Next Morning.
Thu sun drags its pale light across rooftops like someone painting without passion — the kind of dawn that forgets it was supposed to bring hope. The city doesn't wake up so much as reboot. Glitch by glitch. Hiccup by breath.
And even after the sleep, I… I don't feel rested. Just reassembled.
Like a memory duct-taped into the skin.
I sit at the table, journal open, pen motionless. I haven't written a word today.
Because I can't remember what I dreamt before.
Or what I was before it.
That happens sometimes — fragments drop out. All the words, feelings, even faces. Everything drops out. It's not dramatic or quiet.
That's what makes it more terrifying.
Eventually, I scribble:
June 5
Wraithmark: dormant pulse.
Symptom: Voice tremors.
Memory lapse: 6 hours missing (night)
Status: Untethered
Anchor: Girl's face — blurry. Still unknown.
I draw a line under it. Then another.
Then I stop pretending it's helping.
The kettle screeches loudly. I forgot that I turned it on.
I pour the tea. Let it steep too long. Let it cool too fast. Let it sit.
In the silence, the flat makes old noises — radiator ticks, pipe groans, the hum of the forgotten. And beneath it all, I hear something I almost mistake for music.
But it's not music. It's a whisper.
Faint. Not from outside. From inside.
From the mark.
I lift my sleeve.
The Wraithmark pulses once. Just once. Like a heartbeat skipping a step.
Then it stills.
Something's coming.
.
I don't want to leave, but I know I have to. The kind of dread I feel isn't the kind you can wait out.
So I dress slowly. Scarf. Chalk. The coat that remembers me even when the mirror doesn't.
I went downstairs, but paused in the hallway.
I saw an envelope on my doorstep.
No name. No stamp. No writing. Just… old. Faded like it had to walk through memory to get here.
Inside is a page. It's not like a paper.
Not quite cloth.
Something in-between.
And words, in jagged ink that looks too deliberate to be messy:
"The more you feel, the less you are.
The more you bind, the more you forget.
When you've forgotten your name — come find me."
No signature.
But something in the handwriting presses on a part of me I didn't know still had weight.
A memory of something before.
I don't remember the name. But the feeling?
It's familiar.
"The Archive Keeper."
.
The rest of the day becomes a blur of almost-places. I roam between sectors like I'm trailing a ghost that's one step ahead of me.
The fog's thicker today. The signs flicker in a language I no longer fully read. The people here avoid eye contact like they've been taught I'm contagious.
I trace my steps to an old alley I remember from when I was still someone — before the mark, before the forgetting. It's narrower now. Like the city's folding in on itself.
At the back wall, I see a phrase scratched in the stone:
"Name erased. Not soul."
And for some reason, it breaks me.
I slide down the wall and sit on the cold ground. Palms open. Breathing shallow.
I whisper my name.
Nothing answers.
Not even the walls this time.
Eventually, I return to the flat.
I don't remember walking back.
I don't remember unlocking the door.
But I remember what I see next.
Sitting on my bed is a box. Plain, wooden, carved with the same spiral symbol that haunted my dreams after Sector 9.
Inside:
• A spool of thread, black and fraying.
• A key, broken.
• A photo — burned at the edges. My face is missing.
• A scrap of fabric marked with my Wraithmark.
• And a note:
"One day, you will forget that you were ever human.
But you will still feel everything they leave behind.
That is the cost.
That is the bond."
I don't know how it got here. I don't know who left it.
But I know what it means:
This is only the beginning.
And I'm not the only one keeping records.
I leave the box untouched on the bed.
For hours.
I don't trust it.
But I can't throw it away either.
Instead, I light one of the few candles I still have — not for ambiance, but to see if the shadows shift. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.
This time, they dance. Subtly.
A ripple near the mirror. A soft outline near the bookshelf. It's not a person. Not a Trace either. Something else. Like the imprint of someone watching from another room that doesn't quite exist.
I ignore it. Like always.
But my fingers reach instinctively for the chalk in my coat. I draw the glyph again — different this time. A circle with three spokes.
It means: "Claimed space. Protected. For now."
The chalk crumbles. Everything does eventually.
Later that night, I open the window. Let the city's breath inside. Veritus doesn't speak, but it knows how to make you listen. You just have to know how to hear with your skin.
And I do.
The hum of forgotten trains. The shuffle of shoes where no one walks. The soft hush of a whisper that never fully left.
The mark tingles once more. But not with danger.
Recognition.
Not of someone I know — but someone else who bears it too.
Somewhere, out in this collapsing map of a city, another Wraithbinder just flinched.
And maybe, just maybe, they felt me too.