The knocks came again. Once a hollow thud like an empty heart clenching in the dark. Twice a dull crack as if the wall itself was trying to remember a name it had forgotten. Kael froze. Soulquill trembled in his hand, its ink trembling like a wounded pulse.
Behind him, Tessa sat leaning against the cracked gate. Her eyes were fixed, distant, pupils wide as if watching a phantom parade. "Kael…" she whispered, voice thin as smoke. "They're calling us back."
He stepped closer to the wall, breathing shallow. The glow of its fissures was brighter now threads of red light pumping like blood through stone veins. Kael raised Soulquill and pressed its tip against the marble. He tried to write a command:"Silence." But the quill refused. The ink turned to ash the moment it touched the wall, crumbling into cold dust.
A third knock louder this time, brimming with regret. Kael's heart pounded. He looked to Tessa. Her jaw moved, but no sound emerged. Then, in her voice thin, fractured came words that were not hers: "Do not open. You are not the first."
Kael's skin tightened. A memory no, a premonition skipped through his mind:He saw the gate open on its own, revealing darkness deeper than any Archive vault. And somebody someone wearing his face stepping through with quiet purpose.
The pressure built. Kael clutched Soulquill like a lifeline. Images flashed behind his eyelids: A version of himself, grinning as ink dripped from his cheek like tears. A choir of voiceless echoes, their mouths agape in endless scream. A single candle flickering atop a mound of unread pages. He blinked them away. Reality stung.
He turned to Tessa. Her hands had fallen to her lap, fingers entwined in the red thread. It pulsed in her grip, humming a sorrowful tune."Tessa, what" He swallowed, voice thick. "Who spoke through you?" She shook her head, eyes clearing for a heartbeat. "It… sounded like me." "But deeper. Older." "Like regret made flesh."
Her words hung between them as the wall groaned again. "I think… it wants us back there." "To remember why it was sealed."
Kael forced himself forward. Each step echoing in the corridor,as if announcing his trespass. He raised his free hand and touched the glowing crack. A jolt of warmth rushed up his arm. Not comforting. Insistent urging him to listen. "Who are you?" Kael whispered. "Why do you call me?"
No answer. Only the pulse beneath his palm,like a heartbeat borrowed from something that once lived.
Another knock...the final one...heavy as a verdict.
This time, the gate shuddered. One shard of stone collapsed inward,revealing a slit of looming darkness. Through the gap, Kael felt a presence a weight of memory that pressed against his chest,demanding to be freed.
He swallowed hard, voice steady despite his racing heart. "We… we're listening." The slit widened. A breath of stale air spilt out, carrying the faint scent of old ink and rain. Kael raised Soulquill once more, balanced on the edge of fear and defiance."Show us."
The darkness exhaled. And for a fleeting moment,Kael thought he heard the pen whisper back:"Welcome home."
The slit in the gate remained open just wide enough for a breath to escape,but not wide enough for Kael to see who was breathing. He stared into it, eyes straining through the inky blackness. No face. No movement. Only a sound. A hum. Low. Gentle. Like someone… singing without hope. And it was humming a melody Kael felt
in his spine. Not because he'd heard it before but because it felt like his own voice, forgotten.
Tessa stirred behind him. She hadn't fully regained consciousness but her lips were moving again. This time, not in words…but in notes. Soft, broken notes. As if she were remembering a lullaby she'd never been taught,yet one that had watched her grow. Kael turned to her. A tear slid from her closed eye. "Tessa… what are you remembering?"
"Or who?"
The air grew heavier. And then, the Archive shifted. The walls trembled subtly, like a great breath was inhaled and held. Then...above them the ceiling cracked. A thin fracture split the sky. Pages loose, ancient, and blank began to fall like snow. Kael caught one. No ink. No name. Just a faint imprint burned into its surface: "Version: XIII"
Kael's heart twisted. "No… that's not possible." There were only twelve Archivists. Always twelve. Even the original songkeepers said so. Unless..Unless there was one more. One they erased. One who was never meant to be read.
He gripped Soulquill tightly. The pen vibrated, as if trying to tear free from his grip. He looked down And saw something forming in his own handwriting on the cold stone floor. He hadn't written it. But it was his script. "I remember the day they deleted me."
Kael stumbled back. "Who are you?" The humming inside the gate rose in pitch. A second voice joined it.
Then a third. All humming the same song. A song with no words. A song full of mourning. And as Kael listened…he realized something terrifying. They were all humming in his voice.
Tessa suddenly gasped. She sat up, eyes wide with shock. "He's not behind the gate," she said. "He's inside you." Kael turned slowly, trembling. "Who?" She looked directly into his eyes. "The version you forgot." "The one they cut out of you to make you… safe." Kael's pulse thundered in his ears.
Soulquill burned in his palm. It scrawled another line on the ground: "You're not the original."
Kael took a step back. The ink at his feet didn't dry. It grew. Bled in slow spirals, forming shapes he didn't recognize but somehow understood. Not words. Not sentences. But memories. Memories that hadn't happened. Memories that shouldn't exist. And yet…his body remembered the weight of the blood,the way the floor once cracked beneath his own rage.
Tessa clutched the red thread in her palms. "Kael… whatever that thing is behind the gate it's not locked away from you." She looked up, fear carving every syllable. "It's waiting for you to open yourself." Kael shook his head. "I'm not some weapon." "I was never meant to" But Soulquill cut him off. The pen rose in the air on its own,hovered before him,and stabbed downward. Not into flesh. Into stone.
With a sound like a scream drowned in parchment,the floor peeled open. Not physically. But memory-wise. Kael's vision split eyes wide as two realities collided in his mind.
He stood in a different place. Same robes. Same hand. Same quill. But the face staring back at him from the broken glass? Not his. The eyes were colder. The smile too calm. The silence around him didn't wait to be broken...it commanded everything to kneel.
A whisper echoed through the chamber: "Archivist XIII…" And Kael...that Kael...nodded.
Kael tore himself free from the vision, gasping. Sweat beaded down his neck. He stumbled backward and fell to his knees."That wasn't me""I would never" But Soulquill wasn't listening. It circled him now. Drawing symbols into the ground. Echoes of rewritten glyphs. Not Archive-approved. But Nullborn-coded. Unstable. Truthful.
Tessa knelt beside him. "Kael… listen to me." "Whoever they erased… he's part of you." "He's bleeding through now because your soul is cracked wide open." Kael clenched his fists, voice hoarse. "Then why can't I remember?" "Why does it feel like I'm the copy?"
The final sentence inked itself in glowing red before him. No quill touched it. No hand wrote it. But it appeared. As if the page had waited centuries to say one thing: "Because you are."
A silence fell over the room. Not empty. Not peaceful. But loaded. Like the breath between a scream and its echo. Kael stood slowly. Looked at the gate. The crack had closed. But the hum remained inside his veins now. Soulquill lowered itself into his palm. Heavy. Willing. Alive.
He whispered one line into the dark: "Then who the hell am I?"
From the still air, a voice his voice, not his own answered: "You're the second draft."