The shadow straightened from its bow.
Not a creature of smoke. Not illusion. This thing had mass, intent—presence. Though its outline blurred at the edges like a forgotten memory, it moved with elegance. Precision. Every step forward sounded like wind pressed against stone.
It wasn't walking. It was gliding. Each shift of motion, though silent, disturbed the very essence of the air around it, like gravity bending in subtle acknowledgment.
Spandrex remained seated, back rigid, hands trembling just above the parchment. He didn't know whether to stand in greeting or kneel in submission. His mind struggled to categorize the presence—demon, shade, specter, fragment of ancient will? None of those labels held.
The air smelled like scorched vellum.
"You are not of this realm," Spandrex whispered. "Not anymore."
The shadow tilted its head. No face. No mouth. Yet somehow… a voice formed—not heard but impressed directly into Spandrex's thoughts:
"Nor are you."
The glyph on his wrist pulsed again, brighter than before. It wasn't just a mark now—it was a key. An anchor. The light it emitted wasn't radiant; it was deep, like the pulse of a memory trying to claw its way back into the world.
Spandrex swallowed hard. "What are you?"
"A shard of what you buried."
His skin went cold. Not the kind of chill born from wind or temperature, but from history suddenly made present. The kind of cold that reached under the ribs and squeezed the lungs.
"I didn't summon you."
"You remembered me."
The room seemed to darken further. Not from magic, but from meaning. Like reality had dimmed in reverence.
His breath trembled. There was a familiarity in this thing's presence—not a person, not even a being—but a concept. Something he had felt once before, long ago, when scribbling in margins as a child, tracing ancient runes he didn't yet understand.
Spandrex felt the sigils dancing in his memory again—the way he'd drawn them, how they came not from study but instinct.
From inheritance.
"You've been waiting," he said slowly, "for someone to remember."
"For someone to feel."
Its voice had weight now. Emotion? No. Clarity. Truth without explanation. It didn't persuade. It didn't plead. It simply existed in the same way gravity existed—undeniable.
"You were bound," Spandrex said, frowning. "The rune that broke… it wasn't cracked by accident."
The being stepped closer. Its form distorted slightly as it passed through the candlelight—but the flame didn't flicker. Time slowed around its movements, like the world adjusted to let it pass.
"This world silenced its older voices. Buried its wildest words. You are not the first to uncover them."
Spandrex stood now. Slowly. Legs stiff, but his eyes didn't waver.
"But I'm the first in this age to listen."
The shadow inclined its head once more, as if to say: Finally.
There was a knock at the door.
Hard. Repeated. Urgent.
"Spandrex?" It was Mistress Kael.
The shadow vanished like breath exhaled too fast. Gone without wind. The only sign it had ever been there was the way Spandrex's skin prickled, and how the parchment before him now glowed with lines that shimmered faintly silver—then faded into ash.
He opened the door.
Kael stepped inside without waiting. She looked different. Tighter. Her usual composed posture was offset by unease that coiled tightly behind her eyes.
"You felt it too," she said.
Spandrex didn't pretend. "Yes."
Kael looked past him. Her eyes scanned the room, saw the parchment, saw the grey. Her jaw tightened. She didn't need to ask more—she knew.
"You answered something tonight, Spandrex. Not just called it. That's a different kind of magic."
"What kind?" he asked.
Kael's voice lowered. "Sympathetic Evocation. Magic born of resonance. Bond. Feeling. It's older than the language of spellbooks. And far more dangerous."
"But powerful."
"Yes," she admitted. "But power always has a price. Especially when it chooses you."
He hesitated, then asked, "What was it?"
Kael's eyes met his. Her silence was heavy.
Then: "We used to call them bound echoes. Spirits of forgotten glyphs—essences of meaning too old to speak. They sleep in broken sigils, in etched ash, in cursed ink. But when someone like you draws them again…"
"They wake."
Kael nodded once. "And some of them remember everything."
Spandrex looked down at his wrist. The glyph wasn't just ink anymore—it was breathing with him. Living.
That night, sleep refused to come. So he studied.
He redrew the rune. Not just once—but dozens of times. Studying its curves. Its intersections. He cross-referenced it against forbidden scripts Kael discreetly slipped him from her private collection.
Papers surrounded him like offerings. A shrine to old language. His fingers were stained with ink, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless hunger.
He learned the name of the form:
Vehrash-Kail.
An extinct variant of Shadow Sigil used by early Writemancers to house volatile spirits, not bind them. Not control—but offer form.
Glyphs were never meant to contain.
They were meant to invite.
As the sky outside lightened with dawn, Spandrex held up his hand. The glyph glowed in answer, dim but undeniable.
Then, without speaking, he raised his other hand—and from the floor, the shadow returned.
Silent.
Waiting.
No longer bound.
But allied.
Spandrex whispered, "What do I call you?"
The air around the shadow rippled.
"The name I had is lost. But I was once called the First Vehrash."
Spandrex stared. "The first?"
"Yes. And perhaps… not the last."
The sun rose over the Academy.
But deep inside, in the corners of things language forgot, something old had risen too.
And it had a vessel now.