CHAPTER 2: THE ARCHIVE DEMANDS
The book was no longer resting on the altar.
It was breathing.
Kai stood before it—if "standing" was what you could call the act of bracing oneself against time itself unraveling beneath your feet. The chapel groaned as though the bones of forgotten saints were being cracked open beneath its floor.
The book pulsed, its leather cover stretched tight like skin under a scream.
And then, it bled.
A single drop of ink-red liquid welled up from the center, trailing down the page like a tear shed from an eye that had long since forgotten how to cry.
Kai's breath hitched.
Feed it, the voice had said.
But what did he have left to give?
The first sacrifice had stolen his mother's voice from his memory—an entire universe of lullabies, gone in exchange for a single whisper of truth. He hadn't even known what the truth was. The transaction felt rigged. Unfair. Cruel.
But the Archive didn't care about fairness. It cared only for obedience.
He reached toward the book, hand trembling.
The moment his skin brushed the bleeding page, the chapel exhaled. A violent gust of wind shot through the room, extinguishing the ghost-candles that hung in midair. Shadows stretched longer, clawing toward him like they were trying to get a grip on his soul.
The bleeding worsened. The ink now poured from the spine, leaking between the floorboards. The altar was drinking it.
And then, words began to write themselves in violent, jerking strokes:
SACRIFICE: YOUR REFLECTION
Kai blinked. "What does that mean?"
But he already knew.
A ripple passed through the air. The stained-glass windows, once showing strange scenes and impossible futures, began to shimmer with a new image: him. His reflection. Except it wasn't still.
It was watching him.
Kai staggered back.
Each of the windows showed him from a different angle, at different ages. A boy with eyes too wide. A teenager bleeding from the temple. A man with hollow cheeks and trembling hands. Each Kai moved just a little—twitching when he turned his head, blinking when he didn't.
And then… they smiled.
But not kindly.
His reflection was no longer his own.
He turned to the nearest wall, where a cracked mirror had appeared—one that hadn't been there before. It wasn't glass. It looked like black mercury. It rippled before he touched it, as if his presence alone disturbed it.
Kai reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the surface, pain slammed through his skull like thunder.
FLASH.
He was five, staring at his reflection and laughing at how his nose wiggled.
FLASH.
He was twelve, fists balled up in front of a mirror, practicing how to look brave.
FLASH.
He was seventeen, sobbing quietly after a fight—telling the mirror: You're not real. None of this is.
FLASH.
Now.
The mercury mirror boiled.
The reflection inside it warped, stretching and twisting. His face melted like wax under heat—until all that remained was a dark, genderless silhouette with too many teeth and no eyes.
Then, the mirror shattered.
A shard flew out, slicing into his cheek.
Kai stumbled back, his hand to his face. Blood.
But not red.
Ink.
The Archive had taken his reflection.
He spun toward the book again.
More words scrawled across its surface:
IDENTITY UNSTABLE. ANCHOR: DAMAGED.
His knees buckled. The shadows whispered around him, voices he didn't recognize but felt too familiar.
"Do you even know what you look like now?" one of them hissed.
Kai crawled forward on hands and knees, eyes stinging. The chapel groaned again—and somewhere deep in its spine, a child screamed.
High. Shrill. Terrified.
Kai froze.
And then his left hand aged.
Not figuratively.
In one blink, it wrinkled, spotted, veins rising like ridges beneath translucent skin. His fingers twisted with arthritis, nails yellowed. Every joint screamed as if mourning lost decades. A hundred years of pain condensed into three seconds—
Then it was gone.
His hand returned to normal.
His breath did not.
The scream echoed still. Not from outside.
From within the book.
He reached up with that same hand, feeling the new brand there. It had changed.
No longer just the word "I".
Now it burned darker:
"I… was…"
Kai.
He clutched his head. The ink-river from earlier poured through his memory now, staining moments, drowning recognition. He saw flashes of places he couldn't name—hallways of rust and whispers, a woman with three shadows, a red door that grew teeth.
He slammed his fist onto the altar.
"What am I even looking for?!"
The voice didn't answer.
Instead, the book turned its own page.
New words bled through:
"To rebuild your truth, you must first become the lie."
Kai's heartbeat surged.
Become the lie?
He looked up at the chapel ceiling.
It was moving now.
The wood panels curled into shapes—faces screaming in silence, mouths open in agony, eyes weeping nothing.
All of them looked like him.
He ran.
He didn't choose a direction. The chapel melted around him, floorboards vanishing underfoot. Every step became a fall. Every breath a fight.
He wasn't sure when the structure disappeared.
All he knew was the endless Archive had returned.
Walls of books stretched infinitely in every direction—none had titles. None had order. The shelves towered impossibly tall, but some floated sideways. Others rotated like puzzle pieces trying to lock into place.
Kai stumbled forward.
Books whispered as he passed.
His name.
Or what used to be his name.
"Kai…"
"Kai lied…"
"Kai died…"
"Kai… tried…"
He grabbed a book at random and opened it.
Inside: a blank page. And then a scream, erupting from the spine like a child's voice being torn in half.
He dropped it.
The air trembled.
From the shadow between the shelves came something shuffling.
He pressed against a bookcase, holding his breath.
It passed.
A shape.
Tall, emaciated, faceless—but holding something in its arms. A bundle wrapped in white. A baby?
No.
The cloth breathed.
Whatever it carried squirmed, twisting under the fabric like it was alive but wrong. The thing cooed with multiple voices. One of them was his.
Kai turned and ran deeper into the Archive.
He found a mirror again, tucked between two bookshelves.
But this one reflected nothing.
Not even the shelves behind him.
Just void.
And written across the frame in bleeding ink:
"You no longer exist."
Kai fell to his knees.
His breath hitched. His limbs shook.
"I don't know who I am anymore."
Silence.
Then… the faintest voice.
A whisper.
But not the Archive's.
A girl.
"Don't trust your name."
He looked up.
A torn scrap of paper floated down before him. Written in crimson strokes:
"The next sacrifice is already inside you."
END OF CHAPTER 2