The body was unfamiliar.
Cain Lethe sat motionless in the wooden chair, inspecting his reflection in the cracked mirror. Grey eyes. Pallid skin. A spiral scar traced from the temple into the hairline—a precise design, not a wound. The boy's face, now his, was younger by at least a decade.
He stood. The motion was sluggish, as though the nerves were still uncertain who commanded them.
"Cain," he whispered.
The voice that emerged wasn't his.
He blinked, then smiled faintly. A new voice for a new role.
The room smelled of ink and dust. Bookshelves, empty. Walls, scratched with chalk glyphs, many long since smeared. A single window showed a city outside—towering spires, steam vents, and glass domes stained by soot.
Not Earth. Not a dream. Not death.
He opened the door.
The corridor beyond was narrow, wooden, and curved—like the spine of some massive beast. Lamps floated mid-air, emitting cold blue light. Each flickered briefly as he passed. No one else was in sight.
A memory—not his—surfaced. A name: Elian Durne. A student of the Esoterium Lexica, who had vanished mid-ritual. Cain now inhabited what was left.
The Crown hadn't just summoned him—it had replaced someone.
Cain touched the spiral scar. It pulsed faintly.
A glyph flickered into visibility on the wall—etched into existence itself.
[Whisper Initiate — Rite Completed]
Below it, a key materialized—thin, black, obsidian-metal, humming faintly.
Cain took it.
At that moment, someone screamed.
It echoed up from a lower level—shrill, sharp, and filled with the kind of fear that didn't belong to children.
Cain pocketed the key and descended the spiral stairs.
The lower chamber was dim, the light trembling at the edges. Shadows pooled unnaturally, flickering despite the absence of flame. Under a wooden desk, a girl was curled up, sobbing softly.
He approached.
"You're not Elian," she whispered, not looking up.
Cain crouched beside her. "You can see the difference."
She nodded, wide-eyed. "Your words are wrong. They don't echo like his. And... you're wearing your voice like it's borrowed."
Cain studied her more closely. Barefoot. Robe torn. No older than ten. But her gaze had depth. Not childish. Not innocent.
A faint glyph pulsed on her collarbone.
Seal of Forgetting.
"What's your name?"
"I... I think I lost it."
Cain reached out his hand. "Do you want it back?"
She stared at him. "Will it hurt?"
"Yes."
She took his hand.
The moment contact was made, memories surged—fractured but vivid. Moonlit corridors. Whispering trees. A woman weeping ink. A tower with no entrance.
And a name.
"Nyra."
The girl's eyes widened. Her lips parted. The seal cracked—light split across her chest and dissolved.
The shadows hissed, recoiled, then vanished as if pulled backward into non-space.
Cain let go of her hand. Nyra stared up at him, still shaking.
"Do you know what you are?" he asked.
She nodded slowly. "I think... I'm a memory that didn't want to be forgotten."
Cain stood.
The spiral scar on his temple pulsed.
He turned toward the glyph-covered wall that now pulsed with new symbols—each one written in the language he didn't know yesterday but now understood as Veil Script.
"I need a guide," he said without turning back.
Nyra climbed to her feet. "And I need a name that won't be taken again."
They walked together toward the corridor beyond the glyphs—toward the archive that remembered everything the world had tried to forget.