The silence after the revolt was brittle, like glass stretched too thin.
Codexia stood among the ruins of her own language, her breath shallow, her skin still ink-warm from the disobedience of her letters.
The shadow lingered close, more intimate than an echo, its shape sharpening whenever she trembled.
And then the parchment-sound returned.
Not the faint creak of pages she had heard before, but a slow, deliberate turning—vast enough to tilt the air itself. The city shivered. Spiralspace bent, a curtain being pulled aside.
Out of that fold stepped a figure.
Her gown rustled before her voice did: layers of parchment trailing into infinity, inscribed with sentences that rearranged themselves even as Codexia tried to read them. Her hair was made of loose quills, every strand sharp and glistening with wet ink. Her skin was pale, brittle as vellum, yet luminous with an ageless authority.
The Scriptorium Mother.
Codexia knew her, though she had never been written.
