Kaelen's skin burned. Not with fire but with light. The tattoos on his chest and arms ignited with golden energy, flaring violently into the room, illuminating every cracked stone, every thread of blood staining Clara's chest. It wasn't a spell he cast. It wasn't a prayer, it was a reaction. A pulse of refusal.
The Light Killer staggered mid-step, its feet ground to a halt, the floor beneath it suddenly glowing with symbols which looked more like runes that Kaelen had never seen before and not just any runes, runes similar to the tattoos on his left chest.
The ones on his chest, they had imprinted themselves on the floor.
A ring of golden light surged around the Light Killer's feet, wrapping up like ethereal chains, rooting it in place. The creature didn't roar or flinch. It simply paused. It smiled. It's arms twitched as it examined the light around it. Not with fear, but with interest.
Kaelen didn't wait for it to figure out how to break free. He rushed to Clara's side and dropped to one knee. Blood soaked through her robe, but her breathing was steady. Her eyes fluttered open as he gently lifted her puting her hands over his shoulder and started moving towards the tunnel.
The tunnel behind the collapsed sanctum writhed like a wounded vein. The deeper Kaelen ran, the more the air changed. It grew heavier, thicker, older. The scent of moss and earth gave way to something stranger, something metallic and dry, like dried ink and candle smoke. The walls were smoother here, too clean to be natural, it looked polished by something other than time.
Clara groaned in his arms, her head nestled against his shoulder, blood still clinging to the tear in her robes. He could feel her heartbeat, it was slow, steady, but faltering. Her skin was colder than it had any right to be.
He had no idea where he was going. Only that the Light Killer was behind them, and something ahead was calling to him. His tattoos guided his feet more than his thoughts, the gold lines burning softly under his skin, casting just enough light to see by. Their glow seemed to respond to the world itself. one flicker to turn left, another to slow down, another still to take a step back before a chunk of stone dislodged above.
He didn't question it, cause he didn't have time. His thought process currently was it wouldn't lead him to harm since it saved him.
The corridor opened unexpectedly into a low alcove. Broken pillars framed the space like teeth, and a long bench of black stone sat at its heart, surrounded by shattered lanterns and rotted banners. A moss-drenched fountain gurgled in the corner. It lookd ancient, but still worked none the less, trickling water like a dying breath.
Kaelen slowed. His arms were shaking. Due to the exhaustion. He knelt carefully and laid Clara down onto the bench, her blood staining the stone as she grimaced.
"Still alive?" he asked softly, brushing her hair from her cheek.
"Define 'alive,'" she murmured, her eyelids fluttering.
He looked down at the gash running from her side to her ribs. "Right. That's bad, real bad."
She forced a thin smile. "Just a scratch."
"Just a nasty scratch you mean?"He reached down and pulled the satchel from her belt, searching through the array of bottles, crushed leaves, chalk dust and what he would assume to be a mummified finger.
He hesitated. "Uh… do you.....do you have, like, healing stuff in here, or just… curses and this?" He says while lifting up the finger.
She opened one eye and snorted weakly. "Lavender vial, silver stopper. Try not to pour poison on my spleen."
Kaelen fumbled through the pouch, pulling out a small vial filled with swirling lavender liquid. It shimmered when it caught the light, thick and iridescent like liquid moonlight. He popped the stopper and he was overwhelmed by the scent of pine and bitter herbs. He hovered it over her side. Then paused as it occured to him that it was his first time using such. "I don't...,how much do I pour?" He said meekly.
Clara raised an eyebrow. "You're asking now?"
"I've never done this before!" He increased his voice and laughed anxiously
She let out a low, pained laugh. "Just pour the whole thing. You're adorable."
"Don't say that while you're bleeding," he muttered. He carefully tilted the vial, and the potion spilled across the wound with a soft hiss. Clara arched with a strangled cry, her fingers clutching the edge of the bench.
