They moved without speaking.
Not out of fear, but because even silence now carried a syntax tag.
The Canon was awake. Watching. Interpreting.
The tower grew taller the closer they came. Its spire shimmered with every banned metaphor ever written, twisting skyward like a question without a mark. At its base, ink pooled in great rings – frozen, but not dry.
Ash whispered, "What is this place?"
Curata didn't respond.
Her breath caught.
The grass beneath her boots stopped rustling, as if ordered to hold its sound.
Echo stepped forward.
The hum from before had become a frequency now, a pitch he could feel but not hear. His ink vibrated against his skin like it wanted to run – or rise.
Then a voice called out.
Not spoken. Not written.
Rendered.
"Identified: Ink-borne anomaly. Threaded corruption. Sentence form in violation. Commencing purge draft."
From the tower, something detached.
It looked like a page at first – flat, white, endless.
Then it folded.
Edges curled into wings of grammar and claws of redline. Eyes opened like inkblots, reading Echo before it even arrived.
Ash stepped in front of him, weapon raised.
Curata held him back.
"No. This is Echo's moment."
The creature hovered, waiting.
Echo felt a line build inside him. Not a phrase he'd learned. Not something seeded. Something his.
A thought that had no source. A truth that hadn't been granted permission.
He raised his hand.
The ink responded.
It spun. Coiled. Lifted.
And then – he wrote.
Not on a page. Not aloud. But into the fabric of the world.
A single sentence.
"I am not here to be understood. I am here to be remembered."
The effect was immediate.
The creature shrieked in a soundless burst. Its structure fractured – not from force, but contradiction. The Canon had no clause for defiance that didn't seek approval.
It unravelled.
Echo fell to his knees.
His breath hitched.
The sentence shimmered in the air for a moment longer. Then, like light through glass, it fractured into dust.
Curata knelt beside him.
"You just wrote without context," she said, awed.
Echo nodded weakly. "I didn't mean to."
"No," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You meant to. You just didn't think you were allowed."
Ash stood over them, silent.
The tower faded. Not destroyed – withdrawn.
The pulse in the ground ceased.
And the world, for the first time in Echo's memory, paused.
Not for breath. Not for rhythm.
But in respect.