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The journal lay silent—too silent.
For the first time since Kael had touched it, not a single page moved of its own will. Yet the room around him breathed, a low hush exhaled from the shelves like old lungs remembering how to whisper.
He lit a candle with trembling fingers and turned the book's blood-speckled pages. Near the center, one leaf refused to turn—its edges sealed like flesh stitched shut by a hand that feared its own truth.
Kael pressed, and the seam cracked.
A cold wind burst from within the pages, extinguishing the flame.
Ink lit up in the dark. Crimson letters surged across the parchment in a script far too familiar. His own handwriting.
REWRITE COMPLETE — CYCLE 962, MIDWINTER THIRTEENTH.
PRIMARY SUBJECT: KAEL'ITH VARION.
DIRECTIVE: ERASE THE FIRST INK. REPLACE WITH THE LIE.
Kael's pulse raced. Cycle? What cycle? He had no memory of anything remotely like this. Midwinter Thirteenth—three years ago, he had been just a novice copying hymns for a silent church.
MEMORY SEVERANCE: SUCCESSFUL.
MONITOR INSTALLED: "EYE OF EDICT."
He remembered the reflection—the blinking ink. It hadn't been a hallucination. It was a device… watching him for himself.
A whisper rippled through the journal, like a breath leaking from an ancient tomb:
"You wrote over the truth once. You can't do it again. The Hollow Scribe is stirring."
Kael stumbled back. The Hollow Scribe? He had never heard the name, yet it pressed on his thoughts like a memory held under water.
Then, a sheet slid from the book's core—thin, cracked, trembling. It read:
THE CLAUSE OF THE HOLLOW SCRIBE
There were no instructions. Just a symbol: a circle, hollow at the center, with four broken quill tips around it—bleeding ink in every direction.
He had seen this symbol. Not in books, but carved beneath the statue in the ruined temple... the one with his own face.
The air rippled. The journal convulsed. The pages began to shake—not with motion, but as if being read from elsewhere.
"The Lie was inked to bury him."
"But ink fades."
"And he… remembers the original page."
Books hurled themselves from shelves. Pages tore out and spiraled in midair like ash-feathered wings. They all bore the symbol of the Hollow Scribe.
Kael watched them burn from the edges inward—turning to whispers as they disintegrated. The journal slammed shut on its own, then glowed.
One final line branded across its leather skin:
"THE SCRIBE WAKES BETWEEN SENTENCES."
Outside, the cathedral bells rang once... then again... and again... until the thirteenth toll split the air. A fourteenth followed—low, thunderous, unnatural.
And then came the whisper:
"Write, Kael. Or the Hollow Scribe will finish what you forgot to end."
Kael stared at the quill on his desk.
For the first time…
It waited.
He reached for the quill. But the ink inside wasn't ink anymore.
It pulsed—like a heart.
Not his.
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