I'm Iya I considered myself to be a Cartographer back when Maps used to mean something.
Lines, landmarks, legends. Certainty.
Now they're just memories. Memories printed in ink and scratched into bone. The land forgets itself so easily these days, and someone has to remind it who it was.
I draw every day. Even when the ink runs thin and the paper smells like meat. Even when the world mocks me, changing shape the moment I turn my back.
Today, I stepped onto a hill I'd climbed a week ago. But it wasn't a hill anymore. It was hollow inside, humming. Like breath. I dropped a rock down, expecting a thud. Instead, it whispered a name I haven't heard since childhood.
I didn't write the name.
Some names have weight. If I map them, the map forgets the rest of itself.
Later, I passed a structure I didn't recognize. It looked like a building but was made of glistening cartilage and wet, translucent folds. As I circled it, it shifted slightly toward me—no movement, no sound, just the sensation of having been noticed.
I didn't go in.
There are places that still obey geometry. Fleeting spots of logic clinging to the edges of the old world. I mark these with a circle and a single line through them: safe—for now. But even they change, just more slowly. Like watching a shadow crawl backward across the ground.
Once, I found a village with walls of packed ash and moss. The people didn't blink. Their skin was tattooed with maps, etched in meticulous black. When I showed them mine, they reached out and touched it. Not with fingers—with tongues.
They hissed a word together. "Unmade."
I left before the sun peeled.
My own body is adapting. My left hand draws things I don't remember seeing. Roads that curve into themselves. Symbols that feel familiar and cruel. Sometimes I wake to find entire pages filled in while I slept.
The veil helps. Squid ink and silver thread woven into damp cloth—it dulls the edges of the visions. I tried a blindfold once, but I walked into something that wasn't supposed to be there. It screamed inside me for three days.
So now, the veil.
Tonight I'll sleep in a hollowed-out tree. The bark weeps blood at dusk, but it hasn't screamed yet. That's as safe as anywhere gets.
Tomorrow I'll head east.
Unless east has changed again.