Lynchie stepped across the threshold, her feet pressing into the shimmering floor that rippled like memory made solid. The door behind her sealed with a soundless pull, as if it too breathed with the chamber's ancient rhythm. The room was dim, yet not dark—lit by glyphs that pulsed in and out of visibility along the walls, their glow synchronized to some invisible heartbeat.
The air was thick with suspended inkdust, fine motes that shimmered and swirled as if drawn toward her. Each breath Lynchie took tingled with cold lucidity. Her thoughts sharpened to a blade. Here, language wasn't written or spoken—it became.
At the center of the chamber, a circular basin of mirrored obsidian reflected not her face, but symbols she didn't yet know. They shifted fluidly, responding to her presence like an eye slowly opening. As she approached, her reflection resolved not as herself, but a silhouette clad in shifting constellations, haloed by unseen moons. Her pulse stuttered.
"This is the Veil," Archivist Vyen said from behind her, his voice subdued. "It shows not who you are—but the shape of your sentence."
"Sentence?" she asked, barely breathing.
"Every soul is a phrase in the language of the First Tongue," he said, stepping beside her. "Most live entire lives never glimpsing their glyph-line. You, however... you are already inked."
The glyphs in the basin coiled suddenly, forming a spiral that pulsed. Lynchie staggered back as a bright syllable flared into visibility, one she'd glimpsed only once before—during the Spiral Wards trial: Sha-Ur-Vael.
She clutched her chest, feeling the glyph burn beneath her skin.
"That glyph..." she said. "It knows me."
Vyen's expression darkened with reverence or fear. "It remembers you."
The basin began to vibrate, and from its depths rose a small obsidian shard, levitating between them. It was faceted, inscribed, and cold with age older than stars. Her reflection vanished from its surface, replaced by... a face.
A face she recognized from dreams. From the rift.
"The glyph remembers," Vyen whispered, voice almost breaking. "But now it wants to be remembered back."
And the shard began to speak.
Not in voice, but in the First Tongue. Straight into her bones.
She fell to her knees. And the room dimmed, as if holding its breath for what came next.