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Chapter 9 - Grinless Doesn’t Laugh Anymore

He came back different.

No one said it. But they knew.

The guards at the gate to Sanctum Virides didn't meet his eyes. The glyph-reader faltered when it scanned his thread. The stone doors didn't hum with recognition like before. They creaked open with unease. Like the Sanctum was asking itself:

> Is this still him?

Izen didn't answer. Because he wasn't sure either.

---

The hallway to his cell felt longer.

Not physically—psychologically.

The walls whispered now. Not with echo-ink or ghosts or memories, but with silence too precise. Too structured.

Every step he took felt recorded.

He reached his cell. Opened the door.

And stopped.

Grinless was crouched in the far corner.

Unmoving. Shadow-thin.

And for the first time since binding him, Izen felt nothing.

No mental link. No echo-thread.

No presence.

Just... a silhouette.

"Grinless?"

No answer.

He stepped closer.

The ink-shadow didn't respond. Didn't shift. Didn't ripple.

It wasn't frozen.

It was hollow.

He knelt. Reached a hand toward the edge.

"Don't," said a voice from the hallway.

The masked man stepped inside, robes dusted with ash. His mask was new again—third one this month. But his voice was the same. Calm. Controlled. Tired.

"I tried to warn you," he said. "Duskwane changed you. It changed your echo."

Izen looked at him. "What happened to him?"

"He's unraveling."

"That's not possible. He's echo-bound. My anchor."

"Not anymore."

The man crossed his arms.

"Echoes are mirrors, Reaver. And when you let yours walk into a place like that, sometimes it doesn't come back with the same reflection."

Izen stood slowly.

"But I felt him, before I left. He was fine."

"Then what did you bring back with you?"

Izen turned to the shadow again.

Grinless wasn't gone.

He was watching.

But not through his old link. Not through echo-sight.

Through something else.

A second presence.

A second anchor.

And it didn't feel like him.

It felt like Callow.

---

He didn't sleep.

Again.

He sat on the cot, turning the old journal in his hands.

The pages had stopped shifting. The bleeding ink had dried. It looked… tame.

Too tame.

He opened it.

Blank.

Every page.

Even the ones that had shown Sovereign glyphs.

Gone.

"What are you hiding?" he whispered.

Then a laugh came from the corner.

Not mocking.

Shaky.

He turned.

Grinless had moved.

Not much—just an inch.

But that was enough.

The ink-shadow raised its hand and pointed.

To the wall.

Izen followed the finger.

There, carved into the stone, was a line of ink—not glyphs. Not writing.

Just scratches.

But he recognized the shape.

It was a phrase from Sovereign combat-code.

> "We are not alone."

Izen stepped back.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Grinless didn't answer.

He just smiled.

But it wasn't his smile.

It was Izen's.

He hadn't carved the mark on the wall.

He was sure of it.

Izen had trained to remember every glyph his fingers ever traced. Echo-precision was drilled into Reavers from day one. If you forgot your own shadows, you died.

But the mark was there. Fresh. Clean. Scratched by his tools.

And it wasn't just writing anymore.

It was growing.

Each day, another line appeared beside it. Sometimes vertical. Sometimes angular. Sometimes slanted like a broken jaw.

By the third day, it wasn't a mark.

It was a face.

Unfinished. Eyeless. Half-drawn.

But it looked like him.

And it was smiling.

---

"Grinless," he said, "Talk to me."

The shadow curled tighter in the corner.

It hadn't laughed since returning.

But now… it was whispering.

Not to Izen.

To the wall.

He placed a binding glyph in the air, snapping an echo-tether between them.

It fizzled.

Not blocked. Not resisted.

Refused.

The connection failed because Grinless didn't recognize the signal.

He rose, pacing.

Something was rewriting his anchor.

Was it Duskwane? The glyph beneath the chapel? That reflection?

Or was it him?

No. Not him.

Not anymore.

Callow.

The name that lived under his skin now. The Sovereign word the Null-echo had spoken. A title etched in ink deeper than language.

He had to know more.

And there was only one place in the Sanctum where forbidden echoes were kept:

The Stain Vault.

---

That night, he broke in.

It wasn't hard.

The masked man had left the sigil wards weak—deliberately. Like he'd known Izen would come.

The Vault's door pulsed with layered bindings, flickering with dead languages. Inside, the air tasted of copper and memory. The floor was littered with sealed jars and scrolls. Echo-shards floated in crystal, glowing faintly.

And at the center, nailed into a stone plinth:

A mask.

Cracked. Burned. Sovereign-style.

Its surface was etched with one word.

Callow.

The same design from Duskwane.

Izen stepped closer.

The ink on his arm pulsed in response.

The journal in his pocket grew warm.

Then the room changed.

He wasn't in the Vault anymore.

He was somewhere else.

A place made of echo.

A memory, but not his.

The world was grayscale. Blurred at the edges like paper soaked in water.

He stood at the center of a courtyard made of glass and ink. Stone pillars rose around him, and in front—kneeling—was a man wearing the same mirror-armor the reflection in Duskwane had worn.

But this wasn't a reflection.

This was the original.

He spoke.

Not in sound—but in binding pulse.

> "If the Reaver fails, we fracture.

If the fracture opens, we remember.

If we remember, we end."

The sky above him cracked.

> "Seal me with name.

Burn the name.

Hide the ink.

Forget the Reaver."

And then—

He looked at Izen.

And smiled.

---

The memory shattered.

Izen fell backward, breath caught, chest tight.

He was back in the Vault.

The mask was gone.

But carved into the stone now was a date.

Four hundred years ago.

The same day Lyrell had founded the Sanctum.

And below it, one word.

Scrawled in fresh ink, though no hand had moved.

"Hello."

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