Morning bells of Veylor tolled with a hollow resonance, iron throats echoing through the stone arteries of the city. From the highest spires down to the labyrinthine alleys, smoke rose like gray sermons into the pale sky, mingling with the damp breath of thousands already awake. The capital was alive not in joy, but in the mechanical certainty of survival.
Elias stepped out from the shadow of the Archivum gates, his limbs heavy, his skin still prickling from the otherworldly ritual of the night before. The symbol on his palm burnt into his flesh like an invisible fire throbbed with a faint warmth, hidden beneath the leather of his glove. He flexed his hand, but the sensation remained, a silent pulse that was not entirely his own.
Streets were crowded with contradictions. Preachers in tattered robes proclaimed the imminent cleansing fire of the gods, while hawkers shouted the prices of salted fish and ink bottles. Children darted between carts, their laughter a fragile rebellion against the choking smoke of the factories along the river. Everywhere, watchful eyes of the Sanctum's guards loomed men in steel gray cloaks, their halberds gleaming like spears of judgment.
Elias lowered his hood, not from comfort, but necessity. To draw attention here was to court suspicion, and suspicion in Veylor was a death sentence without trial.
Path led him to the Bookmarket District, a crooked square where forgotten texts were traded in whispers. Old parchment, illegal treatises, forbidden liturgies all exchanged under the noses of the Sanctum. The air smelled of mold, ink, and desperation.
A voice cut through the noise.
"Elias? By the Nine Saints, you look like death warmed twice."
Turning, Elias saw Marrek, a hunched bookseller with fingers stained permanently black by ink. Marrek had been a quiet ally in his archival days, often slipping Elias contraband glossaries under the guise of scrap. His clouded eyes now studied Elias with unusual intensity.
"Couldn't sleep," Elias muttered.
Marrek sniffed, leaning closer. "Sleep has little to do with it. There's… a shimmer around you. Like heat over stone. What did you touch, boy?"
Elias froze. He pulled his cloak tighter. "Nothing that concerns you."
But Marrek's gaze sharpened. "Be wary. The Sanctum dogs sniff out such things faster than carrion crows. Whatever binds you it sings louder than you realize."
Clang split the air. Across the square, a detachment of guards was moving deliberately, their cloaks snapping like storm flags. They weren't here for trade they were searching. For someone.
Panic rippled through the market. Vendors snatched up wares, children vanished into holes, whispers of heresy raids surged like sparks in dry grass. Elias felt the mark on his hand sear with renewed heat, a warning or a beacon he could not tell.
Marrek hissed, thrusting a bundle of rags into Elias's hands. "Hide this and go. Do not come back here for some time."
"What is it?"
"Answers you're not ready for."
Elias shoved the bundle under his cloak and slipped into the current of fleeing bodies, weaving between barrels and broken stalls. Guards' eyes scanned, their boots drumming closer. His heart pounded like war drums, but the mark on his palm seemed to guide him tugging, pulling until he ducked into a narrow alley where light scarcely reached.
Alley was suffocating, damp with the reek of rot and rust. Elias leaned against the wall, steadying his breath. He unwrapped Marrek's bundle. Inside lay fragments of parchment, brittle and scorched, bearing the same sigils he had seen in the Nameless Gospel.
His pulse quickened. Letters twisted as he stared, alive, rearranging themselves into whispers in his head.
Follow the Ash. Seek the Mouth that Devours Silence.
Words weren't spoken, yet they echoed within him as if the city itself breathed them. He clutched his head, gasping.
And then
Shadow detached itself from the darkness of the alley.
A tall figure, face hidden beneath a mask of tarnished bronze, robes stitched with threads of crimson. No footsteps had heralded its arrival. Presence was suffocating, like standing before a sealed tomb.
"You bear the Scribe's mark," the figure said, voice neither male nor female, but layered, as though spoken by many throats. "The city already tastes your scent."
