

“That’s... possible?”

“She’s a Curator. She doesn’t kill. She edits.”

Ashen blinked, but the ruin stayed put.

For now.

Vaela reached into her satchel and pulled out something wrapped in velvet: a sigil-powdered thread, woven through a severed feather.

“See this?” she whispered. “This is our only way out.”

“What is it?”

“Counterline. From an older narrative. Before the Archive revised this place.”

Ashen stared at it. “You’re going to stitch a way out of here... using something that used to exist?”

Vaela grinned, wild and terrified.
“Exactly. We’re going to remember our way out.

Behind them, the Curator took a step.

Everything went quiet again.
Even the ruin.

Ashen nodded. “Do it.”

Vaela closed her eyes, muttering phrases that sounded backwards.

She pricked Ashen’s finger and let a drop of his blood fall onto the thread.

For a moment

nothing.

Then, the wall beside them rippled. A crack opened. Like a sentence that was scratched out but not fully erased.

Vaela grabbed his hand.

“RUN.”

They dove through the wound in the world.

[Meanwhile – Unknown Location – Beyond Archive Parameters]

Somewhere far beyond the ruin, beneath a forgotten bay, a man sat in a cathedral that hummed with voices trapped in bottles.

He looked like Ryn Velos.

But his eyes were closed. And his lips were sewn shut.

He held a broken sigil in one hand. In the other, a piece of a mirror that refused to reflect anything twice.

A priest approached him.

“Your echo has engaged with the Witness.”

The man did not speak. Could not.

The priest knelt anyway.

“What would you have us do?”

The man raised the mirror. Showed the priest something in the glass.

The priest wept. Then nodded.

[Back with Ashen – The Other Side of Memory]

Ashen stumbled out into mist. Trees with scripture-carved bark stretched into a blank sky. This wasn’t the same world.

It was a footnote.

A place barely permitted to exist.

Vaela collapsed to the ground, wheezing, blood soaking her shoulder.

Ashen dropped beside her.

“I—I saw something,” he said. “When we passed through. A face. Not mine. Not yours. But I knew it.”

Vaela looked at him, half-dazed.

“Good,” she whispered. “You’re starting to remember things you were never taught. That’s the price of Witnessing.”

Ashen nodded. “But why me?”

And Vaela, before passing out, muttered just three words:

“Because Rudra watched.”