He awoke in silence. Not the silence of night, nor the hush of empty wind—but the kind of silence that followed erasure. A silence where something had once been, and now was not.
Dust settled in soft waves around him. The floor beneath his back was stone, cold and split with hairline cracks. Ancient runes clung to the edges, half-faded. The air smelled of ink and mildew.
He sat up slowly. No pain. No memory.
Where am I?
His thoughts emerged cleanly, disturbingly calm. He should have been afraid. He should have panicked, cursed, cried out. But there was only assessment. Instinct guided his fingers across the ground, noting the scratches in the stone, the yellowed fragments of scrolls.
This place was abandoned. Recently.
He looked down.
A book was embedded in his chest.
It was not stitched or taped or even fused. It simply was—part of him. Thin strands of black vein-like script curled outward from its spine, crawling across his collarbone like written roots. It pulsed once, faintly.
He stared.
Living Scripture. Bound. But not naturally.
His hand moved toward it. He paused, considered, then opened the cover with care. A single glowing character hovered on the first page, etched in slow-burning gold:
—"燈"
Lantern.
His thoughts stilled.
And then something inside the Scripture pulsed again.
The walls around him darkened, not with shadow, but with age. Words faded from the stones as if scrubbed away by time. His breath slowed.
This is an incantation, he realized. A beginning.
Some part of him recognized it. Some part of him trembled.
He stood.
He was tall, lean, and scholarly in form, his body covered in soft gray dust. His hair was long, black, and tangled—clearly untouched by cultivation. His skin was pale, but not the porcelain glow of divine lineage. Rather, it was dull and sunless, marked by the faint trails of ink that had seeped from the Scripture and hardened across his chest like veins.
His eyes were black. Not the luminous crimson or golden fire of ascended bloodlines. Just black. Mortal. Empty.
He scanned the chamber. It was a ruin—collapsed scroll racks, shattered calligraphy pillars, dried quill feathers scattered like bones. This was a place of study, once. A library wing, long forgotten.
He traced the runes on the floor. Familiar and strange. He could read some of them. Others were blurred, smudged by time or intent.
Someone tried to erase them.
He approached the wall and touched a half-preserved inscription. The moment his fingers made contact, a word entered his mind.
Witness.
He froze. Not in fear. But in certainty.
This place had seen things.
He returned to the center of the room, where the dust had not settled. A shallow crater ringed by disturbed ash. As if someone—or something—had stood there until recently.
Was it me?
The Scripture turned a page on its own.
A second character appeared, bleeding onto the parchment as though written by an unseen hand.
—"虐"
Torment.
He did not flinch.
He did not speak.
But deep inside, something whispered.
Not a voice. Not a word.
Just a truth:
He had written this before.
He knelt and breathed in the dust. There was no scent of blood, only old ink and regret. His hand moved again, touching the script on his chest.
He couldn't feel his heartbeat. Only the thrum of language.
The Scripture's spine trembled.
And the air in the chamber shifted.
A faint breeze swept across the ruins, even though there were no windows, no doors. The dust lifted, swirled, and danced in shapes. Not faces. Not phantoms. Just impressions—outlines of stories that once were.
He watched them, silent.
These are echoes. This Scripture stores more than power. It remembers.
A fragment of a name tickled his mind. Not his name. Someone else's. It faded before it could form.
His fingers moved again. This time, not by instinct.
He reached into the Scripture.
The page turned.
This time, three characters appeared at once.
—"無","聲","書"
Silence. Voice. Book.
He understood nothing.
But he knew this:
Each word was part of a sentence. And that sentence was not yet complete.
And until it was...
He could not remember who he was.
Nor could he leave.
Footsteps sounded above.
A voice barked something, muffled and distant. A door creaked open in another part of the ruin. Someone had entered the Scripture Wing.
He did not move. He was not ready.
The Scripture pulsed again.
Another page flipped.
This time, the ink ran like blood.