The wind shifted.
Not like wind should—but like a page turning.
Elian felt it in his spine before he heard the whisper:
> "Unauthorized glyph detected."
He turned to Quill.
"You drew something, didn't you?"
Quill didn't deny it. Instead, he yanked his Codex open, the pages reacting like angry wings—flaring wide and luminous. Symbols bled across them, lines shivering as if unsure they should exist.
"Had to." He crouched low, hand pressed against the moss. "Your Stabilization glyph is leaking. If we stay here, the forest will eat our thoughts."
"And the Reapers?" Elian hissed.
Quill didn't answer.
A shriek tore through the sky—high and cruel. The forest shadows twitched.
Then… it dropped.
A Reaper.
---
It was grotesque.
A cloak of torn map pages, all stitched together with floating ink threads. Its face was blank parchment, marked only with a single black seal — a glyph of erasure, glowing like a dying sun.
It didn't walk.
It drifted.
And wherever it moved, reality folded inward—the trees bending away, the air thickening like wet parchment.
"Move," Quill growled.
Elian didn't argue.
They sprinted, tearing through bent trees and moss-covered stone. Behind them, the Reaper glided forward, slow but inevitable. A second scream echoed from above.
Another one.
And another.
Three Reapers.
Quill spat. "They're converging."
"How do we fight them?" Elian shouted.
"We don't! We map around them."
---
They reached a clearing that pulsed faintly with unstable lines—remnants of an ancient glyph field.
Quill stopped. He yanked a stylus from a bone sheath and slashed through the air.
> Glyph: Fog of Distortion.
The air immediately rippled. Trees repeated themselves. Footprints inverted. Even the sky fractaled like shattered glass.
Elian stumbled. "What the hell is this?"
"A Spatial Loop." Quill said, panting. "They'll follow false versions of us."
"But won't we get trapped too?"
Quill grinned grimly. "That's the fun part."
---
One of the Reapers entered the edge of the loop.
It paused.
Then let out a mechanical moan—part paper tearing, part human anguish.
And turned away.
The others followed.
Elian exhaled shakily. "You knew that would work?"
"I hoped."
He dropped to one knee, pressing a hand against the Codex. "But they'll be back. We've got maybe ten minutes before the glyph destabilizes."
"More if we overwrite the distortion with a secondary layer," Elian murmured, already sketching.
> Counter-Glyph: Folded Echoes.
Ink lanced across the moss in precise lines, anchoring the loop's edges with mirrored zones.
The area shivered—and then calmed.
The false forest stabilized.
Quill blinked. "That's a rare glyph."
"I invented it," Elian replied, not looking up. "Out of desperation. When I tried to save my village."
Quill watched him for a moment, the weight in his gaze unreadable.
"I've heard of you," he said. "You're the one who tried to anchor a dying Shard without a sanction. They said you erased yourself in the process."
"They weren't wrong."
---
Silence settled.
Birdsong fluttered into the loop—artificial, looped.
Quill sat cross-legged on a stone.
"I wasn't always Unbound," he said. "Used to work for a Cartographer's Guild. Fifth Glyph Division."
"What happened?"
"I drew something they told me not to. A bridge between Shards. It worked. Too well. A town crossed through. But… only the buildings made it. The people didn't."
Elian's stomach churned.
"They wanted to cover it up. Burn the map. Erase the data."
He pulled back his sleeve. There was a glyph etched into his forearm—burned there like a brand.
"They tried to bind me to silence. I burned out the contract with raw Ink. Been Unbound ever since."
---
Elian looked away.
"We're not the same," he said.
"No," Quill replied. "But we're both alive. And that counts for something."
Then Quill stood suddenly. His Codex vibrated at his side.
"They're rerouting," he muttered. "The Reapers are scanning for residual heat. This loop won't hold forever."
Elian nodded. "We keep moving."
He opened the unstable scroll Scripture had given him.
The lines danced again—trembling like they were afraid to reveal what they knew.
But this time, they held.
A path revealed itself—curved, like a serpent biting its tail. It led through a gorge carved into the roots of the mountain.
And at the center of the path—drawn in blood-red ink—was the symbol for the Spindle.
---
The map shifted again—revealing something new.
A glyph he'd never seen.
Even Quill's breath hitched as he leaned over.
It pulsed in the center of the Spindle's base.
A dark symbol.
No name. No translation.
But they both recognized its shape.
"…That's not possible," Elian whispered.
The glyph was a Zero Sigil — a forbidden mark rumored to be from before the Inkfracture, capable of rewriting fundamental constants of reality.
Only two had ever been recorded.
Both were considered suicidal to draw.
And this one was active.
"It's being cast," Quill said. "Right now."
---
Suddenly, the Codex at Elian's side hissed.
It opened of its own will.
Pages flipped.
Then stopped.
A message had been written there.
Not in Elian's hand.
Not in Ink.
But in ashes.
> Do not try to stop it. The world must be redrawn.
A second message appeared below.
In red.
> The Cartographer of Ash is awake.
Elian's hands trembled.
He turned to Quill.
"We need to get to the Spindle."
Quill nodded slowly.
"But if the Cartographer of Ash is truly awake…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
Elian closed the Codex. His fingers tightened around the scroll. The unstable map trembled once more—and then stilled.
Whatever waited at the Spindle wasn't just a Remap.
It was a rebirth.
Of something that should've stayed erased.
---
> Far beneath the Spindle,
a chamber opened.
And an old voice stirred.
One that had written the world
before maps had names.