⋱⌘⋰ Lore Scrap ⋱⌘⋰
"A name once erased becomes a weight the soul still carries. Some burdens are too quiet to hear—until someone dares speak them."
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The light faded.
But the silence lingered.
Eira's breath returned in a slow, uneven shiver. Her eyes blinked clear. The glyphs that had swirled like galaxies were gone, leaving behind only their afterglow — like the echo of a dream too large for her chest.
She wasn't sure if she was still standing on her own, or if the Library was holding her up.
The man — the one who had pulled the cosmos into her eyes — lowered his hand. His expression hadn't changed, but something in the air around him had. Less… distant. Still unreadable.
She backed up half a step, fingers tightening around the key pendant at her neck. It pulsed faintly against her skin — cold, not painful. But alive. Like breath trapped in metal.
"What did you just do?" she whispered.
The man — Cael, she would later learn — tilted his head slightly.
"I looked."
"That was more than just… looking."
"There is something missing from you," he said, calm as candlelight. "Something torn."
Before she could ask what that meant, the shelves around them moved.
Books lifted from their rows, pages fluttering midair like birds caught in a dream. One snapped open beside her — runes scrawled across its vellum pages pulsed once, then stilled.
The Library was listening.
Responding.
"The Library reacts to intent," Cael said, watching the air like it might change again. "And names. Especially names."
"I didn't say any name."
"You didn't have to."
She stepped back from the floating book. It followed her.
"Why is it doing that?"
"It's trying to find what was taken from you."
The words landed like a dropped stone in her chest.
She swallowed, her hand drifting again to the pendant. The metal sparked slightly beneath her touch.
"Taken…?"
Cael's gaze narrowed. He turned, gesturing toward a corridor that hadn't been there moments ago. It parted the shelves like water, revealing a heavy iron door veiled in chains. No handle. No hinges.
"This section is sealed," he said. "It houses names too dangerous to be spoken aloud. Names that tried to rewrite themselves."
Eira stepped forward, half-hypnotised.
The door knew her.
Her pendant glowed brighter now, its cold deepening — as though something within it had woken.
"I've seen that lock before," she murmured.
Cael's eyes flicked to the pendant.
"Where?"
"The funeral."
She hadn't meant to say it aloud. But the moment the words left her mouth, the key flared — brilliant, blinding.
A pulse of magic shot from her chest to the door. The runes that bound the chains sparked, then hissed. Ravens shrieked and scattered above, wings slashing the candlelight.
Then silence again.
Cael stepped sharply between her and the door, palm raised. The air around his fingers cracked — ink hissed from the shelves, swirling into a barrier of black smoke and glyphs.
Books dropped to the floor in a thudding ring.
"Don't," he said, voice low. "You don't understand what you're asking for."
Eira looked up at him, heart pounding.
"I didn't ask—it's reacting to me."
He didn't move. His hand remained outstretched.
"If you open that door," he said quietly, "you won't leave unchanged."
There was something behind his words now. Not warning — memory. Like someone who knew what lay beyond the chains.
She didn't flinch this time.
"Then show me how to change."
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A long pause.
The kind that filled the Library with something heavier than silence.
Cael studied her like he was searching for the shape of her bones beneath her fear. Something flickered behind his eyes — a trace of caution. A breath of something else: regret, maybe. Or recognition.
Some part of her remembered being forgotten.
Then, without a word, he turned. His coat whispered against the stone floor — black and fluid like spilled ink.
"Follow me," he said. "But know this — once a name is returned…"
He looked back over his shoulder.
"…so too is its burden."
The man led her deeper into the heart of the Library, where candlelight flickered and bookcases breathed like sleeping giants.
"I'm not staying," Eira muttered. "I just—"
"Found a door that shouldn't exist?"
"Yes."
He glanced at her with weary humor.
"So did the last one."
He introduced himself only as Cael, Keeper of the Library. When she asked his surname, he only said:
"I left it behind."
She told him hers, reluctantly. When he repeated it aloud, the shelves shifted, as if recognizing her.
The scratch on her arm had already scabbed over — but something inside her still ached. The books seemed to know.
"What is this place?" Eira asked. Not for the first time—but this time, her voice held more demand than awe.
Cael didn't look up from the glyph he was sketching into the air, its shape lingering like a shadow that hadn't made up its mind.
"A library," he said, too easily.
Eira crossed her arms. "A library doesn't rearrange the floorplan when it's moody. Or whisper your name from the spine of a book that shouldn't exist."
Cael paused.
Then, with a sigh like parchment curling near firelight, he turned to her. His eyes were old ink—smeared across centuries.
"This is the place where memory and magic forgot how to stay separate."
He stepped closer, tone low but unflinching.
"A library built not to store books—but the pieces of people they leave behind. Forgotten lullabies. Lies that became truths. Names never spoken aloud."
She stared. The silence pressed close.
"And the whispers?" she asked.
Cael's mouth twisted—something between regret and reverence.
"Whispers are what remains when a story refuses to die."
"Why am I here?" she asked.
Cael paused, as if choosing the least dangerous answer.
"Because the Library called you. It does that… when a name is ready to be remembered."
He guided her to an archway shaped like a keyhole. A massive door was sealed beyond it — runes glowing faintly around the frame.
"What's behind that?" she asked.
"Whispers that should not be opened," he said.
"And names that should never be spoken again."
She reached for the door. It didn't budge.
Cael turned, his expression unreadable.
"Looking for someone?"
"My brother. Julian Starling. He disappeared five years ago."
He went still.
"There are no Starling entries in the Archive," he said.
"But names change. Or get taken."
Her heart turned hollow.
"You're saying he might've been… stolen?"
Cael's eyes didn't leave the door.
"I'm saying," he said softly, "you're not the first to search for a name the Library tried to forget."
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To be continued…
⸻ ❖ Archive Fragment ❖ ⸻
To forget a name is a kindness. To steal one is a curse.
⋱◈⋰ End Chapter ⋱◈⋰