Chapter 8: The Scripture of Teeth
The skull was older than the mountain it slept in.
It was buried deep beneath the deadwood—hidden beneath layers of rot, rubble, and silence. Arith led them through a split in the earth that wound like a scar, down past weeping stone and bone-smooth walls carved by something not human.
They descended into darkness that didn't grow thicker, but heavier—like breath condensed into weight.
When they reached the bottom, Kairis felt it before he saw it.
The presence.
The intention.
Not asleep.
Not awake.
Waiting.
A faint blue glow emerged from the gloom ahead—torches long dead still radiating through veins of script carved into the stone. They entered a wide chamber.
At its center sat a skull.
Not fossil. Not statue.
Real.
Its jaws were open. Its fangs longer than spears, each etched with symbols in a language that moved when you looked too long.
And in its throat, half-swallowed by calcified flesh and time—a Scripture, coiled in iron and tooth.
Kairis staggered forward.
It was calling to him.
"You stand before the Bone-Sealed Truth."
He flinched.
The voice wasn't the Eye. It was deeper. Like a god buried in salt and silence.
Arith watched from the edge of the chamber, hand resting on her blade but not drawn. "This one isn't like the first," she said. "It wants something before it'll bind."
"What?"
"A memory."
Kairis blinked. "What kind of memory?"
"Not just any," she said. "A true one. Something that defines who you are. Something the Eye wouldn't choose to take."
"And if I give it?"
"You lose it forever."
He approached the skull, eyes locked on the Scripture tangled between its teeth.
The runes on his arms itched. The Eye stirred. The bone glowed faintly.
Offer your self.
Offer a piece that bleeds.
He closed his eyes.
He thought of the first time he tasted honey-bread. Hayako's laugh. Elda's hands, always dusted in flour. The shape of her smile.
His mother's voice.
No.
Not her voice.
He didn't remember her voice.
Only...
Her face.
Not clearly. Not really.
Just the way it felt when he imagined her watching him.
Safe.
Unjudging.
Home.
That is the one.
"No," he whispered.
It is your last human anchor.
He opened his eyes.
"I give you her," he said. "I give you the memory of the woman who never came back for me. I give you the face I held onto every time I felt lost."
The Scripture pulsed.
The jaw of the skull snapped shut.
Teeth shattered. The Scripture erupted in a blast of dull gold light and fireless heat, curling through the air like smoke, like ink, like bone.
It slammed into Kairis's chest.
He didn't scream.
He didn't even breathe.
The second seal carved itself into his back, right over his spine—like a blade pressed edge-first into memory.
He staggered.
Fell to his knees.
When he looked up—
He knew something was gone.
And he didn't know what.
Arith knelt beside him.
"Which one did you give?"
He tried to answer.
But his mouth moved around an absence.
"I don't remember," he said.
She looked at him for a long time.
Then nodded.
"Good."
They climbed from the cave at dawn. The light above looked thinner, stretched, like it had passed through grief to reach them.
Kairis didn't speak.
The Eye inside him was quieter than it had ever been.
But it hummed now—not in warning, not in command.
In acceptance.