There were no stars in the sky that night only names.
Names carved into the void like scars. They drifted in slow orbits above Kael's body, glowing faintly like dying candles. Each one pulsed with memory. Each one wept with regret. Kael Veyhar didn't know who he was. Not truly. All he knew was that he'd woken up in a world where people screamed not in pain, but in remembrance.
The sky mourned. The ground groaned. And the wind… it whispered stories he could not bear to hear.
He stood barefoot on the blackened bones of a forgotten battlefield. Ruined arches rose like broken ribs from the ash, and beyond them… a sea of paper. Blank pages floated endlessly, shivering in the air like leaves refusing to fall. He picked one. It crumbled in his hands.
No ink.
No voice.
No past.
Just like him.
His chest burned. Not from pain, but from absence
like something inside him had been scraped out with jagged words. Behind him, a sound.
Creak.
Kael turned.
A girl stood at the edge of the ruin.
Small. Pale.Eyes like bottled sorrow. She didn't speak not with her mouth. But Kael heard it, still.
"You can hear me… can't you?"
He nodded. She smiled. Not joyfully but like someone who'd forgotten how to smile, and stitched one together from leftover hope.
"Then you're like me," she said.
"A story that was never written."
Kael blinked. The wind howled louder, and his ears began to ring. The sky cracked. One of the floating names flared red and fell like a comet crashing into the earth near his feet. Ash flew. The ground split. A scream erupted. And in that scream…Kael saw someone die.
Not now. Not here. But… somewhere inside his chest. He gasped. Blood ran from his nose.
His eyes blurred, and a name carved itself into his mind:
"LENN AESTRA."
The girl trembled.
"The Thread Tower has opened…"
"And it's hungry for names."
Kael whispered hoarsely,
"Whose name was that?"
She looked at him. Tears in her eyes. Her lips parted.
"Yours."
Kael stared at the girl as her words shattered something silent inside him.
"Yours."
The word echoed like a curse,
like a secret the world had tried too hard to forget. The name Lenn Aestra It wasn't just carved into his head. It pulsed in his blood, like a scream that had never been let out.
His breath caught. His legs gave in.
And the ash-covered ground welcomed him like an old friend.
The girl moved closer, the hem of her tattered cloak brushing across the paper-laden ruins. Her voice still silent, yet deafening poured into his head.
"Everyone here is a Threadless Soul. We were born in the gaps of fate…The spaces between stories, the errors in every perfect narrative."
"Some call us glitches."
"Some call us ghosts."
"But the truth is…"
She knelt before him, placing her hand on his chest.
"We're just stories no one wanted to write."
Kael felt it. Not her touch but the absence it awakened. His heart beat once.
Twice.
And then It bled.
Not blood. But ink.
Black.
Thick.
Cold.
It leaked from his veins like a dying poem. He clutched his chest as foreign memories rushed into his head memories not his own. A little boy hiding in a cellar. A mother calling out a name not Kael's.A blade held by a trembling hand. A scream swallowed by silence.
"What… is this…?" he gasped.
The girl's expression darkened.
"The Archive has opened. That name… Lenn Aestra… must have been a soul waiting for release."
"And you… you just heard their final moment."
A sudden gust tore through the ruins. The floating papers scattered. One page slapped against Kael's chest and stuck there,like it knew him.
He peeled it off. No ink.
Until. A single line appeared, dripping in that same black:
"I only ever wanted to be remembered."
Kael's hands trembled. Something ancient inside him stirred like a voice that had been buried beneath centuries of silence.
"Who... writes these?" he asked softly.
The girl's eyes widened not in fear,
but something deeper.
"The Laughing Archivist," she whispered.
"The one who decides which stories live… and which vanish."
Kael looked up at the name-filled sky. He understood now. This wasn't a world. This was a library of the forgotten. And he? He wasn't here to read. He was here…to decide what deserved to be written.
The paper in Kael's hand continued to bleed. Not like ink from a pen, but like sorrow from a wound. Each drop formed symbols he didn't recognize,yet his heart read them with terrifying clarity.
"This pain does not belong to you."
"But now… it does."
Suddenly, the silence cracked.
Not a sound. But a pressure A deep, ancient pull beneath his feet,
like the earth had grown tired of staying buried. The girl flinched. She backed away slowly, her eyes locked onto Kael's chest.
"You triggered it…" she whispered.
"The Echo…"
Kael rose shakily. The page in his hand burned away into ash. His eyes still held the name Lenn Aestra, but behind it now another memory stirred. A field of sunlit grass…a lullaby humming in the background…a child reaching up to touch the sky…and then Screams. Flames. Darkness swallowing it all.
Kael clutched his head, as two memories neither his collided inside him like dying stars.
"What's… happening to me…?" he groaned.
The girl knelt, her forehead pressed to the cold earth.
"The Archive marked you."
"It gave you a fragment. That means you're now bound to the Storyweave."
Kael barely heard her. His breathing turned sharp. The ash below him lifted, forming spirals and from it, a glowing thread floated upward.
Not a rope. Not a line. A thread of fate. Frayed. Flickering. Singing in silence.
It hovered in front of him.
Then sank…straight into his heart. Kael didn't scream. He didn't flinch.
He just… remembered.
A woman running.
A child crying.
A blade meant for someone else piercing her instead. A name whispered as breath faded:
"Lenn…"
The girl looked up slowly.
"You've been chosen as a Threadkeeper."
Kael's hands curled into fists. He didn't understand this world. He didn't know its rules. But deep inside,he knew one thing:
"I felt them die."
"I felt their need to be remembered."
He looked at the skies,at the names orbiting like mourning stars. And in that moment,Kael Veyhar changed. Not into a warrior. Not into a hero.
But into something the Archive had tried so hard to erase: A soul who would write back.
The sky pulsed once. A thunderclap of silence roared. And then, in fire and ink, a new name appeared in the air:
"Kael Veyhar – Threadkeeper of the Lost Echo."