The deeper he went, the more the Archive changed.
Bookshelves gave way to altars. Stone tiles morphed into sculpted panels depicting strange, angular faces locked in silent expression: awe, agony, reverence, transformation. The walls pulsed faintly, the heartbeat of a buried memory not quite willing to be forgotten.
Then he felt it.
A shift.
Like stepping through a warm membrane of air, Pag crossed into a new chamber—and the world stilled.
It was cavernous. Vast and quiet. No water here. Only silence thick enough to feel.
The roots that had clawed through the archive above now hung in looping strands of pale silver, drifting slowly as though underwater. They emitted a faint glow, enough to illuminate the center of the space.
And there, rising from a bed of darkened quartz, stood the Silverleaf Tree.
It was ancient. Massive. Its bark shimmered like wet marble, etched with lunar sigils and faint runes that curled and shimmered when looked at too long. Its leaves were as thin as rice paper and glowed with gentle iridescence, their color shifting with each heartbeat—from ivory to blue, from verdant green to starfire gold. The air here buzzed with arcane tension, like standing too close to a spell mid-chant.
Pag stepped forward cautiously, every sense alert. Beneath the tree, nestled in a ring of worn stone, lay the Oracle’s Seal—a disc of pale obsidian marked with an eye divided into three parts. Lines radiated from it like fractures or veins.
A prompt flickered into view:
Pag exhaled, slow and steady. He sheathed the dagger at his side, then knelt before the seal. The runes on the bark above shimmered in response, and the air thickened like honey. His fingertips hovered over the stone, then pressed gently into the eye’s center.
The floor shook—gently at first, then with growing insistence. The roots hanging from the ceiling tensed, as if drawn taut by some unseen thread. The eye in the stone glowed. Faintly at first, then blindingly.
And the world dropped away again.
But this time, Pag did not fall into someone else’s memory.
He stood within it.
>>Vision – The Last Gathering<<
The chamber was whole.
Pag now stood among a dozen figures cloaked in moon-white robes, each bearing a crystal orb cradled in reverent hands. At the tree’s base knelt the Oracle—older, her skin now etched with scars, the lunar tattoos along her arms shimmering with unspoken magic. Her voice was quiet, but carried through the air like a melody heard underwater.
“The seal will hold,” she whispered. “But only if someone bears the echo forward. One flame must carry another.”
A woman stepped forward—a Fennician with silver-streaked fur and a weathered, weary look in her golden eyes.
andromeda.
“Then let it be me,” she said, her voice calm and resolute.
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The Oracle looked at her for a long moment. “You will be forgotten by history. Reviled by both gods and kings.”
andromeda’s gaze didn’t waver. “But the children will live. And that’s enough.”
The Oracle reached out and pressed a hand to andromeda’s chest. Light surged—gentle but searing. The roots above the tree flexed. Then, with trembling hands, the Oracle passed her a single crystal orb—pale as mist, pulsing softly.
“Carry the thread. Seek the next weaver. Do not look back.”
Pag blinked—
—and the vision ended.
He gasped as he came back to himself, knees pressed to the cold floor. The seal had split into three concentric rings now, each one glowing faintly. At the center, where his fingers had touched, sat a small crystalline fragment—pale, misty, and warm.
The chamber dimmed again, the silver leaves trembling as if stirred by a breath too ancient to name. Pag pocketed the fragment. Every part of him felt sore, weighted—but clearer than before. Whatever andromeda had started, he was now part of it.
And someone, somewhere, very powerful likely didn’t want this fragment to ever resurface.
Behind him, a faint noise.
The soft drip of ink on stone.
The Custodian had followed.
Pag turned, eyes narrowing, as he slid the hood of his robe up over his horns. He didn’t know yet if he could fight this thing. But he did know he wasn’t leaving the seal behind.
The flame had been passed.
And Pag would carry it forward.
Pag stumbled forward, boots slapping across water-slick stone as the archive warped behind him. The weight of the Oracle’s fragment pulsed against his side, searing-hot for a heartbeat before cooling into something heavier—like a second pulse thudding beneath his ribs.
