> The final torchlight flickered behind its glass hood, its pale flame casting skeletal shadows on the stacked scrolls and chain-bound tomes that lined the wall.
Alric Velas stood perfectly still in the aisle, hand hovering inches above an ink-stained ledger. Dust motes swirled in the beam of his reading lamp, dancing like memory-fragments that hadn't yet settled.
He hated working in silence. Not because it unnerved him—he was long past that—but because it made him think too clearly.
Tonight, the Obscurati archives felt especially quiet. Too quiet. Not even the mechanical scribes—those hunched, wax-headed automatons—were clattering in the outer chambers.
He flipped the page in the registry.
Class D – Repeating Echoes
Class C – Bound Rites
Class B – Residual Self-Wills
Class A – Taboo Constructs
Then… nothing.
No Class Null. No Class Unwritten.
And yet the drawer was here. Unmarked. Tucked between two sealed stone racks. A strip of wax had been melted over its handle—standard protocol for sealed anomalies. But the wax was cracked, still soft to the touch. As if someone had opened it just minutes before.
Alric narrowed his eyes.
He hadn't seen this drawer on any chart. He knew the archive layouts by memory, not because he was supposed to—but because he had to. No one survived the inner stacks without mapping it in their mind.
He pulled on his gloves. Not ritual silk—just work leather. Slowly, he unlatched the drawer.
Inside lay a box. Black lacquer. Gold hinges. No markings. No symbol of the Order. No tags. No curse seals.
That alone should've triggered alarms.
Alric glanced toward the nearest scribe conduit, but it was dead. No hum. No whisper. As if the archive was... watching.
He removed the box with both hands. It was heavier than it looked. Not weight-heavy, but meaning-heavy. As if the thing remembered something terrible and didn't want to be touched again.
He set it on the desk. Unsnapped the clasp.
> Inside lay a single page.
Blank.
Not ancient parchment, not treated vellum—no, this page was smooth. Almost reflective. Like paper made from polished ash. Cold. Clean. Dead.
He shouldn't touch it.
So of course, he did.
---
> It was not ink.
It was thought.
Words rose up on the page—not drawn but surfaced, like oil pushing through old cloth. One by one they formed a line, curling with gentle hunger:
> "I remember you."
Alric froze.
The page… it hadn't been enchanted to react to blood. He'd used gloves. There was no trigger glyph. No priming spell.
The words shifted.
> "Take me. Bind me. I am yours again."
His breath slowed.
Something curled at the base of his spine. A pressure—not cold or warm—but inside-out. Like someone had grabbed his soul and twisted it.
The page moved.
Not drifted. Moved. It leapt, faster than reflex, and struck his forearm.
He gasped. Pulled back.
The page was gone.
But a symbol now burned beneath his glove. Something alive. Shifting. A mark drawn in letters he didn't know—but somehow understood.
His thoughts echoed with something that wasn't his own:
> "Noxa."
A name.
His hand shook. The air around him rippled, like memory being peeled away from the present.
A light flared red at the end of the corridor.
Archive breach alert.
> "No," Alric whispered. "No no no…"
Footsteps.
Voices.
His own Order was coming for him.
And they already knew what he'd done.