The Hall of Records did not sleep.
It cycled.
Lyrae learned that on her second night inside.
Light dimmed and brightened in slow, regulated pulses, synchronized with the turning of the massive stone tablets suspended above the central chamber. Script rearranged itself constantly—names sliding, events compressing, entire wars shrinking into footnotes.
History breathing.
Lyrae moved where shadows failed to align.
She wore no uniform, no sigil, no authority. Just ink-stained gloves and a thin slate pressed tight against her chest, its surface crawling with half-stable glyphs.
Every step she took was a crime.
She reached the first archive node and paused.
The tablet before her shimmered, sensing proximity.
Lyrae exhaled and placed her palm against it.
"Query," she whispered. "Unrecorded anomaly. Cross-reference by absence."
The slate in her hand heated sharply.
Script bloomed across the tablet—then fractured, characters folding inward, collapsing into unreadable smears.
Lyrae smiled grimly.
Still incompatible.
She moved deeper.
Aerun counted breaths.
It was the only way to measure time in the cell.
Inhale.Hold.Exhale.
The correction lines along the walls pulsed faintly with each cycle, reacting to the smallest shifts in his posture. If he stood too long, pressure accumulated. If he lay down, the air thinned.
Balanced discomfort.
Footsteps stopped outside his cell.
A slot opened in the door.
Food slid through. Water.
Aerun did not move.
"Sentinel," a voice said.
Not Talrek's.
A woman's. Calm. Precise.
"You are being petitioned."
Aerun lifted his head slightly. "By whom?"
"By the Chorus," she replied. "Through intermediaries."
"I didn't know gods needed permission."
A pause.
"They don't," the woman said. "But you do."
Aerun closed his eyes.
"What do they want?" he asked.
"They want you to speak," she said. "Publicly. One sentence."
He laughed quietly. "And if I don't?"
"Then villages like the one you left will continue to be… misunderstood."
Silence followed.
The woman leaned closer to the door.
"You can stop this," she said. "One statement acknowledging divine authority."
Aerun met the door's narrow slit.
"You already control history," he said. "Why do you need my voice?"
Another pause.
Longer.
"Because," the woman said finally, "your silence is spreading."
The slot closed.
Lyrae reached the restricted tier just before dawn.
Here, the tablets did not float.
They were embedded.
Locked into the walls themselves, etched with layers of divine seal-work that hurt to look at directly. This was where revisions were finalized. Where truth stopped resisting.
Lyrae knelt, heart pounding.
She pulled a narrow stylus from her boot—old, illegal, carved from a material the gods had stopped accounting for long ago.
Bone.
She pressed it to the stone.
Nothing happened.
Then—
The script recoiled.
Lines blurred. Seals wavered.
Lyrae swallowed hard and began to write.
Not names.
Relationships.
Village → ErasedSentinel → RemovedCorrection → Applied
She scratched one new line beneath it.
Cause → Fear
The tablet shuddered violently.
Lyrae gasped as pressure slammed into her chest, forcing the air from her lungs. The stylus cracked, splintering in her grip.
Alarms began to ring.
Not sound—
Alignment.
She ripped the slate from her chest and slapped it against the tablet.
"Hold," she whispered.
The slate flared white-hot.
Script froze.
For one breathless moment, history stopped moving.
Lyrae smiled through the pain.
"Found you."
Aerun felt it.
A tremor—not in the walls, but in the idea of them.
The pressure shifted.
The cell's geometry faltered.
Aerun pushed himself to his feet, heart hammering.
Somewhere above him, something had gone wrong.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor.
Talrek Vos appeared at the threshold moments later, breath quick, composure fractured for the first time.
"What did she do?" Talrek demanded.
Aerun met his gaze. "You should ask what you erased."
Talrek's jaw tightened.
"You don't understand the scale of this."
"I do," Aerun said. "You're afraid people will notice."
Talrek laughed once, sharp and humorless. "People notice nothing unless we tell them to."
Aerun stepped closer to the door.
"Then why are you here?" he asked.
Talrek stared at him.
Because something was wrong.
Lyrae ran.
Not away.
Deeper.
The slate burned her hands, glyphs tearing themselves apart as they tried—and failed—to stabilize.
She skidded to a halt as figures stepped into her path.
Archivist guards. Real ones.
"Stop," one ordered.
Lyrae raised the slate.
"I wouldn't," she warned.
They lunged.
The slate detonated.
Not with force—but with clarity.
For an instant, every tablet in the Hall displayed the same phrase:
CAUSE → FEAR
Then the system screamed.
Aerun dropped to one knee as the cell's pressure collapsed.
The warmth at his back surged—not violently, not freely—but recognizing.
Talrek staggered, grabbing the doorframe.
"What have you done?" he whispered.
Aerun looked up slowly.
"I stayed silent," he said.
Somewhere far above, Lyrae screamed—not in pain—
In triumph.