The silence didn't last.
Footsteps echoed down the broken stairwell—slow, cautious, too careful to belong to someone confident. Dust shifted in the doorway. A boy stepped in, robes frayed at the cuffs, a sect badge clinging weakly to a half-stitched sash.
Lin Khei didn't move.
He sat beside the collapsed pillar where the Scripture had first pulsed. His fingers were still faintly stained, black ink soaking through cracked skin like blood that had forgotten how to dry.
The boy spotted him and froze.
He was no older than sixteen, maybe seventeen. Outer disciple. Not dangerous. Not interesting.
And yet—he stared as if he'd walked in on a god.
Or a corpse.
"You…" the boy breathed. His hand trembled toward his waist, fumbling for something. A talisman. He ripped it free and held it up—a small parchment square with a single glyph: "避". Avoid.
It blackened instantly in his hand. Crumbled into ash before Lin Khei even turned his head.
The boy fell to his knees.
"A Divine Glyph…" His voice cracked. His fingers clawed in the air, sketching broken warding sigils from memory. "No one's seen one since the Hollow Sage's—"
He choked on the name. Couldn't finish it.
Couldn't say it.
Lin tilted his head slightly, lips unmoving.
What do they see when they look at me?
He reached for the answer instinctively, but there was nothing in his memory. Just the hollow quiet of a mind overwritten.
The Scripture stirred.
A low pulse of warmth crawled up his arm. Then his right hand twitched—once, twice. The tendons stretched taut. Fingers bent like quills snapping backward. He didn't resist. He simply watched.
It's moving me again.
His hand rose into the air and traced a line. The black ink came from nowhere—or maybe from him—and hung in the space before them like smoke. It didn't drip. It waited.
One glyph appeared.
Then another.
Then a third.
—"見""真""形"
Witness. Truth. Form.
The effect was immediate.
The boy screamed.
Not from pain—at first—but from pure reaction. His sigils—painted vermilion lines across his face—began to bubble. The skin beneath peeled raw, blistering where the glyph-light struck. His mouth opened too wide, like parchment tearing at the fold.
Behind him, another disciple staggered through the broken doorway. A girl in cracked sandals and layered training robes, too thin for her frame.
She saw Lin.
Then the glyphs.
Then she vomited.
Not bile—ink. Thick and alive, it came up in strands, twitching like wet calligraphy trying to spell itself out before dissolving.
Her pupils dilated unnaturally, reflecting the glyphs—and for one heartbeat, the characters burned backward across her retinas.
"It's writing inside my—!"
She shrieked as blood streamed from her eyes. Her hands tore at her face, but the glyphs had already taken root.
Lin didn't move. He only watched.
The Scripture flipped a page on its own, gently.
It was not finished.
The air shimmered again. This time, it drew another glyph without permission.
"名"
Name.
Lin looked down. The page rippled. More ink bled into his palm, unfamiliar. He didn't know where it came from. It smelled like burnt parchment. Like someone else's memory.
Then the glyph twisted.
"你 是 誰"
Who are you?
His palm split open along an old scar he didn't remember earning. The ink licked at the wound like a dog tasting blood before writing.
He didn't flinch.
But something deep in his chest pulsed—off-beat. Unsteady.
The girl collapsed, still convulsing. Her charm had burned through her sash.
The boy tried to run.
He got as far as the stairwell before his legs gave out. The last thing he said wasn't a prayer.
"Don't read it!" he screamed, blood bubbling where his lips split. "Names have weight here—!"
He was gone a moment later.
Only Lin remained.
And the Scripture.
Its next page was blank.
He stared at it. The ink still pulsed faintly under his skin.
If I am unwritten… who wrote this?
His breath caught for the first time.
Not from fear. From doubt.
The blank page didn't answer. But his fingers twitched again. Not of his own will. The Scripture wanted something.
A new name.
A new chapter.
Above him, voices broke through the crumbled rafters.
"Over there!"
"—the Thirteenth Tome is awake!"
Lin glanced down. His Scripture's cover now read: "盜 名"
Stolen Name.
But the voices screamed a different title.
One that made his missing memories pulse like a fresh wound.
The stolen name itched between his ribs.
He wondered if it had ever been his to lose.