He had no name.
Only a scar.
A long, jagged line across his throat, sealed by something older than stitches—something sacred or cursed. He remembered no voice. No beginning. Only the scream of crows circling a tower made of melted bells.
They called him Tirian, though he'd never chosen it. Names were weights. And he was already drowning.
He wandered through the remains of a city that had never known life. Its buildings leaned, whispering regrets to one another. Doors bled rust. Windows wept smoke. The sky overhead was a bruised parchment, torn open in places where forgotten gods had clawed their way out.
Each step Tirian took stirred the ash.
But this ash was not dead.
It inhaled.
It pulsed.
It remembered.
At his side, a lantern flickered, though no flame lived inside. It fed on memory. His, or others'. He didn't know. It flickered louder when he neared the grave-markers—thousands of them—each carved not with names, but with questions. Not asked. Engraved.
"Where did the sun go?"
"Why did they bury the sky?"
"Who dreamt me into this shape?"
Tirian knelt beside one of the markers, brushing away the moving ash. His hand came back smeared with something warm. Not blood. Not ink. Something between both.
He turned as the wind stilled. That was always the warning.
Something approached.
It didn't walk. It unfolded. Like a scripture burned into origami flesh, folding and unfolding in nauseating precision. Its head was made of mirrors. Its body was wrapped in bandages inscribed with screaming letters. It smelled of forgotten tongues.
A Lexivore.
They fed on speech, on unspoken thoughts, on names you refused to speak aloud.
Tirian stood.
The scar on his throat burned—it wanted to scream, but couldn't.
He reached into his coat. Pulled the blade.
Not a sword. A fragment of silence, sharpened into form.
The Lexivore shrieked—its mirrors cracked, its bandages unraveled, releasing moths made of grammar and hate. Tirian moved fast. He didn't swing the blade; he unmade with it. Each slash wasn't a cut—it was a redaction. A denial of form.
The creature withered into syllables.
He stepped back. Breathing hard. Or mimicking breath.
The lantern dimmed.
Another question glowed faintly from a nearby grave:
"Was I ever real?"
Tirian didn't answer. He never did.
Far ahead, beyond the collapsing spires and twitching statues, he saw it: a light that did not belong.
Not holy.
Not cursed.
Just... alien.
He followed.
Hours—or minutes—passed. Time here was bent, folded like pages in a book thrown into fire. Eventually, Tirian reached the source of the light: a building shaped like a cathedral, but inverted. Its spires plunged into the ground. Its bells rang backward.
And in the center of it, a boy knelt.
No—not a boy anymore.
A name.
A warning.
Elías.
Tirian didn't move closer. He watched from the shadows, the lantern whispering threats to itself.
Elías wrote on the air with something blacker than memory.
Tirian could see the words bleeding into the stone, rewriting the shapes of nearby things. Trees twisted into cages. Statues melted into song. Even the wind forgot how to move.
He is one of them now, the lantern hissed.
But Tirian already knew.
He had seen many rise. None returned.
And yet… this one felt different. Not stronger. Just... stranger.
The ink from Elías's quill bled toward the cathedral walls, forming sentences that read like commandments, or curses:
"There will be no more gods."
"The truth has teeth."
"Only liars survive the end."
Tirian turned away. He'd seen enough.
The world was changing again. Not with fire or flood.
But with words.
And he still had none.
As he left the cathedral behind, the ash began to rise again—not with hunger, but with curiosity.
One of the grave-markers behind him now glowed with fresh ink.
"Will you write, or be written?"
Tirian didn't answer.
But for the first time in uncounted years…
He wanted to.
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Question for the reader: If the world were rewritten around you, would you fight to remember who you were… or surrender, and become what it needs you to be?