The cave narrowed.
Not enough to crawl, but enough that Ren had to walk sideways in parts, his shoulder brushing cold stone. The torch he carried sputtered, flame clawing at the damp air. Every step farther into the tunnel stripped more warmth from him.
Zarno moved ahead in silence, ducking under a lip of jagged rock. Her fingers skimmed the wall like she was reading it.
They hadn't spoken since they crossed the stone threshold. Not because of fear. Because of quiet. A kind of reverent tension, like they'd stepped into a memory someone else had tried to forget.
When they emerged into the wider chamber, Ren almost dropped the torch.
Not because of anything violent. But because of what wasn't there.
No blood. No bones. Just rows of empty benches carved into the rock, smooth and old. At the front—an altar. But it wasn't divine. No icon. No symbol. Just a slab of slate with scratch marks, long and shallow, like someone had tried to write with their hands after forgetting language.
Zarno stood near it, arms folded.
"This wasn't a chapel," she said.
"No," Ren agreed. "It was a courtroom."
There were no windows. No doors other than the one they came from. Just echoes. Ren stepped closer, running a hand over the bench closest to him. The wood—or what had once been wood—crumbled slightly under his touch. Dried out. Starved.
"People came here to be judged," he said. "But not by gods. Maybe by each other."
Zarno tapped the altar once. "Or themselves."
He didn't respond.
He moved to the far side of the chamber, where a smaller passage twisted off into another hall. The pen in his coat shifted.
Then moved.
He froze.
The nib pressed down hard against his notes even before he could open the flap fully. It scratched a single line across a blank page:
"One of them knew what you were."
Ren read it twice. "One of who?"
Another sentence began, scrawled out in broken rhythm.
"The last group. The ones who left the symbols near the cliffs. They built this place."
"They built it after failing."
He felt the chill settle behind his ribs.
Zarno stepped up beside him. "Let me guess," she said. "The pen's gossiping again?"
Ren nodded slowly.
"It says whoever was here before us—auditors, maybe—already tried to fix this world. Or judge it. And they failed."
Zarno's expression didn't shift much. But her eyes tightened. "They didn't make it out, then."
"No," Ren said. "But they left this behind."
He walked back toward the altar and placed his journal on top of it. The surface of the stone was cracked, but solid. It had held. Even after everything else crumbled.
A thought occurred to him.
"What if this whole place… was meant for someone like me? What if the court wasn't for them. But for us?"
Zarno didn't laugh. Didn't say he was being paranoid.
She just said, "Then maybe you should read the verdict."
Later
They found it after three hours of checking blind corridors—another chamber, smaller, tucked away beneath the lowest shelf of the caves. Unlike the others, this one was filled with marks. Scratched into the walls, onto floor stones, into the backs of slate tablets scattered like broken teeth across the room.
Not language. Not really. But Ren recognized patterns. Lists. Names. Symbols for places, ideas. Probabilities. At the center of the back wall, a diagram: a rough globe, split in thirds. One labeled "Maintain." One labeled "Flag." One—etched so deep the wall cracked—"Erase."
He stood in front of it for a long time.
Zarno crouched nearby, reading fragments from a slate. "'Infection confirmed. Two cycles in drift. Locals unaware. Observers neutralized.'"
Ren touched the cracked part of the wall.
There were seven hash marks near the word Erase. One fresh.
He realized his mouth had gone dry.
"This was real," he said quietly.
Zarno didn't ask what "this" was. She knew.
Others had been here. Others had judged this world before him. And they'd all come to the same conclusion.
"Seven recommendations for deletion," he murmured.
He closed his eyes.
The pen was silent again.
He wanted to scream at it. Demand something useful.
Instead, he crouched and picked up one of the tablets. It had been scorched along the edge.
Not by fire.
Inkfire.
His fingers brushed the pattern. It burned cold.
"You okay?" Zarno asked.
"No," he answered honestly.
She nodded once. "Then we're on track."
Elsewhere – Serel Vann
The ashes were still warm.
She knelt beside the remains of a hill camp—one that Ren and Zarno had abandoned last night. Bits of bark still smoldered in the coals. She touched the ground beside it. Still damp from water boiled. No footprints in the soft moss.
They were getting smarter.
But so was she.
She held up her whisperstone.
It pulsed, but slower now.
Less fear in the trail.
More resolve.
She stood slowly.
"They found something."
Not just shelter. A direction.
She looked to the horizon, where the cliffs curved down into the western ravines.
"They're headed toward the Archive."
She paused, then added, "Or what's left of it."
The stone dimmed.
She closed her fingers around it.
"I'll catch up. But I'll let them see the cracks first."
Back in the Archive
Ren didn't sleep that night.
He kept reading.
The more he read, the more hollow he felt.
Not because of fear.
Because of familiarity.
They'd all written the same things. Notes about unfair systems, dying gods, corrupted magic, people surviving by bending morals until they snapped. Every auditor had made a list of what they thought needed fixing.
But none of them ever filed a report.
None had finished.
Some had been erased. Others had chosen silence. One, apparently, had burned his own pen.
Zarno had drifted off nearby, curled under a threadbare blanket. She didn't snore. Just breathed slow and even, like she trusted the walls.
Ren stared at the words in his notebook.
Then added his own line.
"I'm still here. And I still don't know what I'm supposed to feel."
He closed the book.
And let the darkness settle.