Ash still clung to Hatim—not just on his skin, but deeper, behind his eyes and in the bruises blooming along his ribs. Memory burned to soot.
He stirred, pain the first thing to greet him. A dull roar spreading from his ribs like fire over dry paper. Cold stone pressed against his spine, ancient and uneven, heavy with the weight of centuries. The floor beneath him thrummed—not with sound, but with sensation—as if the ground itself was listening.
Air brushed his face: damp, metallic, thick with moss and rust and old breath. Somewhere far off, a drip echoed—slow and steady. Closer, something exhaled, deep and steady. The silence was never silent here.
Hatim tried to rise.
A hand settled gently on his chest.
"Stay down," came a calm, measured voice. It bent the room to it, like stone yielding to the tide.
He blinked against flickering torchlight. Black walls surrounded him, carved with glyphs so faded they seemed grown, not carved—breathing faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat. These were not mere decorations, but memories etched in stone, records older than parchment or ink.
This chamber was ancient. It had survived countless names, forgotten them all.
The Akar here didn't burn—it pulsed. Slow, sure, alive.
Hatim turned his head with effort.
Beside him sat a figure robed in bark-colored layers, hood drooping low, face hidden. Stillness wrapped him like a cloak, as if even the dust deferred to his presence.
"Who are you?" Hatim rasped. His throat was raw, as if he'd swallowed flame.
"Someone who doesn't enjoy watching boys get folded into pavement," the man said. "And someone who knows what stirred when the Akar touched you."
That word—touched—tightened something in Hatim's chest. It wasn't just memory. It was recognition. Shame.
Suddenly, the room flickered.
The torchlight dimmed, replaced by a blood-red glow spilling from cracks in the walls. Heat shimmered, warping the space. The glyphs flowed like rivers, shifting and alive.
Hatim saw himself younger—barefoot, bleeding, nails crusted black, breathing like a cornered animal.
Across from him stood another boy. Calm. Terrible in his quiet.
Akar pooled at the boy's feet like serpents of fire and ink. It licked his toes, drawn inward.
Hatim raised his hands—not to defend, but reflexively.
Between his fingers, a shape formed. Invisible at first, then a pattern—a memory.
Veshan.
A shield. Soft-edged. Curved against force.
The other boy smiled, feral and hollow. "I don't draw," he said. "I bleed."
Dark lines cracked open across his arms—not carved, but torn. Glyphs screamed as they emerged, twisted like broken branches. Akar surged in, frenzied.
He roared.
A pulse of light blasted from his chest.
Hatim's glyph flared bright, held—then fractured.
Stone screamed.
Dust shot skyward.
Hatim skidded backward, arms braced. His mind raced faster than thought.
"You're leaking," he muttered. "Your glyphs collapse as they form."
"I am the glyph," came the reply.
Behind him, a sigil cracked open in the air—jagged, snarling. The boy lunged.
Hatim moved—not to block, but to flow. Sideways. Under.
His palm swept low.
Sen'nari.
It drank the boy's charge. Force unraveled like breath into water.
Hatim struck the ground with two fingers.
Tharnel.
Golden bars rose from the floor, weaving a cage around the feral glyph-maker.
The boy shrieked. Glyphs swarmed his body. The cage cracked, groaned.
Hatim didn't flinch.
He dropped, drawing two symbols in tandem: spiral left, triangle right. Glyphs spun from his fingertips, tracing a dance as old as the veins of the world.
Akar leapt.
A spear surged into his hand. Not summoned—born.
He threw.
Impact. Blinding light. A sound like breath torn from a god.
The boy collapsed.
The glyphs extinguished.
Silence.
A voice emerged from the dark.
"Crude," it said. "But precise. It listened."
The vision collapsed.
Torchlight returned. Stone walls breathed quietly. The drip echoed again.
Hatim gasped.
The hooded man sat beside him, unchanged.
"You remember," he said.
Hatim didn't answer. But the memory seared behind his eyes—the spear, the scream.
"You wonder why it lingers."
Hatim looked at the glyphs trailing the walls like veins under skin. Breathing. Remembering.
Beneath the stone, the Akar stirred. It was always watching. Not with judgment. Not with malice.
With memory.
It had seen his glyphs.
And it had listened.
And it was waiting.
He pressed his hand to the floor.
The hum beneath answered.
Like a whisper in a tongue older than sound.
The Akar was not a tool.
It was a witness.
And now it remembered him.