Rhys stood in what he had mentally designated as the 'Grand Foyer' of the Argent Sanctum. It was a vast, cathedral-like hall whose crystalline walls refracted the blue void-light into a constant, shifting dance of rainbows. The silence was profound, broken only by the distant, soothing sound of the island's waterfalls.
It was beautiful. Majestic. And extremely empty.
"It needs furniture," Rhys announced to no one in particular. Liora, who had been standing a few paces behind him in a state of quiet prayer, jolted slightly.
"My Lord?"
"Furniture," Rhys repeated, gesturing around the echoing hall. "Rugs. Tables. Some thrones, maybe? A big one for me, obviously, but a few smaller, less ostentatious ones for... you know. Guests. It feels less like a sanctum and more like an empty art gallery right now."
And I need a library, he thought. A big one. What's a magic castle without a library filled with dusty old tomes of forbidden lore? He envisioned it already: floor-to-ceiling shelves of dark wood, rolling ladders, the smell of old paper and leather.
"A library would be nice," he said aloud. "A place to keep track of the... the story."
"You wish for me to begin a chronicle of your works?" Liora asked, her voice filled with earnest purpose. "I will carve your deeds into the very walls of this holy place!"
Rhys winced. "No, no, that's a bit much. Let's start with a book. And maybe a desk. But first, we need the actual lore. I've only been 'dreaming' for a little while. I wonder how the world fills in the details."
He was walking towards a side chamber he intended to be the library when a flicker in the corner of his eye made him stop.
It was like a heat shimmer in the air. A visual distortion. A brief, human-shaped patch of static that was there one moment and gone the next.
Bzzt...
The sound was faint, like a dying wasp.
"Is that a graphical glitch?" Rhys muttered, genuinely curious.
The static reappeared, holding its shape for a fraction longer this time. It resolved into the silhouette of a woman, thin and frail. She was dressed in the tattered, moth-eaten remains of what might have once been a fine noble's gown of deep crimson. Her hair was a tangled mane of black, and her face... her face was the unsettling part. It was blurry, indistinct, as if his dreaming mind hadn't finished rendering the details.
Then, just as quickly, she vanished.
...bzzzz...
Liora stepped forward, her hand instinctively going to her side as if reaching for a sword she didn't have. Her star-wrought wings flared, casting brilliant constellations across the crystal walls. "An echo! A lost soul fading to The Bleed! My Lord, be careful!"
Rhys waved a dismissive hand. "Relax, Liora. She's not hostile." He was fascinated. "This is a great narrative hook. A ghost NPC? Or a time-displaced person? The concept is excellent."
He walked towards the spot where the woman had appeared. "Hello?" he called out, his voice echoing in the hall. "Are you a quest-giver?"
The static figure flickered back into view, more solid this time, but still transparent. He could see the crystal patterns on the wall right through her trembling form. She was looking at him, her blurry features contorted in what looked like agony.
Pain. And then, less pain.
For longer than she could remember, her existence had been a single, horrifying sensation: the feeling of being erased. Her name, her family, her history—all of it had been consumed, and now The Unraveling was coming for her body, her very concept.
She flickered. Between moments, between places, between being and not-being. The hissing static was the soundtrack to her dissolution.
Then she saw him.
It was like seeing a lighthouse in an ocean of static. A solid, undeniable point of absolute reality. The closer her flickering spirit came to his presence, the less the hiss tormented her. The sight of the Argent Sanctum wasn't a comfort; it was an anchor. This place was, with a certainty that defied the erasure of The Bleed.
And its master, The Progenitor, was the source of that certainty.
When he spoke, his voice didn't just reach her ears. It solidified her. The question—"Are you a quest-giver?"—was bizarre, incomprehensible, but the power behind the words was not. They were real. They held her in place.
Her blurry features sharpened. Her form, while still ghostly, became stable. Dark, terrified eyes locked onto Rhys.
"I..." she gasped, her voice a dry rasp, thin and reedy. "I... cannot... remember..."
Rhys leaned in, stroking his chin. "Oh, classic amnesia plotline. I like it. A true and tested trope. So you don't know who you are or why you're here?"
The ghostly woman shook her head, a tear tracing a path down her newly defined cheek. The tear itself seemed to flicker, threatening to de-materialize before it fell. "My name... I think it was... no. It's gone. A whisper. My home... a ghost of a ghost. I have no past. The Bleed... it took my story."
The tragic, poetic line hung in the air.
