The ink in the Hall of Records began to fade.
It started with a single name — Calyra — vanishing from the enrollment scrolls. Then the class rosters shifted. Then the tower maps redrew themselves. The fifth tower blurred at the edges.
Headmistress Virelle stood in the center of the archive, her hands glowing with containment magic.
"This is not censorship," she whispered. "It's correction."
The Ritual of Revision
She summoned the Archivists — silent figures stitched from parchment and ink. They moved without sound, rewriting scrolls, resealing mirrors, reweaving the emotional threads that held the school's memory together.
Professor Umbra watched from the shadows. "You're erasing truth."
Virelle didn't look up. "I'm preserving order."
The Resistance
But memory resists.
The koi pond refused to clear.
The cracked mirrors whispered Calyra's fragments.
Students began dreaming in her voice.
And the book in Lyra's dorm pulsed violently.
> "She is not gone. She is embedded."
The Stitched Ones Respond
Lyra gathered the others.
Nova. Maris. Zephyr. Cassian. Juno. Corvin.
They met in the Whisper Theatre, now dimmed and trembling.
"She's rewriting the school," Lyra said.
Nova nodded. "But the school remembers."
Zephyr murmured, "Then we must anchor the truth."
The Anchoring
Each stitched one took a fragment of Calyra's message and embedded it into the school:
- Nova whispered "Grief is architecture" into the Reflection Pool.
- Maris etched "Emotion is the oldest magic" into the Dream Lab walls.
- Zephyr placed "I did not vanish. I was overwritten" beneath the Obsidian Tower's foundation.
- Lyra stitched "The stitched ones are keys" into the velvet of her own robe.
The school pulsed.
The mirrors shimmered.
The fifth tower hummed.
The Book Again
That night, the book wrote:
> "You cannot erase what has been felt. You can only delay its return."
Maris whispered, "She's still here."
Lyra nodded. "And we're still listening."