The Quiet Rooms shifted again. The shelves bent, curling into a circle around Seren like ribs closing in. Pages fluttered loose, blank on one side, covered in jagged script on the other. None of the letters matched. They scraped across each other like arguments that never ended.
Seren clutched the Echo Stone in her pouch. The strain in her chest felt heavier now, like silence had settled on her lungs. But the Title she'd carved for herself — Silent Record — burned faint in her mind. Her scraps resisted erasure once. She would test if that cut both ways.
A blank page drifted down, landing on the desk in front of her. The bell above trembled, though no sound came.
The system brushed her skull faintly. She didn't hear words — she felt them. She wrote them down quick:
Rule: Write against the Ledger. Page becomes blade. Cost: Strain bleeds.
Her pencil hovered. She thought of Kael clutching her notes like anchors. She thought of Riven laughing through fear until the shadow listened. They had their weapons. She had hers.
She wrote sharp: This page cuts debt.
The letters glowed, burned bright. The page stiffened in her hand like steel. For a heartbeat, the silence cracked, thin and brittle. She swung the page through the air. The shelves around her shuddered. Names etched on them blurred, then sharpened again.
Her chest seized. The strain doubled, pressing her ribs shut. She nearly dropped the page.
A keeper appeared, stepping from the shelves — taller, face wrapped in gray cloth. His eyes glowed faint. He signed, deliberate: Weapon drawn bleeds both ways. Careful, Record.
Seren's hand trembled, but she held his gaze. She signed back, slow and sharp: Better to bleed than vanish.
The keeper tilted his head, then stepped back into shadow, leaving her with the page still hot in her hand.
She tucked it into her pouch with the rest of her scraps. A blade made of words. It could cut debt, but each swing would tear at her too.
Her pencil scratched one last note: Every word is a wound. But wounds remind you you're alive.
From deep in the Rooms, the gong rolled faint, low as a heartbeat.
BOOOONG.
The shelves rattled. The page in her pouch burned faintly, waiting for its first cut.