The door was wrong.
It wasn't built, but remembered. Shaped not by tools, but by belief. Bone and blackstone intertwined like roots, veins glowing faintly with coiled red sigils. There was no handle only a whisper stitched into the frame, flickering between tongues.
Kaelen's Wyrdmark pulsed as the glyph burned into his chest reacted.
The Master raised a hand but didn't follow.
"This door leads to your first myth-trial. It will not test your strength. It will test your certainty."
"You must carve a truth into death itself. Or you will be unmade."
Kaelen nodded, every step feeling heavier than the last. The Master's voice followed him:
"And do not speak a name unless you wish to become it."
Darkness swallowed him.
Then light. But not fire. Not sun.
The space lit from beneath. Faint, red-glowing symbols threaded beneath glasslike floors. Thorned vines wrapped the walls, each covered in runes. Thousands of them. Whispering.
Each vine pulsed with life not blood, but memory.
And in the center, a stone basin.
Inside it: A flame.
Still. Cold. Black.
Kaelen stepped toward it, instinct pulling him closer. The flame hissed — not heat, but history.
And then the trial began.
A voice boomed—not from the flame, but from inside Kaelen's thoughts.
"You must name yourself."
Kaelen clenched his fists. "I already have a name."
"That name is echo. The Wyrd wants the shape of your soul, not your scars."
"Speak a truth. Burn a lie. Carve your self."
Kaelen stepped forward. The basin reacted the black flame shuddering, stretching upward.
A glyph burst from his chest the one the Master gave him:𓂀 - the Sigil of the Memory-Bound Flame.
The air warped.
Kaelen's body began to react.
🜂 His senses sharpened. He could hear the vines breathing.🜁 His emotions stilled. Panic became memory.🜃 When he blinked, flickers of Auren's laugh, their training, the way he smiled even when injured — they flooded him.
And then it changed his body:
His blood slowed, making wounds clot instantly.
His pain became focus. The more grief he felt, the sharper his reflexes.
He could burn memories as fuel, casting pieces of his soul into motion.
But each use… permanently scars something real.
This is the cost of Soul Glyphs. They're not power. They're sacrifice.
Kaelen stepped into the circle.
One word burned across the basin:Vel'ithraen.
He didn't speak it. He felt it.
It meant:
"To name a wound, and make it whole."
The ancient language wasn't spoken aloud. It was felt, carved into memory, emotion, regret.
Here's how it works:
🜍 Runes - Single-stroke carvings. Base units. Easy to shape, quick to burn.
🜏 Sigils - Layered truths. Multiple meanings. Must be felt, not spoken.
🜐 Utterances - Full myth-fragments. Dangerous. When spoken with belief, they alter fate.
Each Wyrdbinder learns to "carry" a few of each but most go mad before they can master even one full utterance.
Kaelen reached toward the flame. His voice shook.
"I… I carry the memory of what I failed."
The flame responded.
"Not enough."
Images tore through the chamber his memories of Auren burning, screaming, falling. But they weren't real. They were twisted.
His hands shaking. Letting go. Laughing. Becoming Sanctum.
Kaelen collapsed, clutching his head.
"NO!"
"What part of you wants this power, Kaelen?"
He screamed. "I want to bring him BACK!"
And that was the truth.
Not justice. Not revenge.
Love.
The black flame surged.
It wrapped around him like a second skin, searing runes into his back not painlessly, but permanently.
And then it spoke in his own voice:
"Then burn. For every step you take now will cost the part of you that loved him."
Kaelen stood as the chamber opened.
He had passed the trial.
But he felt colder.
Not because of the flame. But because he now knew what he was willing to give up.
Back in the Archive, the Master turned sharply.
A second door opened. One he did not summon.
The same bone-veined stone. But this one bled.
Kaelen stepped through, eyes dim. Changed.
The Master whispered:
"The myth writes back."
And on the wall behind them, a new Utterance began to carve itself into reality:
"The Ghost Who Burns Without Name."