Ilyan found the letter crumpled inside his coat's inner pocket—pressed against his ribs like a secret trying not to be kept. The paper was waxy, water-resistant, and smelled faintly of tea. He turned it over once, then again. No seal, no stamp, no handwriting.
"Is that a love note?" Ashwen asked without looking up. She was flipping a dagger between her fingers with hypnotic rhythm, the edge nicking air more than it did her glove.
Ilyan frowned. "Not unless I've been very, very confusing to myself."
He opened it.
You are not Ilyan. Not yet. You are the placeholder.
Do not tell Ashwen. She will lie, too.
Remember the vault. Remember the twins.
—You.
Ashwen caught the change in his expression and stood up, her cloak rustling like annoyed parchment. "What?"
He folded the note with too much care. "Junk mail."
"Your kind of junk mail talks in riddles?"
"Better than coupons."
Just then, Groat stirred in his satchel, his small coin-like form jingling indignantly. "Oh dear. Is this your handwriting? Sloppy punctuation. Passive voice. Obvious time loop residue."
"I didn't write it," Ilyan muttered.
"Oh good. Because it's addressed from you, and that's usually a felony."
They had reached the outer checkpoint of Tevrath Hollow—a borderless city wrapped in gray fog, with no gate or guards, just a single billboard that read:
WELCOME TO TEVRATH — PLEASE MISREMEMBER YOUR VISIT
Their escort, a tired paper automaton named 9-Form-Delta, tried to scan their "entrance recall permits." It clicked twice, jammed, and then spontaneously combusted into flame.
Ashwen stared at the ashes. "That feels about right."
The streets of Tevrath felt like walking through a scrapbook underwater. Buildings shimmered in and out of structural cohesion. Road names changed mid-syllable. Once, they crossed a plaza twice without realizing it had rotated 90 degrees.
"We're headed to the Registry of Uncertain Kinships," Groat explained from Ilyan's coat pocket. "According to Article 17-E of the Identity Vagrancy Act, your memory file has been flagged for existential double-housing."
"Do I want to know what that means?"
"You are possibly squatting in someone else's selfhood. Unknowingly, perhaps. Or rudely."
Ashwen blew into her gloves. "So this city's going to decide if you're real or not?"
"Yup."
"Great. Hate this already."
The Registry of Uncertain Kinships was a spiraling tower stitched together from what looked like mismatched tenement buildings. Inside, a queue of humans, memory fragments, and literal ghosts stood in shifting lines, clutching forms they weren't sure they'd filled out.
A bored attendant—one arm made of quills—looked up when Ilyan approached. "Name?"
"Ilyan."
She flipped a book. Her eyebrow twitched. "Do you have a backup name in case this one's deprecated?"
"Excuse me?"
"We don't seem to have an 'Ilyan' listed today."
Ashwen crossed her arms. "We were here yesterday."
"Impossible. We haven't had a yesterday in this district for weeks."
Groat launched himself onto the desk. "This is identity discrimination! I demand a mnemonic audit!"
"Oh no," the clerk sighed. "Not another Auditor Coin."
They were ushered into a glass chamber lined with ink that moved like mercury. A small platform rose from the floor. The Mnemonic Index.
A voice, deep and slurred as if recorded backwards, boomed:
"VERIFY SUBJECT: ILYAN. STATE YOUR NAME."
Ilyan hesitated. "I… am Ilyan."
"VERIFICATION FAILED. NAME CANNOT BE CONFIRMED."
Ashwen narrowed her eyes. "What does that mean?"
"SUBJECT MAY BE A PLACEHOLDER. PROCEED TO WITNESS RETRIEVAL: CODE 27-M."
"Witness retrieval?" Ilyan echoed.
Groat rattled ominously. "They think you're a file left open. A name waiting to be used. And now you have to find the person who originally filed you. If they exist."
Ashwen sighed. "Of course. Because the one thing harder than finding yourself is finding someone else who remembers you correctly."
A bell tolled twelve. Then six. Then twenty-one.
"Who's the witness?"
"According to Index records… Witness #6. Known alias: Gerald."
"Great. Sounds reliable."
"He lives in the district of Memory Echoes. Bring snacks. He talks in loops."
Ilyan tucked the folded letter deeper into his coat. It pulsed once, faintly warm. Somewhere in Tevrath, someone—or something—still knew who he was.