Elias staggered back, fists clenched. "Who are you?"
Figure tilted its head. "A Watcher. Not of the Sanctum, but of what came before it. You've been chosen, Elias of the Archivum. The Gospel is no book it is a covenant. And covenants demand their due."
The mark on Elias's palm flared so hot he nearly screamed. He saw visions veins of fire running under the streets, cathedrals crumbling into dust, a sea of faceless voices chanting his name.
When he blinked, the figure was gone.
Only the whisper remained, curling in his ear like smoke
Tonight, at the Ashen Spire. Or be unmade.
Elias stumbled from the alley, the city spinning around him. He barely noticed guards marching past, or beggars shrieking hymns of famine. His world had narrowed to the burning mark, the parchment whispering from within his cloak, and the summons that could not be ignored.
Ashen Spire loomed in his mind's eye a ruin at the city's edge, avoided by all save the desperate and the damned.
Something awaited him there. Answers, or damnation.
Perhaps both.
And as the evening shadows began to stretch across Veylor, Elias knew there was no turning back.
Dusk bled slowly across Veylor, painting the sky a dirty red. Smoke from the factories climbed heavier than ever, drowning the sun until its final glow was only a faint scar behind the cathedral spires.
Elias walked beyond the crowded districts toward the city's edge. Streets grew emptier, replaced by rotting houses and walls thick with moss. Each step carried whispers that seeped from the mark in his palm no longer mere murmurs, but faint breaths, as if something unseen exhaled inside his flesh.
From afar, the Ashen Tower rose into sight. A broken fang of black stone stabbed the sky, its peak shattered long ago. No one lived nearby. Rumors claimed the tower had once been an altar of summoning, where blood had flowed more than holy water.
The road fell silent. Air grew unnaturally cold, so bitter that Elias's breath fogged despite summer's hold. Wisps of black vapor leaked from the cracked stones, as if the ruins themselves still breathed.
Closer to the tower, the earth changed. Not soil, but ash blanketed the ground, swallowing every footprint as if erasing his presence.
At the tower's base, a ruined circle of stone opened into a courtyard. At its center stood a fractured altar, and upon it sprawled a massive parchment not paper, but something else. Skin, too smooth for beasts, too lifeless for man.
The mark on his hand flared. Whispers sharpened into words.
Sit. Write. Remind the world of what it forgot.
Elias's pulse thundered. An unseen pull dragged him forward. The closer he came, the clearer the parchment revealed itself ink already crawled across its surface, forming letters without touch.
His name surfaced.
Elias Veylor, the Voiceless Scribe.
Tremors seized his hands. He wanted to retreat, but his feet clung to the ash. The mark throbbed like a second heart, beating in rhythm with the spreading words.
Air shuddered.
Shadows seeped from cracks in the stones, gathering into formless masses. Dozens no, hundreds encircled the altar. Eyes burned red in the dark, mouths absent, yet a voice struck the air in unison
"THE SCRIBE HAS BEEN CHOSEN."
The sound pierced to bone. Elias collapsed to his knees, clutching his ears. The parchment lifted slightly, as though caught by unseen wind, drifting toward him.
"No… I don't want this…" His whisper broke, but the mark in his palm burned, defying refusal.
One shadow advanced. Its shape coiled into something vaguely human, though its face remained blurred. When it spoke, the voice was unmistakable
The same voice he had heard in the archive. The same that bled from the Nameless Gospel.
"Refuse, and you will be erased. Name, flesh, soul consumed. Accept, and you will rewrite what even history abandoned."
The parchment hovered before him, waiting. A quill of polished bone formed in the air, descending into his hand.
The mark pulsed violently, urging, commanding.
Elias stared at the quill. His choice was no longer life or death. Something greater loomed.
Shadows roared as one. Ash trembled under his knees.
"WRITE OR VANISH."
The quill touched parchment. Black light exploded from his palm, swallowing his sight.
Darkness consumed all.