"What is written remembers. What is forgotten waits."
Lucien Varro sat in the dim light of the Archive Tower, the obsidian-black notebook open before him. The pages, once blank, now pulsed with inked symbols that shifted when unobserved. He traced a finger over a newly formed sigil—a circle within a triangle, surrounded by thorns.
He recalled the mirror in the Hollow Veins, the fractured reflections, the voice that had spoken without sound. The memory clung to him like damp fog, seeping into his thoughts.
The candle flickered, casting elongated shadows that danced across the walls. Lucien leaned back, the chair creaking beneath him. He closed his eyes, seeking solace in the silence.
But the silence was not empty.
A whisper curled around his mind, soft and insistent.
"Who were you before the silence?"
His eyes snapped open. The notebook's pages fluttered, though there was no breeze. Words etched themselves onto the parchment:
"The path is not forward, but inward. Descent is the only ascent."
Lucien's breath caught. He reached for his pen, but the ink bottle tipped over, spilling its contents. The black liquid spread across the desk, forming patterns reminiscent of the glyphs in the notebook.
He stared, entranced, as the ink coalesced into an image—a door, slightly ajar, with darkness beyond.
The whisper returned, louder this time.
"Open it."
Lucien stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the stone floor with a screech. He wiped the ink off his hands with a rag, but the stains remained—inky tendrils that crept beneath his skin like veins of night.
He stepped away from the desk and approached the large circular window of the Archive Tower. Through the fog-stained glass, he could barely make out the spires of Old Eostera, their silhouettes bent like crooked fingers clawing at the sky.
Below, the city murmured—streets half-buried in fog, lanterns casting orange halos through the gloom, and shadows that moved too smoothly to be human.
He pressed his hand against the cold glass. Somewhere out there, he knew, the Path waited. Forgotten, buried, but never erased. Not entirely.
A flutter of pages behind him made him turn.
The notebook lay closed, but atop it now rested a single white feather, pristine and unreal. It hadn't been there moments ago.
He picked it up.
It was warm.
Before he could ponder further, a knock echoed from the iron door at the base of the Archive Tower.
Three soft taps.
Then silence.
Lucien descended the narrow spiral staircase cautiously, each footstep echoing like a warning. When he reached the base, he paused. The knock came again—this time firmer.
He opened the door.
No one stood there.
Only a letter.
A sealed envelope bearing the symbol he'd seen in his dream: the triangle, the circle, and the thorns. His pulse quickened. He looked around—no footsteps, no carriage, no courier.
He tore the seal and unfolded the letter.
It contained one sentence.
"The Third Veil will part in three nights. Be ready."
No signature. No explanation.
Just the rising certainty in Lucien's bones that something was coming.
Lucien shut the heavy door behind him and returned to the tower's heart, the envelope still in hand. His thoughts churned. The Third Veil. He had read of the Three Veils in esoteric texts—layers of reality that shielded mortal minds from the raw truths of the primordial world.
Few believed in such things now. Fewer still dared to pursue them.
He made his way back up the spiral staircase, each step heavier than the last. In the attic chamber, the notebook remained untouched. But the feather—now blackened and brittle—had begun to flake, as if scorched by invisible fire.
Lucien placed the letter beside the notebook, then opened a hidden drawer beneath the desk. Inside were fragments: torn pages from occult volumes, scraps of forbidden glyphs copied from monuments beneath the city, a silver pendant shaped like an eye within a compass rose.
He selected a torn parchment inscribed in faded crimson ink.
"To part the Veil, one must first accept blindness."
The cryptic line resonated within him. He remembered the distorted reflections in the mirror—the dissonant voice that echoed in no language he knew—and how his own image had smiled back without him.
That night, sleep did not come easily.
He dreamt of a vast library with no walls, its shelves winding into the void. A hooded figure stood before him, face hidden, voice like parchment torn slowly:
"The ink you spill writes not only the world… but your self."
Lucien tried to speak, but his mouth was stitched shut.
When he awoke, the candle had burned down to a puddle of wax, and the tower was cold as a tomb.
The notebook now bore a new page.
Written in his own hand—yet he had no memory of writing it—were the words:
"We are not alone in the writing."
The morning sun bled weakly through the clouds, casting no warmth upon the cold stone of the Archive Tower. Lucien wrapped himself in a thick woolen coat and descended into the city. The fog clung to him like wet silk.
He followed the alleys toward the southern end of Eostera, past crumbling archways and buildings whose windows had long been sealed shut. The city was older here—less touched by modern hands, and far more whisper-prone.
His destination: The Binder's Hollow, a forgotten antiquarian bookshop tucked beneath a collapsed viaduct. It was said to stock volumes lost to the official record—books that had no authors, no dates, and sometimes, no titles.
As he pushed open the creaking wooden door, a bell above chimed—not with a ring, but with a low, resonant hum. The scent of dust and ink rushed to meet him, accompanied by the faint aroma of candle wax and mildew.
An old man emerged from between two towers of books. He wore dark spectacles and gloves stitched with runes.
"You again," he said, voice like dry leaves. "Looking for truths or for trouble, Mr. Varro?"
Lucien smiled thinly. "Both, if possible."
He placed the letter on the counter.
The old man frowned. "The Third Veil. You've caught its scent."
"You know of it?"
"I've survived it." His lips twitched into something between a grin and a grimace. "Few do."
Lucien tapped the counter. "I need something to prepare. A guide. A ritual. Anything."
The old man vanished behind the shelves. A moment later, he returned with a book bound in what looked disturbingly like stitched flesh. No title. Just a seal: the triangle, the circle, the thorns.
Lucien's breath caught.
"You'll pay for this not in coin, but in clarity," the old man warned. "Each page read… replaces something you once understood."
Lucien nodded and took the book.
As he stepped out of the shop, the bell hummed again, and the fog outside felt thicker—as if the very air resisted his path forward.
He did not look back.
Back at the tower, Lucien cleared the desk of its relics and laid the fleshy-bound tome upon the parchment map that had been pinned there for years. He felt the weight of it through his gloves—far heavier than its size suggested, as if the book bore the gravity of thought itself.
He hesitated before opening it.
The first page was blank.
So was the second.
Only on the third did he find ink—strange ink, shimmering faintly, as if refusing to sit still within the parchment's fibers.
"All words are shadows of the True Voice. To read is to let the echo speak through you."
Lucien pressed his fingers to the page. The ink felt… warm.
Suddenly, the tower shuddered.
Not violently—just enough that the hanging lantern above swayed, casting long, crooked shadows across the walls. Lucien turned, but saw no wind, no tremor, no explanation.
And then the whispers returned.
Faint, like murmurs through a closed door.
He turned the page.
Symbols greeted him now—not letters, but writhing marks that seemed to rearrange themselves when stared at too long. A headache bloomed behind his eyes, and he heard a sound, low and steady, like the beating of distant wings.
Lucien blinked, and for a moment, the room was no longer the tower.
He stood on a bridge of ash, suspended above a chasm of stars. Figures stood at its edge, hooded and silent, each holding a quill made of bone. Below, something stirred—a vast presence, coiled in ink and thought.
Then it was gone.
He gasped, back in his chair, the book glowing faintly on the desk.
A new line had appeared:
"You are invited to the First Chamber. Midnight. Come alone. Do not write your name."
Lucien stood, heart pounding. The summons was unmistakable.
The Third Veil awaited.