CHAPTER 53: THE WRIT OF SILENCE

The relics lay on the war table, sealed and humming.

The scroll bound in molten iron, the crystal orb still faintly aflame, and the circlet of thorns coiled with coiling glyphs none of them ordinary, none of them safe. Around the table stood Thalen, Renal, Varos, Ilara, and Crown Arcanist Sevra, summoned by Renal personally for her expertise in forbidden historical arcana.

No one spoke for a long time. The scroll, even bound, radiated a gravity that pressed into the room like a rising tide. Not malevolent just ancient. Weighted by intention.

Ilara broke the silence. "We can’t decipher the scroll here. Its aura signature pulses on a level too close to the Tyrant Spirit it could trigger the wards around the Citadel."

Sevra agreed. "Even containing it is dangerous. This was meant to be kept away. But..."

She hesitated.

"But what?" Thalen asked.

"It’s not sealed against use," Sevra murmured. "It’s sealed against witnessing."

Varos frowned. "You mean... the scroll is not protected from danger it’s protecting others from itself?"

Sevra nodded slowly. "Exactly. Whatever’s inside it, someone wanted buried, unseen, unheard."

Thalen exhaled. "Then it’s likely the most important truth we’ve found."

He looked to Renal. "We must decode it. Carefully."

Renal agreed. "But not in the Citadel. And not with full command watching."

"We need a neutral site," Ilara said. "A spirit-sealed vault. And a scribe of Silence."

At that, everyone looked toward Sevra.

She paled.

"You want to invoke the Writ of Silence?"

"What is that?" Thalen asked.

"A ritual of old Crownguard order," Renal answered. "Used only to transcribe forbidden knowledge without imprinting it. The scribe records, but forgets. The memory is etched into the object not the mind."

"A living ghostwriter," Ilara murmured. "The words vanish from their memory. The scribe becomes an echo."

Thalen looked at Sevra. "Can you do it?"

She hesitated. "I was trained... but only once, years ago. If the knowledge is unstable, it can fracture me."

"I’ll go with you," Thalen said. "You’re not doing it alone."

Varos stepped in. "Then I go too."

Renal gave a tight nod. "And I will remain at the Citadel. If Crown agents push against this, I’ll hold them."

Sevra took a deep breath. "I’ll need one day to prepare."

"Then we leave at dawn," Thalen said.

The sanctuary of the Writ stood deep in the Black Veil Wood, hidden among gnarled ash-trees and crooked roots. It had once been a Crown observatory, long abandoned, now a hollow shell of its former glory.

Ilara placed spirit wards across the glade while Thalen, Varos, and Sevra entered the chamber. The inner walls were lined with soulglass a translucent, shimmering material that drank in sound and light alike. No echo could survive here.

Sevra lit the heart-glyph at the center and placed the scroll in its halo. The flame within the crystal orb flared briefly, then dimmed. The circlet pulsed faintly, matching her breath.

"This is where we begin," she said quietly. "And where I forget."

She seated herself cross-legged, unrolled her parchment, and pressed two fingers to the scroll’s seal.

It hissed as the iron split. A whispering began like thousands of voices at once, too fast to follow.

Thalen and Varos watched silently as Sevra began writing.

Her quill moved rapidly, almost violently, across the parchment. Her eyes went blank. Not white, not glowing just... absent.

She wrote and wrote, for hours, until dusk stained the windows with blood-colored light.

When she stopped, the scroll was half-covered in symbols and glyphs Thalen didn’t recognize. Some looked familiar derivatives of Tyrant glyphs but others bent space, ink swerving in curves that gave him nausea just looking at them.

Sevra blinked.

Her face was pale. Her eyes full of tears.

She looked up at them, confused. "Who... who are you?"

Ilara rushed in, checking her aura pulse.

"She’s intact," she said. "The Writ held. But she’s forgotten everything written."

Varos stepped forward. "Then the memory is in the parchment."

Thalen lifted the new scroll.

"What did we learn?" he asked Ilara.

She studied the symbols. Slowly, she began to read.

"This is not the origin of the Tyrant Spirit. It’s the confession of its first bearer."

Thalen’s heart pounded. "Go on."

Ilara read from the parchment:

"I was the Root’s last heir, the first to breathe memory into flame. We called it the Memory Flame, a sacred vessel for recording the world’s sorrow never to be wielded, only remembered."

"But the rulers grew afraid. They twisted the Flame. Said the bearer could reshape history by owning memory. That they could force remembrance. And so the Memory Flame became the Tyrant Spirit."

Ilara paused.

Thalen felt his blood run cold.

"All of this," Varos said quietly, "all this conflict... was built on misused memory."

Ilara kept reading:

"We sealed the truth underground. Not to hide power, but to hide shame. Because the Flame could restore what was lost... or burn what was loved."

There was silence in the soulglass chamber.

Thalen looked at the scroll in his hand, no longer just an object.

It was a grave marker.

"We’ve all been wielding a weapon forged from grief," he murmured.

Ilara nodded. "No wonder those touched by it are so unstable. It’s not rage it’s memory. Raw and wild."

Varos put a hand on Thalen’s shoulder. "Then maybe... your Tyrant Spirit doesn’t make you a warrior."

Thalen looked at him. "What, then?"

"A historian."

Thalen exhaled.

Then, from outside, came the sound of shattering wards.

Ilara’s head snapped up. "We’re not alone."

Flames crackled outside.

Shouts.

A glyph exploded near the trees. Crown soldiers burst from the brush, followed by Shadehand robed cultists.

Varos cursed. "They found us."

"Evacuate Sevra," Thalen ordered. "Now."

Ilara threw a protective veil over Sevra’s unconscious body. The scribe didn’t stir.

Thalen drew the Blade That Breaks.

He ran out of the chamber into firelight and smoke.

A Shadehand acolyte lunged at him, glaive crackling with aura.

Thalen parried, spun, and struck the man’s glyph arm shattering it and knocking him to the dirt. He ducked a Crown arrow and kicked a second attacker into a tree.

Ilara leapt from the doorway, staff sweeping arcs of barrier across the glade. She shielded Sevra as Varos carried her toward the glyph horses.

Thalen held the rear, covering their retreat.

More cultists appeared from the shadows. One cast a Memory Rift a distorted flicker of past scenes meant to disorient.

Thalen felt it.

A vision his childhood. His first duel. His father dying.

He grit his teeth and channeled the Tyrant Spirit.

The Rift shattered.

He roared and the Blade That Breaks exploded with violet fire.

One swing carved through three cultists, and the air went silent for a beat.

"GO!" he shouted.

Varos, Ilara, and Sevra galloped out of the glade.

Thalen turned and followed last through the warded gate, sealing it with a glyph of his own blood.

The enemy didn’t pursue.

But the message was clear.

They were being watched.

They had always been watched.

Back at the Citadel, Sevra rested under heavy warding. Ilara poured over the scroll’s last lines.

There, just before the ink stopped, was one final message.

A glyph.

Different from the rest.

It translated simply as:

"She remembers still."

Ilara paled.

Thalen leaned over her shoulder. "Who?"

Ilara didn’t answer immediately.

But in her silence, he understood.

Not a what. A who.

Someone survived.

The Flame’s true heir.

And she was still alive.

Somewhere.