They buried the Book of Flesh again.
Beneath three layers of sigil wards and a seal stitched in real blood, Remiel and Soot watched as the Vault doors closed—cutting off the pulsing light that had leaked from its pages like a dying star.
"Is she gone for good?" Soot asked.
Remiel didn't answer at first.
Instead, he traced a symbol in the air—three intersecting circles—and whispered a prayer in the Old Script.
"She won't come back while the Book is closed," he said. "But she will try again. Especially now that she knows you can resist her."
Soot flexed his hands. The new glyphs on his forearms hadn't stopped glowing.
"Why me?" he asked. "What makes me different?"
Remiel looked at him strangely.
"You still don't know, do you?"
"Know what?"
Remiel turned, robes whispering.
"You weren't born during the Silence. You were written into it."
They walked through the lower chambers of the Archive—abandoned rooms, dust-heavy halls, places where no one spoke above a whisper. Here, scrolls curled from disuse. Doors hung on broken hinges. Some corridors even refused to echo.
It was here, in the shadow of a collapsed tower, that Remiel brought Soot to a hidden chamber marked with one word burned into the wall:
PROLOGUE
The door opened inward, moaning like a soul.
Inside were only three things:
A torn map of the old world,
A mirror that reflected no face,
And a scroll locked in a cage of bone.
Remiel knelt before it. "This is the Page Before the Beginning. The prophecy written before time. The one even the Ministry couldn't destroy."
Soot's voice was dry. "And you've just had it sitting here all this time?"
"No," Remiel said. "It moved itself here the day you arrived in the Archive."
Soot blinked. "You mean it walked?"
"I mean it rewrote its location."
Remiel pointed to the scroll. "You want answers? This is where the Ink started. But reading it has… consequences."
Soot stepped forward.
He stared at the scroll. His skin started burning before he even touched it. Lines of prophecy writhed across his spine and ribs, coiling tighter.
Then—
He placed one hand on the cage.
The scroll opened.
Vision.
Wind, fire, language.
A sky filled with falling letters. Cities collapsing under the weight of rewritten names. A mountain cracking in half as a single word—erasure—was spoken aloud.
And at the center of it all: a tree.
Its bark was ink. Its leaves were paper.
It breathed.
And something moved within its roots. Not a god. Not a creature. A presence.
Watching.
Waiting.
Feeding.
We are the Ink.
We remember every version of you.
And we are tired of silence.
Soot gasped, yanked his hand away.
The scroll rolled shut with a heavy clack.
Remiel steadied him. "You saw it?"
"I saw it," Soot said. "The Ink. It's not a force. It's alive."
Remiel nodded slowly. "That is the secret Mother Quill tried to bury. The Ink isn't just prophecy. It's memory. It's sentient. Every word ever written, spoken, or imagined—it remembers. And it's choosing sides."
Soot looked at his arms. "Why me?"
Remiel was silent for a long time.
Then: "Because you're not the first Ink Prophet. You're the first one it let live long enough to change the script."
The next day, the Ministry sent a messenger.
She arrived at dawn, wearing crimson robes marked with the royal sigil of Caelum Prime. She carried no sword, no seal—only a rolled parchment bound in three locks.
Soot and Remiel met her in the Outer Hall.
She unrolled the parchment silently.
A single sentence glowed there.
The Prophet is summoned to the Court of Ink. By Order of the Crown and the Seven Scribes.
Remiel's face paled.
"This is a trap," he whispered. "The Crown hasn't invoked the Court in over a hundred years. The last prophet they summoned didn't return."
Soot looked at the parchment, then down at his skin.
A new word had just appeared on his forearm:
Go.