The ash-warriors closed in. Their blades scraped against one another as they lifted, a circle of smoke and ruin. The Librarian stood behind them, chains clinking softly as he raised his head, waiting for the moment the page would break.
The young man wrote.
My body remembers the shape of defense.
The quill hissed across parchment. Heat surged—his arms tingled, muscles bracing as if instinct had been carved into them.
New Skill: [Reflex Guard] — The body mimics the memory of defense.
The first ash-blade fell. His arm moved before he thought, Chronicle clutched against his ribs, free hand snapping up in a guard he had never learned. The strike glanced aside. Sparks flew.
Another blade thrust. He twisted, parried with nothing but forearm and momentum, breath steadying him. Every block bled embers from the attackers' bodies, as if each clash burned them thinner.
But they did not stop. They could not. Their borrowed flesh crumbled even as they fought, and still they pressed forward.
The Archivist's voice cut through the din. "He is forcing you to bleed your lines. Hold back. Too many, too fast, and you will burn."
He gritted his teeth. Already the Chronicle's margin was warm against his palm. Every line was heat, every stroke of the quill a bargain.
The Librarian lifted one of his chained books and snapped it open. The ash around the chamber rippled, and from it rose another shape—not a warrior this time, but a towering figure cloaked in smoke, its hands ending in hooked claws. It roared, the sound hollow, and lurched toward him.
The young man's lungs stuttered. His quill hovered. He couldn't fight this many. He needed—something else.
A memory brushed him. Not his own, but the fragment of Ema Karr he had once borrowed. The way her knife had flashed in a stairwell, precise and merciless. He felt the angle in his wrist, the pressure in his grip.
He set the quill. Ash remembers the cut it once made.
The page burned, ink flaring white-hot before sinking.
New Skill: [Ash Echo] — Summons a fleeting memory of a strike once written.
His hand moved, and from the air itself a blade of gray fire took shape. He slashed, and the strike was hers—the forgotten girl's, sharp as regret. The ash-warrior before him split from shoulder to hip, scattering in a hiss of cinders.
For a heartbeat, silence rang. Then the others shrieked, a chorus of hollow hunger.
The Librarian's voice rumbled. "You dare steal the dead to stand against me?"
He lifted his chain. One of the tomes blazed. A strand of ash coiled from it, snapping toward the Chronicle in the young man's hand. He jerked back, but the tendril lashed across the page. Words bled, letters smearing, and a sudden coldness stabbed into him.
He gasped. A line was gone.
Trait Lost: [Swift Step]
His knees buckled. The instinct to dart, to dodge—that quicksilver grace—was ripped away as if it had never existed. He staggered under the absence, hollow in a way no wound had ever made him.
The Librarian's masked head tilted. "Yes. Every word you dare write, I can unwrite. And when you are empty again, you will be mine."
"No—" He gripped the Chronicle harder, heart pounding against its cover. "This is mine."
The ash-giant lunged, claws tearing chunks from the floor. He barely rolled aside, slower now, the absence of speed a weight dragging him down. He landed hard, ash choking his breath.
The Archivist called sharply: "You must trade higher! Risk deeper! Or you will drown beneath him!"
He swallowed blood. Risk deeper. He felt the Chronicle's heat against his chest, a living furnace begging for words. His mind screamed that he would burn—but his body moved, quill poised.
He wrote: Ash cuts with me—but cuts me too.
Pain blossomed immediately, scorching across his arms as if fire had bitten into flesh. But in his hands, the blade of ash lengthened, solid, humming like memory itself.
New Skill: [Ashblade: Shared Edge] — Wounds mirror between wielder and target.
The giant swung. He roared and slashed upward. The blade met claw—and where it bit into the ash-flesh, the same wound tore across his own arm, blood spilling. But the giant's claw split to the elbow, ash howling as it staggered.
He screamed with it, pain doubling, fire and blood at once. But he stayed standing.
The Librarian hissed. "You will destroy yourself."
"Maybe," he spat, blood on his teeth. "But not for you."
He lunged again. The [Ashblade] cut another warrior apart, both of them scattering in twin ruin—him with another gash, the creature reduced to nothing. One by one he carved them, wounds stacking, every strike paid for in his own blood. His body shook, but the Chronicle glowed brighter with each exchange, alive with his refusal.
Finally only the giant remained. He and the ash-colossus faced one another, both bleeding—one of blood, one of cinder. He lifted the blade with both hands, breath ragged, and whispered through cracked lips: "I will not vanish."
He struck. So did it. Their blows met, and the shared wound ripped them both open. Ash exploded into a storm. He fell to one knee, coughing, the blade shattering in his hands.
When the storm cleared, the giant was gone.
The Librarian stood alone, chains smoldering. His mask tilted, unreadable. For a long moment, the silence held.
Then the Librarian spoke, low and sharp. "You are costlier than I thought. Very well. Survive a little longer. The Archive itself will tire of you."
He snapped his tomes shut. The chains rattled, and his figure bled into smoke, vanishing into the dome's shadows.
The chamber rang with stillness once more.
The young man collapsed to both knees, Chronicle pressed against his chest. His wounds burned, blood spattering the ash. The page within glowed faintly, alive, whispering heat.
The Archivist approached, skirts whispering, quill still. She looked down at him not with triumph, nor relief, but something sharper—something that tasted of awe and unease.
"You bled yourself into the Archive," she said softly. "And it answered. That… is not supposed to be possible."
He raised his head. "I—what does that mean?"
But before she could answer, the Chronicle shifted in his grip. Letters seared themselves onto the first page, unbidden. A single line, half-burned, half-clear.
Once, you stood on the edge of the old world, and it fell with you.
His breath caught. Not a line he had written. A line that had always been there, waiting.
A fragment of his past.
The Archivist's eyes widened, ink-dark and knowing. "Your blankness is not blank at all."
The line faded into the page, leaving only heat behind. He clutched the book tighter, a chill crawling through him.
The atrium stank of cinders and blood. His wounds throbbed with each heartbeat. And somewhere in the depths of the Archive, the Librarian's chains rattled, echoing like a promise.
The duel was not over. It had only just begun.