Behind him, the Archive Custodian shrieked.
Not with voice.
With memory.
Symbols carved into air, ink like tar writhing across the tunnel mouth. Every footfall Pag took was dogged by twitching, sentient script that tried to rewrite the path in reverse, pulling him back—back into the sealed chamber, back into forgetting, back into being watched and catalogued.
"Fantastic," Pag growled, blood pounding in his ears. "Add that to the résumé."
He sprinted.
The tunnel narrowed, roots constricting around him like the throat of some ancient beast, weeping water and bioluminescent spores. Pages of melted script sloughed off the walls around him, crumbling into nothing as reality unwrote itself.
Another warning flashed.
His breath came ragged. His vision swam. The pulsing lines of forgotten history clung to his heels.
And then—light.
Natural light.
Pag surged forward, chest burning, and burst through a final glyph-covered veil that cracked like ice around him. The veil collapsed with a shriek of lost voices and evaporated behind him, leaving nothing but the sound of his own heartbeat and the cold wind of morning.
He crashed into the open, tumbling across uneven stone and into a patch of wet moss. The sudden chill shocked his senses, and the wind cut across his sweat-drenched skin like a knife.
For a moment, he simply lay there—gasping, trembling, the world spinning in strange orbits around him.
Then a voice pierced the haze.
"By the chains of the Founders, Pag!" Toula's voice snapped through the rising dawn. She dropped beside him, the heavy slam of her clawed feet chipping stone. “You were in there too long.”
Pag rolled onto his side, one hand still clutched around the fragment. “It… didn’t want to let me go.”
“You look like it tried to eat you,” Andromeda said, kneeling just behind Toula. Her spear was drawn, and her armor buzzed faintly with reactive mana. “You’re bleeding from your shoulder.”
Pag looked down. The fabric of his robe was burned through where ink had seared into it—blackened threads curled like scorched paper. “It branded me. I don’t think it liked me stealing a piece of its secrets.”
From above, a shadow loomed. Maverick peered down from atop a fallen pillar, one boot dangling lazily, the other foot braced against broken masonry. “I was about five minutes from assuming you’d been eaten by sentient scrolls and voting to go home.”
Pag coughed a laugh, though it hurt. “You’re only half wrong.”
Andromeda offered a hand, and Pag took it gratefully. He rose to shaky feet, glancing back toward the shattered tunnel he’d emerged from.
No sign of pursuit.
But he could still feel the Custodian’s gaze. Not its eyes—its attention. Like a library catalog that never forgot the name of a stolen book.
Pag looked down at the fragment in his palm. It glowed with a soft internal light, refracting the early dawn in pulses that matched his heartbeat.
Toula’s ears flattened slightly. “What is it?”
“A piece of the Oracle’s Seal,” Pag said quietly. “It… remembers something. Something important. I don’t know what it’s tied to yet, but it’s real. It’s alive, in a way.”
Maverick slid down the pillar, landing with a flourish. “So. Mystery artifact in hand, haunted by a memory demon, and possibly cursed. You know, I was beginning to worry this trip would be boring.”
Pag looked at him, deadpan. “You’re welcome.”
Toula glanced between them and then to the sky, where streaks of dawn were slicing across retreating storm clouds. “We shouldn’t stay here. Kyrbane’s changing. I can feel it. The Archive’s disturbance didn’t just affect you. Something’s… stirring.”
Andromeda nodded. “We move. Quietly. West side of the city still has intact roofs. That’s where the refugees are rumored to be clustered.”
Pag tightened his grip on the fragment and tucked it beneath the collar of his robe. He inhaled deeply, letting the cool morning air steady his nerves.
“Lead the way,” he said. “Whatever this thing is… it’s part of a bigger thread. And I don’t think it ends here.”
As the four of them faded into the broken city, mist curling behind them, the last tendrils of glyph-ink dissolved into the wind—forgotten by most, but not by the Archive.
Never by the Archive.