The ink didn't fade from Izen's fingertips. It had settled beneath his skin like a bruise, like something permanent, stitched in and pulsing faintly with every beat of his heart. The journal sat closed on his desk now, its silver glyph half-burned and still warm, a faint wisp of memory-smoke rising from its edges. He hadn't touched it since the masked figure tried to erase its contents. The glyph on the cover—the impaled eye—seemed to watch him with fresh intensity.
Across from him, Grinless crouched silently in the corner, no longer smiling. Its grin had faded sometime during the night, and now it sat still and wide-eyed, as if it too had felt the presence that had bled into the room, that strange Reaper-thing Velrith had not warned him about. The creature that had tried to reach through memory and pull out Seril's name as if it were a weed growing in the wrong garden.
Luro hadn't returned since dragging Izen from the room, bandaging the bite of fear that the attack had left in his bones. No one had. The Scribes had gone quiet. Even the hallway glyphs had dimmed. The Shattered Hall seemed to be holding its breath.
Then came the knock.
Sharp. Measured. Three taps.
Izen opened the door cautiously. It wasn't Luro waiting on the other side—it was a man in deep crimson robes, his sleeves marked with coiling glyphs that shimmered faintly in the gloom. His hair was short, his eyes dark, and his presence somehow heavier than his body. When he spoke, his voice wasn't loud, but it carried like a whisper spoken directly into Izen's chest.
"You're to come with me," he said. "Now."
Izen didn't ask where. He followed.
The man didn't give his name, and Izen didn't ask. They walked in silence through the bowels of the Hall, past silent scribes hunched over shadow-screens and ink-troughs, past walls carved with the names of forgotten places. They passed through an arch shaped like a quill being snapped in half, and Izen felt the air change as they crossed the threshold. Denser. Cold. Saturated with meaning.
"This is the Binding Vault," the man said finally.
Izen looked around. The chamber was vast and circular, a ring of stone platforms surrounding a pit of shifting shadow at its center. Hovering above the pit were dozens—maybe hundreds—of bound memories, each one sealed in glass-like spheres that drifted like stars caught in orbit. Some pulsed with deep violet light. Others hissed faintly, whispering fragments of thought that made the hairs on his arms rise.
"You will bind one," the man continued, pointing toward the far side of the vault. "Not a fragment. A full echo. Something with weight. Something that resists."
"I've only bound one before," Izen said, voice tight. "It nearly tore me apart."
"Then this will likely finish the job," the man said without inflection. "We don't allow half-Scribes to remain here. Either you carry your burden, or you become part of it."
He gestured toward one of the orbiting spheres. It shimmered with a dull blue glow and pulsed in time with something that sounded like distant breathing. As Izen stepped closer, the shadow inside stirred. It was no longer a passive memory—it was aware of him. Waiting.
Grinless appeared beside him, rising from the floor like smoke condensing into a body. Its eyes narrowed as it studied the sphere.
"This one's different," Izen said, voice low.
"They all are," the man replied. "That one is called the Weaver's Cry. It is the memory of a person who unspooled their entire life to save another. The name inside was once sung across the Shattered Peaks—but no one remembers it now. Bind it, and it may give you its gift."
"Or kill me."
"Both are gifts, in their way."
Izen stepped forward. The sphere drifted lower, drawn to him. Its surface began to ripple, and he could hear the sound of cloth tearing. Threads, dozens of them, invisible to the eye but tugging at his limbs, began to wind around his arms and throat. He clenched his fists and looked to Grinless—but the reflection-creature had already stepped back, silent and watching.
The first shadow always helps. The second watches. The third... The third doesn't come back.
That was something Velrith had said in passing, during his first day. At the time, it had meant nothing. Now, it crawled inside his thoughts like a warning disguised as wisdom.
The sphere pulsed again. He reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched its surface, it cracked.
Ink rushed outward—not liquid, but threadlike. Tangled filaments of memory wrapped around his wrist, pulling him forward, dragging him inside the echo.
