> There are languages that reveal.
Languages that conceal.
And one language that consumes.
—Fragment from the Black-Tongue Codex, Section Δ
---
I didn't speak for three days after the blood mirror.
Not because I was afraid of what I'd say.
But because I wasn't sure who would say it.
Every time I opened my mouth, I heard an echo that didn't match.
Not my voice.
Not my phrasing.
A delay. A distortion.
Like something else was waiting inside my tongue.
---
By the fourth night, the Archive left a new page under my bed.
Not placed.
Grown.
It pulsed like a sore tooth.
Flesh-bound, spine-wrapped, and bleeding slightly from the margins.
There were no words on it.
Only an instruction burned into the page in thin, black script:
> SPEAK ME.
---
I didn't. Not right away.
Instead, I watched the paper curl when I touched it.
It flinched.
It responded.
And then, after two hours of silence—
It said my name.
Whispered.
Through the gaps in my own teeth.
> "Taren."
I turned away.
But something in me was already responding.
A sentence coiled on the tip of my tongue like venom.
---
That night, the hallway changed.
Again.
---
Gone were the skulls and teeth. No bone this time.
Just pages.
Pages on walls, on ceilings, on floors.
Some fluttered as I passed.
Some folded themselves shut.
But all of them bore the same phrase, etched in different languages, many of which I'd never seen:
> THE WORD IS HUNGRY.
---
At the end of the hall, a door waited.
Made not of wood, but of bound tongues—stitched together, twitching slightly, whispering backwards.
I didn't touch it.
I just said:
> "Open."
And the door devoured the sound.
Not echoed.
Ate.
The tongues curled. The door opened.
Inside was a single figure—
Standing over a page that shifted as they read.
The figure turned, their face hidden beneath a paper veil.
And they spoke.
---
But not in words.
In voids.
---
Each sentence was an absence.
An extraction from my memory.
When they said "Welcome,"
I forgot how I got there.
When they said "We've been waiting,"
I forgot who we was.
And when they said "You may begin,"
I forgot my own name.
Only then did they lift the page.
And hand it to me.
---
> "This is the Unuttered Script," they said.
"It can only be read aloud.
But every sentence you speak will eat something from your life."
"Truth for truth.
Name for name.
Identity for revelation."
---
I should've refused.
I didn't.
I opened the page.
And I read:
> "The Archive is not a place."
"It is a word looking for meaning."
The room shook.
The page pulsed.
And I felt my father's face vanish from memory.
I tried to recall his voice. Gone.
The page laughed.
---
Next line.
> "The Unwritten God is not silent."
"It simply speaks in erasure."
This time, it took the name of my hometown.
No more images.
Just static.
Just the taste of ash and the scent of unremembered rain.
---
Third line.
I hesitated.
The paper waited.
The figure in the veil said nothing.
So I read:
> "I was never chosen."
"I was already written."
This time, the cost was my reflection.
---
The wall mirror melted.
Not physically. Conceptually.
I couldn't see myself.
Not just in mirrors, but in memory.
My face became a narrative gap.
A missing descriptor in my own mind.
Every time I tried to picture myself, I saw a blinking cursor.
Waiting for someone else to fill me in.
---
> "You've spoken enough," the veiled one finally said.
"You now know why we never read aloud."
"Because language is not an expression."
"It's a predator."
---
I dropped the script.
It didn't fall.
It slithered.
Across the floor. Back into the shadows.
Still twitching.
Still hungry.
---
When I left the room, I didn't recognize the hallway.
Even the walls had changed.
The Archive was different.
Because I had named it.
And what you name inside the Archive, you feed.
---
That night, I woke up gagging.
My tongue was moving.
Not randomly.
Reciting.
A sentence I never learned.
But my voice said it anyway:
> "The sentence that ends the world is not loud."
"It's whispered from the wrong mouth."
---
The lights flickered.
A door appeared where none had been.
It bore no keyhole.
Only a warning, etched in dried breath:
> "The next thing you say will not belong to you."
---
But I spoke anyway.
> "I'm not afraid."
The moment the words left my mouth, I felt my shadow detach.
It didn't follow me anymore.
It watched me.
And then, without any sound, it whispered something back.
I didn't hear it.
I felt it in my ribs.
> "Then you are ready to be spoken."
The door opened.
Inside was a chair. And a mouth.
Not attached to a body. Just… floating in the air, smiling.
Words circled it like flies.
> "Sit," it said. "You've fed enough. It's time to let something feed on you."
---
This was built to make you uncomfortable with the most natural thing you do: speak.
In horror, we often fear what we see.
But what if the real threat comes from what you say—or worse, what gets said through you?
Taren enters a place in the Archive where language is no longer passive.
It doesn't describe—it devours.
Words don't just communicate—they erase.
A language that eats memories for meaning
Pages that write back
Sentences that require a sacrifice of self to understand
And Taren's horrifying realization that the next thing he says may not belong to him at all
The idea hear came from one question:
> What if every sentence you spoke left a wound?
Some cuts are deep.
Some never heal.
And some—like the Archive—bite back.
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