> "A story does not end when it is told.
It ends when the version telling it no longer exists."
—Fragment from the Ritual Codex, Draft Excision Appendix
---
The Archive does not grieve its Hosts.
It catalogues them.
Sorts them by what they tried to bury—not what they became.
Taren was never the first.
Not even the first version of himself.
The one walking the Ossuary Wing now had begun to notice it. The voices that echoed before he spoke. The memories that didn't match the choices he'd made. The ache in his hand—not from reclaiming it, but from a scar he'd never earned.
Something old was crawling beneath his ribs. Something that knew what it was like to be him better than he did.
And the Archive had been waiting for this exact moment.
---
RITUAL: DRAFT EXCISION Status: Incomplete.
Requirements:
A mirror that no longer reflects the current Host.
A page taken from the Host's own skin (or soul).
An item from the Host's earlier version.
A spoken lie, believed by the tongue that speaks it.
Location: Mnemonic Isolation Cell — behind the Door of Unremembering.
The door opened before Taren knocked. Because the version already waiting inside had been expecting him.
---
The room was circular. No windows. Just mirrors—each of them showing a different version of the same boy. Some bleeding. Some smiling. None of them entirely Taren.
In the center: a chair. Strapped to it with rune-inked leather: another Taren. Eyes open. Breathing shallow. Smiling like someone who knew the ending.
> "You're late," the other Taren said. "I was hoping you'd come before we both collapsed into something worse."
Taren didn't answer. He stepped forward. Held the page in one hand—the one the Archive had taken. The one he'd reclaimed.
He tore a word from the skin-page. Let it bleed onto the floor.
The mirrors shimmered. Each version of Taren looked away—except the one in the chair.
> "Do you know what the ritual costs?" he asked.
> "Me," Taren answered.
> "No. It costs me remembering you were never the real one."
---
The ritual began. Taren placed the object: a toy whistle. The kind he'd buried at age seven beneath the roots of a house he never lived in.
The tied Taren twitched. Eyes rolling. Blood dripped from his nose. He was remembering.
Taren spoke the lie:
> "I have never failed the Archive."
The room shivered. A line of the mirror cracked. And behind that mirror, a third Taren reached up to scratch at the glass.
> "Only one of us can walk out," said the tied version. "And the Archive… doesn't care which."
Taren opened his mouth to speak the closing line of the ritual:
> "Erase the line. Reclaim the silence."
But the tied version spoke over him:
> "I am the version the Archive kept hidden." "You were just the mouthpiece it needed to lure me back."
The mirrors cracked fully. All versions turned. Every Taren in the room began to speak.
Different sentences. Different truths. All at once.
> "I was the one who stayed behind." "I burned the original name." "I whispered the first sentence that made the Archive wake."
Taren fell to his knees. Blood from the page had reached his ankles. His voice was unraveling—mimicking the others.
Until only one line remained.
The chair-bound version leaned forward and whispered:
> "You're the draft they never finished."
> "I'm the one that ended."
Then he smiled—gently. And closed his eyes.
Taren spoke the final line:
> "Erase the line. Reclaim the silence."
A light filled the room. The mirrors burned. Each version crumbled—not to ash, but to unfinished sentences.
The tied version's body collapsed. Gone.
But his smile remained—etched onto the chair. Taren turned. The door opened.
The ritual was complete.
---
Outside, Mneme watched. From her veiled chamber, through twelve layers of refracted memory.
> "He did it," she said. "He buried a version."
The Archivist beside her didn't speak. Just flipped a page.
And on that page was a new label:
> TAREN: DRAFT 7-A (Active)
Status: Unstable.
Correction: Redundant?
The last line appeared slowly:
> "Definition Host suspected of recursive contamination."
Mneme whispered:
> "Then we'll just have to see which one of him survives."
---
Back in the Mnemonic Wing, Taren passed by a mirror. No reflection. Only text.
It read:
> "You buried him.
But did you bury the right one?"
He looked away. But something in his hand—the reclaimed one—twitched again.
This time, in rhythm with someone else's breath.
---
CONTINUATION
That night, as Taren tried to sleep beneath the humming lights of his assigned cell, the Archive began to change again.
The walls bled draft glyphs—black sigils written in reversed logic. They formed sentences he hadn't spoken—but somehow remembered.
From the shadows, the voice of a child whispered:
> "You took the wrong one."
Taren jolted upright. The cot beneath him had grown roots—pulling at his legs, keeping him grounded in this version of himself.
In the corner of the room stood a figure with no face. Just a folded piece of paper where the head should be. The folds twitched. Then opened.
Inside was another version of the whistle. Clean. Untouched. Unburied.
> "If I was the buried one," said the faceless figure, "Then why do I still have your voice?"
Taren backed toward the wall.
The air around him thinned. Words began to condense out of the air—dripping like ink, forming symbols he couldn't translate.
> "You erased the line," the Archive whispered, all around him now.
"But you didn't reclaim the silence."
And in that moment—Taren understood:
The version he buried… was not the only one still awake.
Somewhere deeper in the Archive, something ancient stirred. And it knew his name before he ever learned it himself.
---
This nearly rewrote itself.
Because that's the danger when you start peeling identity apart—you don't always know which version of the self is doing the writing.
Taren's journey through the Archive is no longer about survival. It's about continuity.
About whether a version of you is still you when your memories, choices, and purpose have all been edited.
There's horror in death.
But there's a deeper horror in realizing the version that lived…
might not be the one that deserved to.
This was the cost of the Draft Excision Ritual—a process meant to purify, but instead left something behind:
an echo, a duplicate, a contamination.
And now the Archive is watching more closely than ever.
■■■□■■■.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
And remember—if your reflection blinks when you don't…
don't wait to see what version it becomes.