He didn't fall.
He unraveled.
—
The world spun, then straightened.
He stood now in a stone chamber filled with looms—massive ones, the size of houses, all strung with black thread that shimmered faintly in the candlelight. A woman stood at the center, her back turned to him, weaving. Her hands moved too fast to follow, her shadow splitting and shifting as she worked.
She didn't see him. Didn't acknowledge him.
He stepped closer.
The threads twisted in the air, forming faces—smiling, screaming, fading.
He realized they were names. Names of people once bound to her, names she had carried. They floated around her like ghosts trying to remember the shape of their own skin.
"She bound them all," came a voice beside him.
Izen turned. The masked figure from before stood in the corner. Still silent. Still watching.
"She wove them into her skin," the voice continued, though the mask never moved. "To save one child, she gave up thousands of stories. Hers. Others. Yours."
"Mine?"
"She saw you."
The woman turned.
She had no eyes.
Just a face made of thread, stitched tight. Her mouth was sewn shut. But her hands never stopped weaving.
"She gave up her voice to keep memory alive," the voice said again. "Bind her, and you will speak for her. Reject her, and her sacrifice will unravel forever."
Izen stared at her. She looked toward him now—not with eyes, but with presence. He felt her weight. The burden she carried. The threads she could no longer hold.
"I don't know if I'm strong enough," he whispered.
"That is not the question," the masked voice said.
"Then what is?"
"Do you believe her sacrifice deserves to be remembered?"
Izen reached out.
The threads wrapped around him like a shroud.
And the world shattered.
—
He was back.
On the floor of the Binding Vault, gasping, hands trembling. The sphere was gone. In its place, a thin ribbon of black thread now wound around his left arm, burning faintly with sigils that weren't his.
The crimson-robed man looked down at him, unreadable.
"You bound it," he said.
Izen nodded. "She didn't fight."
"No," the man replied. "She waited."
Grinless emerged from the shadows, its form now draped in thin strands of thread that hadn't been there before. Its expression was unreadable.
"You carry her now," the man continued. "That makes you a danger. To the Archive. To the Guild. And to the lie we tell to keep this world turning."
"What lie?"
"That we forget nothing."
Izen stood slowly. The thread around his arm pulsed again.
The Binding was complete.
But the cost had only begun to show its shape.
The threads didn't unravel when he left the Binding Vault. They tightened.
Each step back through the Shattered Hall's corridors was heavier, not just in body but in sense. The light flickered less now, as though the shadows themselves refused to dance in his presence. His new shadow—longer than before, with tiny stitched flickers at the edges—slid along the floor beside him like a forgotten cloak. Sometimes, it moved before he did.
Grinless didn't speak. It didn't need to. It hovered close, its limbs more defined now, its grin slowly returning, not maliciously, but with something that resembled reverence. Something in the creature had changed the moment Izen emerged from the vault with the binding thread scorched into his skin. It knew. Or perhaps remembered.
Izen reached his assigned quarters—bare walls, that same black journal sitting where he'd left it. He hesitated at the door.
There was someone inside.
Not Grinless. Not Luro. He felt it. A pressure in the air, a taste like burning ash on his tongue.
Then came the voice—calm, cold, crisp.
"You bound a memory that was meant to fade."
He stepped in.
She stood at the far wall, hooded, silver cuffs circling both wrists. Her robe was ink-black but shimmered faintly with golden edges. Her shadow split three ways behind her—one like a sword, one like wings, one shaped like nothing he could describe.
"I'm told you were Lightless," she said, turning slightly. "And yet here you stand, a thread of the Hollow wrapped around your arm, pulsing with an echo that was archived and silenced for good reason."
"I didn't choose her," Izen said. "She chose me."
"That is exactly what we feared."
Her eyes—too still, too clear—studied him. Not his clothes, not his posture, but his shadow. She wasn't just looking. She was reading it, every flicker and tremble. After a moment, she stepped closer and tapped her fingers lightly against the wall. A circle bloomed in the stone—a scrying sigil—and within it appeared an image of the Binding Vault, the cracked sphere he'd shattered, and a glowing fragment of the Weaver's final thread winding its way around his own.