Rhys's eyes lit up. "Wow. That's a fantastic line. 'It took my story.' Seriously, top-tier writing."
His praise, so utterly disconnected from her suffering, only confused her more. She was confessing the annihilation of her soul, and he was complimenting the prose.
"A living paradox," Rhys mused excitedly. "A person with no history. That's brilliant! How does the dream logic even support that? You should technically not exist at all, but here you are. I love it." He looked at her tattered crimson dress. "A noble, probably. From a forgotten house."
"I... think so," she whispered, her form flickering violently. "The colors... are the only thing that feel true..."
BZZZZT! KRRSHH...
She was losing her hold. The stability his presence gave her wasn't enough.
"Right," Rhys said, his expression turning serious in the way a game master does when the rules need a little nudge. "Your whole problem is your lore got deleted. So, the solution is simple: you just need a new way to record it."
He held out his empty hand.
"A story that's gone needs a new book to be written in," he said, the words coming to him with the easy confidence of a storyteller setting a new scene.
Liora watched, her breath hitched. The very air around The Progenitor's outstretched hand grew thick and heavy. Points of light, tiny embers of starlight, gathered from the ambient magic of the Sanctum. Wisps of shadow, pure and absolute, rose from the crystal floor.
Vmmmmmm...
Light and dark swirled, intertwining like thread. They did not mix; they wove together. In his palm, an object began to form, a concept being given physical shape.
FWUMP.
It settled. Lying in his hand was a book. It was a large, heavy tome, bound in leather the color of a starless midnight sky. A simple, elegant clasp of unadorned silver held it shut. It radiated no power, no light, no heat. It simply was, with the same undeniable presence as Rhys himself.
He held it out to the flickering woman. "Here. I just came up with this. Let's call it… an anchor. A place for a story that needs one."
The woman, the ghost, the echo—she reached out with a trembling, translucent hand. The moment her fingertips touched the cover of the book, everything changed.
THRRUMMM.
A deep, resonant hum pulsed from the tome, traveling up her arm and through her entire being. The static hiss around her was violently silenced. The flickering stopped. Her transparent form solidified, the colors of her crimson dress becoming rich and deep. The pale white of her skin gained a living blush. Her black hair settled around her shoulders, tangible and real.
She was no longer a ghost. She was a woman.
She stared at the book, then back at Rhys, her dark eyes now sharp and filled with a dawning, terrifying comprehension. "What... is this?"
"It's a blank book," Rhys explained simply. "But, my theory is, because your problem is conceptual, you need a conceptual solution. Anything you write in there... well, let's just say the dream will accept it as canon. An irrefutable truth." He smiled. "You've been erased from history? Fine. You're now the historian of a future yet to be written. So go on. Give yourself a name."
From a nearby crystalline pillar, a long, black raven's feather detached itself, its tip hardening into a point of sharp obsidian. It floated down and settled into her free hand. An inkwell, filled with a liquid darker than night, materialized on the floor beside her.
With shaking hands, she unclasped the book. The pages within were pristine, utterly blank. They felt like vellum and silk, but she knew they were made of something far more fundamental.
She knelt, setting the great book on the floor. She dipped the quill. She paused, her mind a maelstrom of fear and hope. Then, with all the conviction she could muster, she put quill to page and wrote the first words of her new existence.
The letters flowed from the ink, seeming to burn themselves into the page.
My name is Theia.
The moment the last letter was complete, the world seemed to take a breath. A soft, powerful shockwave, imperceptible to Rhys but earth-shattering to Theia and Liora, emanated from the book. The very laws of reality had just been amended.
Theia gasped, her hand flying to her chest. Her name. It wasn't a half-forgotten whisper anymore. It was hers. It was real. It had weight. It had meaning.
Tears streamed down her face now, but they were no longer tears of a ghost. They were the tears of a woman who had been given the one thing she thought she'd lost forever: a truth.
She looked up at Rhys, her expression of awe even deeper than Liora's. Liora saw a savior who had defied the end. Theia saw a god who had gifted her the power of Genesis.
"I am Theia," she said, her voice clear and strong for the first time. "The Crimson Archivist." She bowed her head to the floor, the tome of her new reality resting before her. "And I will record the scripture of your dawning world, my Progenitor."
Rhys clapped his hands together. "Theia, the Crimson Archivist! Perfect! See? I told you it was a cool concept. Now," he said, a pragmatic look on his face, "can you write us up some chairs?"