The book opened itself.
Soot watched in silence as the pages flipped in a frenzy, each one revealing indecipherable glyphs, symbols that pulsed like a heartbeat. Ink bled from the letters, dripping down onto the stone floor. He took an involuntary step back.
The First Ink raised a hand.
Instantly, the pages froze.
"This is the Book of Flesh," the faceless man said. "Written by those who bore the Ink before you. Words etched into skin, carved by the will of something far older than gods."
Soot felt the pull of the book like gravity, the same strange pain he experienced before a prophecy burst through him. His skin itched.
"What does it want from me?" he asked.
The First Ink tilted his head. "A choice."
Soot narrowed his eyes. "What kind of choice?"
The First Ink gestured toward the wall behind him. Glyphs unfolded across the smooth stone, rearranging until they formed two lines of prophecy—glowing ink shimmering like firelight.
One truth will burn the world.
One lie will save it.
The room fell into silence.
Soot clenched his fists, still shackled. "You're saying I have to lie to stop the world from ending?"
"No," said the First Ink. "You have to choose whether to tell the world what it does not want to hear."
The woman in white stepped forward. "There have been dozens before you. But none received their own death prophecy. That makes you the last."
Soot's voice was quiet. "You said the Ink reached its final page. What happens when it ends?"
The First Ink leaned forward. His skinless face swirled faster. "Then the world rewrites itself. Or disappears."
Later, Soot sat alone in a stone cell high above the city.
He could see the horizon through the narrow window—a broken skyline, towers blackened from past wars, smoke rising from the factories of the Ministry. Somewhere below, the Hollow slept. Tali would be awake, trying to guess what had happened to him.
The prophecy still glowed on his chest, faint but steady.
Ink Prophet Dies Tonight.
He pressed his palm against it. "Why? Who writes you?"
He had no answer. He never did. The words were pain, not clarity. They arrived without warning, without consent.
The cell door creaked.
A boy stepped in. Maybe fifteen. Dressed in the gray robes of an Inkservant, but there was something off—his eyes were too sharp, too knowing.
He carried a black bowl and a long needle.
"Bath and draw," he said. "Orders from the Archive."
Soot glared. "What's that supposed to mean?"
The boy set the bowl on the floor. "You're going to be copied."
"I'm not a manuscript."
"No," the boy said. "You're the last one. You're scripture."
The process was simple and brutal.
The Inkservant traced the prophecy glowing on Soot's skin with the needle, dipping it into thick black ink mixed with ash. As he worked, the glow dimmed—as if the copying stole the prophecy's energy, locking it into another form.
"They'll keep it in the Vault," the boy said. "So when you die, your words don't."
Soot gritted his teeth. "Why bother? If the world ends, there won't be a Vault."
"Then they'll die clinging to a lie," the boy muttered. "Like everyone else."
There was bitterness in his voice.
"You don't like the Ministry," Soot observed.
The boy paused, glanced up. "They erased my sister. Her name, her face, her story. Said she was a false prophet. But she never lied. She just told a truth they didn't like."
Soot's voice lowered. "What was it?"
The boy's hands trembled.
"She said the Ink speaks to more than one."
Midnight approached.
The walls of the Archive hummed with ancient energy. Below the central chamber, the Vault doors began to unlock themselves—one by one—revealing the inner sanctum where the Book of Flesh would be sealed again.
But something was wrong.
The glyphs on Soot's skin began to move again—not the death prophecy this time, but new lines, different script, faster, more urgent.
The Inkservant gasped.
"I didn't touch anything," he whispered.
Soot stared as the words spilled across his arms like wildfire.
The dead prophets are waking.
They remember what was stolen.
The Silence was no accident.
"What does it mean?" the boy asked.
Soot's voice was distant. "It means I'm not the last after all."
In the Vault, the Book of Flesh shuddered.
Pages curled, ink seethed.
A scream echoed through the Archive—not human, not animal, but something ancient and angry, a voice formed from a thousand dead tongues.
Soot dropped to his knees.
His vision blurred. The Ink scorched his skin from the inside.
A final line flared bright across his chest.
Truth bleeds tonight.
And then—
—darkness.