The skin around the cut shimmered, glowing for a moment, then began knitting together not cleanly, but like candle wax sealing an envelope. The blood dried to powder. Her breathing slowed. The wound sealed, leaving behind a darkened scar and a lingering burn mark.
Clara let out a long breath and collapsed against the bench.
"Gods, that stings," she muttered.
"You okay?" He asks while being astonished by the surprising effectiveness of the potion.
She nodded, gritting her teeth. "Thanks. You didn't botch it too badly."
"I'll add 'healer' to my résumé." He finally felt relieved she could joke.
She laughed again, softer this time. "Don't quit your day job."
Clara leaned against him, blinking. "Where… where are we?"
"No idea. A cathedral ruin. Beneath the sanctum, I think. We got lucky."
Her eyes scanned the space slowly. "No… not lucky."
Kaelen frowned. "What?"
Clara pointed to a symbol carved into the fountain's rim. The image of a black eye surrounded by eight radial lines adorned the fountain. "That's the sigil of the Black Choir."
"Is that… bad?"
"Depends who you ask."
She leaned back against the stone, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. Her voice came quieter. "The Black Choir was the first guild to discover the Reckoning's core questline. They vanished one by one… after someone triggered an 'unwritten' event."
Kaelen went still. "Unwritten?"
"That is exactly what Circe wrote but she was paramount on the fact that they still exist," Clara said. "But everyone thinks they're myths."
Kaelen rubbed his face. "And you're telling me we just landed in one of such ?"
He smiled, wiping his hands on his tunic, trying not to notice how badly they were shaking. Then his tattoos pulsed again once, twice warning him. He had begun to trust his tattoo a lot.
The air behind them shifted. not dangerously, But deliberately.
Kaelen stood, turning to face the corridor.
A figure emerged from the archway beyond the fountain.
She didn't walk, She arrived. The woman tall, serene, radiant and impossible, stepped forward with robes trailing behind her like a mourning shroud. Her gown was stitched in symbols Kaelen's brain refused to understand, written in languages older than memory. Her mask, porcelain and seamless, was carved into the likeness of a weeping angel, with two long ink-stained tears running down its cheeks. Her bare arms shimmered with silver filaments, ink swirling beneath her skin in slow, languid motion.
In her hand she carried a lantern and inside it, a single blue flame flickered like a heartbeat.
Kaelen couldn't move.
"Archivist," Clara said faintly behind him. "So the diary did hold true. I thought Circe was rambling as she was loosing her mind."
The woman's voice came in layers, gentle, terrible, feminine, monstrous as if multiple memories spoke at once through a single vessel.
"One born outside the script. One tangled in old debt. One who was never meant to wake."
Kaelen stepped in front of Clara, hand on Clara's dagger he took from her side, he barely held it properly, it felt awkward in his grip, but he lifted it anyway. "Who are you?"
The woman bowed her head slightly. "I am called Silence. I was and I'm the last memory of the Black Choir, The Vault made flesh."
Clara pushed herself upright. "You're the seal."
Silence nodded slowly. "And I remember too much."
Her lantern flared.
Kaelen's tattoos pulsed again — erratic this time.
"Wait," he said, stepping forward. "If you're the Vault, why is the Light Killer after me?"
Silence turned.
Even without a face, Kaelen felt her eyes pierce him.
"Because you are the error. The echo without a call. You have not been written, yet you are being written. You are not designed, yet you decide and change the flow."
Clara stared at him. "What does that mean?"
Silence tilted her head. "He is not the key. He is the break. A class that does not exist. An origin that was never coded but found it's way into the code."
Kaelen stepped back. "But i didn't ask for this, all I wanted was to live a decent life"
"No anomaly ever does."
Silence's flame pulsed, then flickered.
She staggered.
Kaelen caught her before she could fall, shocked at how light she felt. And being marveled how the ink under her skin twisted violently like a raging torrent.
Clara stood, alarmed. "She's glitching."
