Ashval could not breathe.
It wasn't the incense, nor the stench of marrow-ink that clung to the stone. It was the certainty that his name no longer belonged to him. The girl had said it in her borrowed voice, days ago:
> "You are the Third Sacrament."
He'd tried to ignore it. He'd tried to pray. But the Archive didn't care for prayer. The Archive only recorded.
Now, as he stood before the cracked altar—still stained with Vael's blood—he saw the words forming on the bone wall behind it.
They were his.
But he hadn't spoken them.
"Ashval. Son of No-One. The reluctant page."
His heart hammered. He staggered back, shaking his head. "No," he whispered. "Not me."
The girl—what remained of her—sat cross-legged in the corner, her face lit by the dim glow of marrowfire. Her mouth twitched with unending recitations. She paused only to glance at him, eyes too white to be human anymore.
"You can't run from being written," she said, though her lips didn't move.
And then the wall began to bleed.
---
Ashval backed toward the archway, his hands raised like he could push back the walls. They weren't stone anymore. They were pulp—pages that pulsed faintly with veins, breathing like they were alive.
"I won't," he whispered. "I won't be part of it."
> "You already are," the girl's not-voice replied.
Ashval's pendant burned against his chest. The spiral etched into the bone charm began to twist—not physically, but in concept, as though it had never been carved into the shape he thought it was. He yanked it from his neck, hurling it at the altar.
It didn't clatter.
It sank.
Straight into the bone, like it was water.
The altar glowed.
---
A deep thrum filled the chamber.
Not sound.
A vibration of thought.
> "You resist the page."
The voice wasn't the girl's.
It wasn't the Echo's.
It came from everywhere—from the ceiling, from the marrowfire, from the blood-streaked walls.
Ashval clutched his ears, but the sound was inside him, reverberating in his jaw and teeth. "I didn't consent," he snarled. "I didn't kneel. I didn't lie for you!"
The marrowfire dimmed.
> "Then give us truth."
"I have nothing to give!"
> "All vessels are filled. We only ask which part of you spills first."
---
The air thickened. He could taste the ritual on his tongue—copper, ink, and something older than language. The walls unfurled. Pages tore themselves loose, hovering midair, circling him like carrion birds.
Each one bore his face.
Not as he was. But as he could be.
One smiling. One screaming. One rotting.
The girl giggled in the corner. "You can't refuse the Archive," she said in a sing-song whisper. "But you can negotiate with it."
---
Ashval's breath hitched. "Negotiate?"
Her head tilted sharply, bones creaking. "Refuse to be written as they want… and offer yourself as you want. But you'll pay more. Always more."
The hovering pages turned inward. Their glyphs hissed.
THE REFUSAL RITE.
It was the only option.
---
He dropped to his knees. "Fine," he rasped, staring at the altar. "You want truth? Take this: I am no Archivist. I am no Sacrament. I am Ashval. And I will be remembered as I choose."
The pages froze.
The marrowfire roared.
The chamber shuddered as if the Archive itself was… listening.
And then:
> "Done."
The pages slammed against his body—fusing to his skin, his ribs, his face. They carved their words into his flesh. He screamed until his throat shredded.
When it ended, he collapsed.
---
Ashval woke hours—days?—later.
The girl was gone.
The altar was clean.
The pages had vanished.
The glyphs moved.
When he looked at his arms, he saw script burned into his skin, crawling like living tattoos. He tried to read them. His eyes refused. His mind slid off the words like oil on water.
The Archive had spared him.
But it had written him on its own terms.
---
His reflection in the fractured bone mirror stared back at him.
It smiled.
He didn't.
And in the dark, the Echo whispered to him one last thing before silence swallowed the chamber:
> "You refused the page. But now, you are the ink."
---
That night, as he lay in the cold chamber, a sound woke him.
Whispering.
Not outside his door.
Not in the hallway.
Under his skin.
He dug his nails into his forearm until blood welled. The whispers grew clearer:
> "You refused the page. But now, you are the ink."
His shadow peeled itself off the wall.
It had no mouth.
It didn't need one.
Because when it spoke, it used his teeth.
---
Ashval froze, staring at the thing that used his shape, his teeth, his voice.
"Go back," he croaked, his throat raw. "You're not real."
His shadow tilted its head.
> "You still think there's a difference between real and written?"
It stepped toward him. Not in motion, but in redefinition — one moment painted against the wall, the next stitched into the space beside his bed.
Ashval scrambled back, fingers clawing at the stone until his nails split. "You can't touch me," he hissed. "You're nothing but—"
> "Ink," it finished for him.
"And so are you."
---
His shadow pressed its hand against his chest. Cold seeped into him, sinking deeper than flesh.
And then the glyphs on his skin began to writhe.
Not metaphorically. Physically. They uncoiled, slithering beneath his flesh like worms. He screamed, tearing at his arms, but the script just burrowed deeper, racing up his neck, his face, his tongue.
His shadow leaned close, pressing its mouthless face to his ear.
> "You refused the page, Ashval. But every refusal needs ink. You are that ink. You are a pen the Archive will use again… and again… and again."
The pain dulled. His vision blurred. He wanted to fight, to speak, but his throat wouldn't obey.
His shadow whispered one final thing before it folded itself back into the wall:
> "You will write the Third Sacrament. And you will thank me for it."
---
Ashval blacked out.
And somewhere in the Archive's unfathomable depth, a new page grew — blank, pulsing like a heart, waiting for his first unwilling word.
---
[Fragment 19 — Codex Ossium: The Refusal Rite]
(Sealed Record. Author: Unknown)
> "The Refusal Rite is not defiance. It is concession in disguise.
Those who refuse the page are not spared. They are rewritten.
They barter identity for authorship, exchanging a fixed narrative for a living one — but in so doing, they become ink: mutable, consumable, eternally unstable.
They walk as paradoxes — free, yet bound to be rewritten again and again. The Archive delights in their volatility. It drinks them slowly.
Ashval was the third to invoke it.
The first two no longer remember that they ever did."
---
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