CHAPTER 1: THE FORGOTTEN VOICE
"It was cold. Not the kind that bit the skin, but the kind that seeped into his bones and whispered,
'You shouldn't be here.'
His lungs burned. Not from breathlessness-from the slow, syrupy ink he'd been drowning in since he woke."
The air wasn't air—it was ink.
Black, slow-moving, and thick as grief. Kai awoke lying face-up in the center of a chapel sculpted from frozen shadows.
The stained-glass windows didn't shimmer with sunlight; they bled it. Streams of colorless light seeped down like mourning veils, barely illuminating the altar ahead.
His fingers ached. They were curled around something—something sharp.
He opened his hand.
A knife.
But not of steel. It shimmered like frozen grief-like it had been forged from heartbreak and tears. It pulsed in his palm, beating in time with something deeper than a heartbeat.
Memory, maybe
And then, the voice came.
A whisper from nowhere and everywhere.
"To remember the truth," it said, "first surrender a lie."
He sat up. The world felt unfamiliar, yet there was a hollowness inside him that had grown roots. His name echoed in his mind, but only in fragments. KAI... what? He tried to conjure the rest, but it slid away like oil on water.
Before him, the altar glistened with an open book. It was bound in flesh.
He stood, stumbling forward. Each step left dark footprints behind, like his presence was rotting the floor. When he reached the altar, he stared down at the book. Its pages were blank, but they shimmered—ink ready to bloom.
The knife trembled in his hand.
"Feed it," the voice murmured again.
Kai raised the blade. Instinctively, he knew: this wasn't a place of prayer. It was a place of trade. And memory was currency.
He looked down at the blade, then at the book.
"What do I give?" he whispered.
The chapel groaned. A new sound joined the whispering wind—something like laughter. Mocking. Childlike.
And then, on the page, words began to write themselves:
SACRIFICE: HER VOICE
Kai's hands began to shake.
"Whose?"
The book bled.
And a memory surfaced.
His mother.
She was there in the kitchen, speaking. Her mouth moved with soft warmth, but the memory had been corrupted—sound had been replaced by static. Her voice, her lullabies, her laughter… gone.
The static spread. Not just in the memory-in his skull. His left ear went dead, as if his mother had carved out the part of his brain that remembered love.
He dropped the knife.
But the chapel didn't let him go. The knife melted into his palm, branding him with a single black mark:
"I"
He screamed. Or tried to. The sound came out strangled and low, like his own voice was sinking beneath an ocean of silence.
The altar-book pulsed.
THE FIRST LIE IS GONE
Kai staggered back. He glanced up at the stained glass windows. Now they shimmered with scenes he didn't recognize—
A hooded figure holding the same tear-forged knife.
A black brand glowing on its palm.
A chapel on fire.
And beneath it all: Kai's face.
No.
Not exactly.
An older version of him.
More broken. More hollow.
"Who am I?" he whispered.
The voice answered.
"You were Kai."
He didn't remember leaving the chapel.
The world outside was stitched from broken thoughts and static clouds. There were no stars—only fading echoes of them, like the sky had forgotten what light meant.
KAI wandered.
His hands trembled. His breath steamed black. His footsteps echoed too loudly, as if the world didn't trust him to be quiet.
Then—
A scream.
Childlike. Not joyful. Not playful.
Terrified.
KAI ran.
The path twisted under his feet, rearranging like a puzzle that refused to be solved. Trees emerged and dissolved. Walls blinked into being. Reality flickered.
He found her by the river of ink.
A girl, no older than ten. Mute, pale, her eyes wide with knowing. She didn't scream when he approached.
She wrote in her own blood.
"You brought this."
He shook his head. "I don't even know where I am."
She scribbled more.
"Sound = Sanity. Don't waste your words."
He knelt. "Who are you?"
She looked at him—then at his hand.
The black brand still pulsed.
"You did this before," she wrote.
Kai stared.
"What does that mean?"
Her hand began to tremble.
The ink-river behind her bubbled. Shapes began to rise.
Kai stood. "We have to go."
But the girl just stared past him, into the river.
Then she signed something.
A simple gesture.
"Don't remember me."
And vanished.
KAI wandered for hours—or was it years? Time didn't matter here. Memories blurred into smoke.
He found a statue.
It wore his face.
Below the feet, carved into obsidian:
"THE KEEPER'S FIRST FAILURE."
He reached out to touch it—and something snapped.
Another memory surged.
A childhood game.
Hide and seek. Laughter. Giggles from behind a curtain.
Gone.
The concept dissolved in his brain like sugar in fire. He no longer understood the point of "games."
The brand on his palm brightened.
"I… was… KAI."
And then, something moaned behind him.
A creature made of sobbing children and stitched-together lullabies. Its mouth opened, and it screamed:
"KAI!"
The name pierced his mind.
Pain lanced through his skull. The world shattered into fractured memories.
He fought. The battle wasn't physical. It was mental, emotional, existential.
And he won.
Barely.
The creature dissolved into whispers.
Kai collapsed, panting.
At his feet lay a torn page.
Words written in crimson:
"THE PAGE OF MUTED SCREAMS"
He picked it up. The moment he did, the world went silent. Not empty. Not quiet. Silent.
He felt power inside it.
A weapon.
A shield.
A curse.
He turned.
The chapel stood behind him again, though he had wandered miles away.
Its windows had changed.
They now showed Li—the girl.
But in each window, he was killing her.
Six different ways.
In one, he pushed her into the ink river.
In another, he stabbed her with the tear-knife.
In the last, he whispered something into her ear—and she shattered into dust.
Kai dropped the page.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
But the voice returned.
The Archive.
Cold. Unfeeling. Patient.
"To remember what you were, you must see what you've done."
And then, silence again.
But this time, it wasn't imposed.
It was chosen.
KAI stood still in the ink-wind, surrounded by ghost-memories, a brand burning on his hand.
"I was Kai,' he said-but his voice wasn't his anymore. It was hers. His mother's.
The ink-river laughed. The Archive had taken more than he'd offered."
But no one listened.
Because even his words weren't real anymore.
Only the silence remained.