The first fire came without heat.
Codexia had been walking the avenues of her new city—a place born half from her tongue and half from the quivering Codex within her—when the white blaze unfurled along the rooftops. At first it looked like moonlight sharpening itself into lines, but then the lines began to unwrite the buildings they touched. Walls buckled not from collapse but from deletion, windows vanishing without shards, stone reverting into raw absence.
She froze. This was not destruction in the way fire consumes. This was erasure, as if the world were ashamed of having been written in the first place.
Her hand burned faintly, glyphs whispering against her palm.
This is not yours, the Codex muttered from within her ribs. It is them.
Figures emerged from the unraveling streets. Hooded, faceless, robed in parchment the color of old ash. They moved without sound, their feet leaving no impression, as though they refused even the courtesy of being witnessed.