Ashwen turned toward the fog-shrouded stairwells of the city. "Let's find Gerald. Before someone else rewrites us again."
The city around them shifted, windows blinking like uncertain eyes. Names echoed from forgotten alleyways. And far behind them, someone in a jester's mask let out a single, delighted laugh.
It was difficult to tell if the Registry had gotten larger or smaller since their last visit. Ashwen insisted it had gained another wing; Ilyan was pretty sure it had lost a staircase.
"Are you sure this Gerald is in here?" Ashwen asked.
Groat chimed from Ilyan's coat pocket. "Well, he was last filed under Section 8-Delta. Of course, memory-prone entities like Gerald tend to… migrate. Or dissolve. Or self-publish."
They stood in the central rotunda, beneath a chandelier made entirely of dried signatures. The walls were covered in filing cabinets that opened themselves at random and screamed if you looked inside without permission.
"Just once," Ashwen muttered, "I'd like a door that just opens."
"Boring," said Groat. "Predictability is how you get audited."
A tiny clerk with an abacus for a face waved them toward the spiral staircase labeled Tautologies and Lost Pets. They climbed without speaking—each level more contradictory than the last. One floor was decorated like a dentist's waiting room, but filled entirely with former librarians who hissed whenever someone breathed too loud.
Finally, on the fifth-and-a-half floor, they found Gerald.
He was sitting in a tea parlor that looped continuously every six minutes. Ilyan had to duck to avoid a tray that reset midair. Gerald wore a vest covered in clock hands and smiled like he'd been waiting for them since before they were born.
"You're not early," Gerald said, sipping a cup of tea that hadn't yet been poured.
Ilyan tried to speak but Gerald interrupted.
"You're wondering how I know your name. I do. You're wondering if this is real. It's not. It's worse."
Ashwen squinted. "This guy is the loop, isn't he?"
Gerald beamed. "A pleasure to meet you again for the first time, Miss Ashwen."
"You remember me?"
"Not yet."
Ilyan produced the folded letter. "Did I write this?"
Gerald peered at it, then placed a biscuit on top. "You will. But it won't help. Until it does."
"Groat said you're the witness I need."
"Oh, I'm not the witness." Gerald leaned forward. "I'm the key. The witness is under lock."
A moment passed in silence.
"Sorry, did you want me to say something more cryptic?"
"Yes," Ashwen said.
"Alright then: The key is not metal, the lock not a door, the witness never forgets but does not speak. There. That ought to waste a few pages."
Groat buzzed in frustration. "Can we get to the point?"
Gerald snapped his fingers. The loop paused. Everyone in the room froze except the three of them.
"I can open the vault where your witness is stored," Gerald said, eyes twinkling. "But you'll have to trade me something."
"What?" Ilyan asked.
"Your certainty. Just a little. One fond memory. Something that makes you sure you are who you say you are."
Ashwen stepped between them. "Wait. That could scramble his brain. Or kill him."
"Technically," Gerald replied. "But it's very unlikely. Only happens to people with unresolved trauma, suppressed truths, or identity paradoxes. You're not one of those, are you?"
Ilyan didn't answer. He thought about the letter. About the vault. About the relic in his satchel that hadn't spoken since they left Uvvvaek.
He reached into his coat and pulled free a small photograph. Blurry. Someone sitting on a fence, laughing. He couldn't remember who.
Gerald took it without touching. "Good choice. That wasn't yours to begin with."
The world unpaused. Tea spilled. The loop resumed.
"Go to the Atrium of Shattered Affidavits," Gerald said, already fading from sight. "Ask for the witness. Say I sent you. And tell them to hurry—I've only got four more loops before I forget all this again."
He waved once. Then looped backward out of sight.
Ashwen exhaled slowly. "Well. That wasn't deeply unsettling at all."
"Can we trust him?" Ilyan asked.
Groat sighed. "In the same way you trust a malfunctioning clock. It's broken, but it still tells the right time twice a day."
As they left the parlor, Ashwen looked over her shoulder. "You think that was the real Gerald?"
"No," Ilyan said. "But maybe he was close enough."
Their next destination shimmered ahead of them like a misremembered dream—the Atrium of Shattered Affidavits. And somewhere within, the final clue to Ilyan's borrowed life.