Rayne had heard the phrase "cursed by obscurity" before, but never understood it—until now.
Since his descent into the Underhall, something had shifted. The walls of the Academy no longer merely stood around him; they watched. The stones whispered when he walked by. Shadows lingered just a second longer in his presence. Most students didn't notice, and those who did merely assumed he'd spent too much time among the dust-maddened archivists. Let them think what they wanted. Rayne had seen things in the dark below the archives—felt things—things that no spell could replicate and no realm-marked noble would dare imagine.
He hadn't spoken of what he saw. Not to Lyra, not even to himself aloud. But since touching the spiral-shaped sigil etched into the black wall, something ancient had followed him back.
Three nights after returning to the surface, he found a book waiting for him in the restricted wing of the library. He hadn't requested it. He hadn't even walked toward it. The book had simply... been there, laid on a pedestal of bone-white marble that hadn't existed before. Its cover was charred leather, its clasp made from a metal Rayne didn't recognize. But what froze him was the mark on the front—the same spiral that burned on his chest when he touched the wall beneath the Academy. Cold recognition lanced through his bones. It was no coincidence.
There was no title.
Not until he touched it.
The moment his fingers brushed the surface, heat pulsed through the cover, and ink bled upward from the leather, etching words that hadn't existed a heartbeat ago:
The Black LedgerOf Those Who Were Never Born
Rayne recoiled. The title alone sent dread burrowing beneath his skin. He looked around, but the library was deserted, and the air hung heavy like damp cloth. No sound but the faint crackle of torches in the hallways. He opened the book with hesitation, heart pounding. The first page was blank, but ink began to write itself in slow, trembling strokes.
Entry 1: Ralyn, Son of Dust. Soul devoured by the Void, 210 B.C.K.Entry 2: Sirin of the Sea That Wasn't. Screamed until stars wept, 134 A.C.K.Entry 3: The Realmless Prince. Destined to Unmake. Awaiting Activation.
Rayne stared at the third line.
The Realmless Prince.
There was no doubt in his mind. That was him.
The Ledger had named him before he could name himself. The date field beside his entry was left blank. No death, no disappearance, no exile. Only: "Awaiting Activation."
He turned the pages with growing urgency. Each one bled more names, each stranger than the last. Some names twisted as he read them, as if resisting memory. Others pulsed faintly on the page, as though aware they were being seen. These weren't just records. They were wounds—lives that had been unmade, realities burned out of time. They hadn't died. They had been forgotten by history itself.
And now, Rayne's name sat among them.
He slammed the book shut, chest heaving. The mark on his chest throbbed in rhythm with the ledger, as if his very soul had been logged into some vast, eldritch accounting system without his consent. And yet… something in him wanted to open the book again.
He didn't. Not that night.
But the Ledger had already begun writing.
Over the next week, strange events rippled through the Academy. Rooms locked for centuries opened with creaks of stone and sighs of wind. Statues long inert turned their heads when no one watched. A mirror in the Dormitory South cracked from the inside—and bled. Professors muttered of "unstable sigil resonance" and "arcane dissonance." But Rayne knew the truth. The Ledger was awakening the bones beneath the Academy. Something buried for millennia was stirring, responding to its call.
On the sixth night, the Seeker came.
Rayne had returned to the library past curfew, unable to sleep, compelled by some invisible force to revisit the Ledger. As he stepped into the room, the torches dimmed—not extinguished, just muted, as if they too held their breath. The pedestal stood empty. The book was gone.
Then he saw the figure.
A tall, robed shape stood between the bookshelves, half-hidden in shadow. Its mask was bone, shaped like a screaming face. In its hand, it held a dagger that didn't reflect light. It drank it. Rayne didn't move. The air felt too thick. Time slowed.
"You are not permitted to read the names," the Seeker said, voice distorted like a broken phonograph. "The Ledger has no author. It must have no reader."
Rayne opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
"You carry the spiral," the Seeker continued, "and with it, the Mouth. But you have not yet earned the tongue."
The dagger lifted.
Rayne did not think—he called. Not with his voice, but with whatever lay behind it. A pulse, a whisper from the mark on his chest, surged outward.
The shadows collapsed inward.
The Seeker screamed, not in pain, but in fear—as if Rayne had done something impossible. The dagger cracked, then melted into oily vapor. The robes withered. The mask shattered.
Before vanishing entirely, the Seeker croaked a final phrase.
"The Mouth speaks. The void listens. The ledger bleeds."
And then he was gone.
No scorch mark. No trace. Only silence.
Rayne stood shaking in the aftermath. The air smelled of dust and salt. On the desk behind him, the Black Ledger reappeared—open to a new entry:
Entry 4: Seeker of the Eighth Silence. Silenced.
The implications chilled him. The Ledger not only recorded unmade beings—it documented their endings. It wrote history backward, from erasure to existence.
He wanted to close it and run. He wanted to burn it and forget. But instead, his hands moved with unnatural calm. He picked up the book, closed it slowly, and whispered:
"What am I becoming?"
No answer came.
Only a quiet pulse beneath his ribs—warm, steady, and terrifyingly alive.