Silence's voice cracked, stuttering mid-sentence.
"The Reckoning is....The Reckoning is...The Rec-c-c-ckoning is not a world."
She dropped to her knees.
"It is a prison."
Her body shimmered, phasing in and out of visibility. Like she wasn't entirely real. Not anymore.
Kaelen knelt beside her. "What's happening?"
"I'm… not meant to speak it," she whispered. "Truths like this corrupt the shell. The rules rewrite the tongue."
Kaelen reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder. "What the heck does that even mean?"
Silence looked up and for the first time, her mask cracked. A line split from temple to cheek, and from within, golden light bled.
"Follow me," she whispered
———————————————————
She led them into the Vault's heart.
Down winding stairs lit by memory, through a narrow hall carved in sacred script. The walls whispered in languages neither of them knew, names passing through the air like ghosts. They stepped into a chamber shaped like a broken egg, jagged on one end, smooth on the other.
In the center floated a sphere of liquid memory, suspended in midair. Ink swirled inside it slowly, deliberate, watching.
Kaelen crouched beside the Archivist, steadying her as her mask cracked further, a thin fracture line running from her brow to her jaw. Light bled through the seams like a failing containment ward.
"You said the Reckoning is a prison," Kaelen said softly. "Then who's trapped in it?"
Silence twitched — not like a person, but like a system trying to reroute a severed circuit.
"All of us."
The words came broken, scattered between breaths.
"Players… NPCs… The world is looping. It cannot evolve. It can only repeat what was once written."
Kaelen frowned. "Why am I different, then?"
Silence raised her head. Her voice was hoarse, layered less now, as if her connection to the greater memory was fracturing.
"Because something intervened outside the loop."
Kaelen stood slowly. "You're saying… someone changed the script?"
"No," she said. "You are the change. An anomaly. Not authored. You were never supposed to be possible, and yet... the Vault responds to your class."
She nodded toward the core a sphere suspended in the air behind her, rotating slowly. It was no longer dark. Swirling ink inside had begun forming shapes, constellations, strange runes, and something that looked like a spinning, fractured wheel.
Kaelen stared. "What is that?"
Silence's voice dropped into something reverent.
"A prophecy."
Clara stepped forward now too, limping but alert. "The Reckoning has prophecy systems. That's old alpha code. It's been forgotten."
Silence shook her head.
"No. They buried it. But prophecy… doesn't forget."
She turned toward the orb, her hand rising. It pulsed in response.
The chamber went still.
And the Vault spoke.
Not in words, but in memory.
Golden script began to dance in the air above the orb, forming a circle. Images flickered around it, projected in pulses: a vast door built from stone and bone; a figure in white robes bleeding into a sigil-lined floor; a blade carved from regret; a pair of hands, Kaelen's hands covered in ink and ash.
Then came the voice.
"THE DOOR MAY ONLY OPEN AT COST."
"THE KEY MUST BLEED. THE VAULT DEMANDS REMEMBRANCE."
A low chime echoed through Kaelen's vision.
A HUD notification flared to life:
> SIDE QUEST UNLOCKED
❖ Echo Beyond the Script ❖
You have triggered an Unwritten Prophecy.
Find another way to access the Vault without sacrificing the Archivist
➤ Objective: Find an alternate entrance to the Vault.
➤ Restrictions: Archivist must remain alive.
➤ Reward: ???
➤ WARNING: Time is limited. The Archivist has gone against the rules and being actively rewritten.
Kaelen stared at the prompt. Then at Silence. She was breathing hard now, the cracks in her mask spreading.
Clara looked at him, voice low. "If we follow the main route, she dies."
"I know."
"And if we don't… we risk everything on a maybe."
Kaelen turned back to the swirling prophecy above the orb. He clenched his jaw.
"We're not killing her."
He looked down at the blue flame inside Silence's lantern, still burning though it looked a lot dimmer now.