The lower corridors beneath the Grand Academy weren't marked on official maps.They weren't forbidden — just forgotten.
Lyric passed beneath a rusted arch that had once read Observatorium Primus. Now the letters had peeled to unreadable sigils, the stone beneath them damp with salt and soot.
He moved quietly. Only the splash of water underfoot betrayed his steps.
The tidewells lay ahead — old stone caverns where seawater, channeled from the coast, once powered ink presses and divine forges. The Council claimed they were dry now.
They weren't.
Saltwater dripped rhythmically from ceiling veins. The air pulsed, faintly echoing.
When he reached the final chamber, the ceiling opened above him into a natural dome where oceanlight filtered in through a cracked skylight.
She stood there.
Wrapped in the regalia of House Oryllae — seafoam-green fabrics trimmed with silver reeds. A longcoat that swayed like kelp in motion. Her hair was dark as drowned ink, braided in the eastern sailor's style.
She didn't turn.
Not at first.
Lyric waited.
Then—
"You're leaking," she said.
He blinked. "What?"
She finally turned, her eyes pale green and far too steady.
"Your memory. It's shedding through your skin."
Lyric stepped back.
"Who are you?"
"Heir of House Oryllae. For now." She didn't offer her name.
"And you've been watched for some time, Lyric Velastra. You shouldn't be alive. Not with two marks."
"I didn't ask for them."
"Doesn't matter." She reached into her coat. Pulled out a seashell, hollowed and laced with silver glyphs.
"We found this on the southern shore. It echoed your name. Three times. That means your memories aren't yours anymore."
Lyric's breath caught.
"Then whose are they?"
She looked up at the cracked skylight.
"That's what I'm trying to find out. Because if the world's remembering wrong… it means it's being rewritten."
A distant tremor shook the stones. Water hissed through a hidden channel.
Lyric's second mark burned cold.
The heir stepped forward and held out a narrow folded cloth.
"This is a veil-band. You wear it when your truth becomes a weapon. Tonight… it already has."
He hesitated — then took it.
She paused at the edge of the light.
"Tread carefully, Inkborn. The gods aren't the only things with memory."
Then she was gone — water swallowing her footsteps like she'd never been.