---
The Archivum had a memory.
Kael'ith now knew this not as a theory, but as a truth etched into the very stone beneath his feet.
The ink bottles weren't just vessels.
They were preserved sins—memories erased from time, sealed into containers, bottled like plague.
And one had just escaped.
He should have left.
Should have fled back to the surface and buried the book somewhere it would never be found.
But the Archivum did not open its doors again.
Not until it had written its due.
---
Kael'ith walked deeper into the vault. Each bottle he passed trembled subtly, reacting to his presence.
Some glowed faintly, others hissed as if whispering names through glass.
In the center of the next chamber, a pedestal waited.
Upon it: a single feather.
Silver.
Suspended in the air.
Around it, twelve dead candles in a perfect circle.
He stepped forward—and the feather dropped into his palm like it had been waiting for him.
Then he heard it again.
The voice.
Not from a bottle. Not from the Archivum.
From inside him.
"You are not the first to hold the Lie."
"But you may be the last."
He turned slowly—and saw something impossible.
A mirror.
Not a reflection.
A mirror hanging in the void between two shelves.
Its frame was formed of bone-white quills.
Its surface showed not his face…
But a younger version of himself.
---
This Kael'ith was different.
Eyes sharper.
Clothes finer.
Confidence ancient.
And he was writing.
In a book Kael'ith had never seen.
A different quill.
A different name.
On the desk beside him sat a ring of fire and a severed crown.
Kael'ith watched, frozen, as the younger version looked up—and locked eyes with him.
"You found it too soon," the mirrored Kael'ith whispered.
"Now we both die out of order."
The mirror cracked.
---
Kael'ith staggered backward.
The feather in his hand burned hot for a second—then cold.
On the far wall, new text etched itself into stone.
"Observe: The First Editor returns."
---
Far above, in the highest chamber of the divine scriptorium, a blind priest stirred.
He opened his ink-sealed eyes for the first time in centuries…
And wept.
"The page is bleeding again."
---