"She is fully bound," the woman said. "You carry not just her name. You carry her will. Her burden. Her unfinished work."
"And what does that mean?"
"It means you're dangerous."
Izen flinched. "I didn't ask for this."
"No," she said. "But the Hollow doesn't care what you ask. It cares what you carry."
He looked at her more closely now. Her cuffs weren't ornamental. They were bindings—runed with containment glyphs, etched with the same ink-marks that had burned through his own skin just hours earlier. She wasn't just a Guild handler. She was a Reaver too. But not a free one.
"Who are you?"
"Eryla Vance," she replied. "Seventh-tier Reaver. Guardian-class enforcer. And as of this moment, your official overseer."
He stepped back. "I thought Luro—"
"Luro's been demoted."
His mind reeled. "What? Why?"
"Because he let a half-broken initiate wander into the Binding Vault without proper clearance. Because he let you survive. And because what you pulled from the Archive should've never been found."
Izen's fists clenched. "She wanted to be remembered."
"And that's what makes her dangerous." Eryla stepped forward again, her voice suddenly quieter. "There are echoes in the Archive that carry more than memory. They carry weight. Gravity. If you pull them back into the world, the world bends."
She tapped the sigil once more. The image of the thread shimmered and changed—to a tapestry. An enormous woven map, black and gold, covered in names. One of them pulsed.
It was his.
"Every time you draw from her thread," Eryla said, "you risk opening a door to the Hollow. And when that happens, things come through. Things that should stay buried."
Izen swallowed. His arms felt colder now. The thread wasn't burning anymore. It was humming—a low, deep vibration that seemed to echo in the corners of the room.
"Then what do you want from me?"
She turned away, the sigil closing behind her like a sealed eye. "You're going to perform your first field Reaving."
He blinked. "Already?"
"You've been seen. Whispered. Watched. The Guild can't erase what's already leaked, and we can't let the Purists or the Null Seekers get to you first. That means control. Fast. You'll go into the Ashrift Quarter. A minor echo has surfaced. Normally, we'd send a Fifth-tier Reaver. But the Binding Threads say it's connected to your lineage."
Izen stared. "My… lineage?"
She didn't respond. She simply handed him a slip of paper. There was no name, no glyph. Just a single word, scrawled in old sequence ink.
Callow.
His breath caught.
"I don't remember them," he said quietly. "My family. My past. The name is all I have."
"And now it's all they want."
She stepped aside. "You leave at first dark."
"And if I fail?"
Eryla's smile was razor-thin. "Then we bind what's left of you."
—
The Ashrift Quarter wasn't far, but it was deeper than anything Izen had entered before. Once part of the noble district, it had fallen into decay centuries ago when the Third Sun cracked and its shadow fell permanently eastward. Now it was a deadland—half-lit, half-choked in ghost-mist, a breeding ground for unbound shadows and corrupted memory-threads.
He stood at its threshold the next morning, Grinless at his side. The Binding Thread around his arm pulsed faintly. The glyph Luro had given him—silent now—was tucked under his collarbone. And in his satchel, his journal waited, its pages already whispering new names.
He crossed the threshold.
The light bent the moment he stepped in. Shadows thickened under his feet, and the air grew colder. Buildings leaned at wrong angles. Sounds echoed before they were made. Even the glyph-marks carved into the stone from old Scribe patrols flickered like broken code.
"You feel it?" Izen whispered.
Grinless nodded—or maybe it didn't. Its face shifted. Its eyes narrowed.
Then it spoke for the first time that day.
"Something is trying to remember you."
He didn't ask what. He knew.
The Binding had changed more than his strength. It had changed his scent. His echo. His imprint on the world.
He was no longer a ghost.
He was a candle.
And something in the Ashrift wanted to snuff him out.