CHAPTER 4 - TWISTES

But the names were removed.

Not erased—no, erasure was an act of violence. This was something older, more deliberate.

Like a mother forgetting the face of her child.

Now, those names lived only in fragments.

In whispers. In bones. In people like Silas Veyne.

The Glass-Eyed Scribe

The ink shop on Fellwater Lane should have been empty. But the bells in Silas's mind tolled faintly as soon as he stepped inside.

Not aloud.

Not real.

But terribly present.

A blind man sat behind the counter, polishing nothing with a cloth that smelled faintly of silver and dead rain.

"You seek ink," the man said without turning. "But not to write."

Silas hesitated. "What else is it for?"

The man lifted his head. His eyes were like mirror glass, reflecting a thousand unread words.

"To remember what you should not. To seal truths that were once forbidden to exist. Ink is not for stories here, Initiate. It is for bargains."

He tapped the counter once.

A thin book slid from beneath it. Bound in grey leather. Unmarked. Unnamed.

"Write your first Truth," the man said. "Or the Spiral will devour you whole."

Codex Path Progression Unlocked

You have begun forging a personal Echo Archive.

This book is now bound to your soul-thread.

Warning: Truths written cannot be unwritten.

Current Path: Thirteenth Bell (Codex-Bound: Hidden Spiral Arc).

Silas stared at the blank page.

He didn't know what to write.

Not because he lacked knowledge—but because he didn't know what was real anymore.

He wrote anyway.

"The Spiral is not a path. It is a prison."

"The bells are not sound. They are names."

"I dream of a face I never saw, speaking words I once forbade myself to remember."

When the ink dried, a shiver rippled through the shop.

The blind man smiled.

"You have remembered something dangerous. Good. Now leave."

Nightfall & the Masked Watcher

Vel Quen changed at night.

The gaslights dimmed to half-light. Reflections lingered in puddles even after their owners walked away. Cats stared too long. Windows blinked.

Silas didn't go home.

He wandered. Back toward the canal that did not map properly on any chart. The one that moved.

He paused when he felt it: the presence.

Watching. Close.

He turned, but saw only fog.

Until—

A figure stepped from shadow, cloaked in blue and silver threads, face hidden behind a long-beaked mask etched with teeth.

The mask did not move, but the voice rang out clearly:

"The Eye of Echo marks you."

Silas stepped back. "Who are you?"

"One who listens. One who gathers. One who rings the First of Thirteen when it is time."

A pause. The sound of metal ticking.

"You are waking too quickly, Silas Veyne. The Spiral punishes haste."

"I didn't choose this."

The mask tilted.

"Then you are wise. The Spiral chooses. Not you. Not us. Not even the bells."

From beneath the cloak, a card fluttered toward him.

On one side: a spiral of bells.

On the other: a single word in ink that refused to stay still.

"Observatorium."

Then the figure was gone.

Not vanished.

Undone.

As if he had never been there at all.

Reflections in the Archive's Ashes

Silas returned to where it began—the broken Archive chamber. The guards were gone. The chains removed. Yet the air still buzzed with resonance.

There, in the place where he first bled onto the stone, something waited.

A small cube of obsidian, warm to the touch, humming like a voice held behind teeth.

He picked it up.

Codex Fragment: Activated.

Welcome, Witness.

Bell of the Unsung: 1% Resonance established.

The world blurred again.

This time the vision was longer. Clearer.

A city of glass, each building shaped like a bell. A boy kneeling before thirteen faceless scribes. The Spiral not just beneath him—but within him, carved into his very bones.

Then—darkness.

A voice, familiar and wrong, whispered:

"You were there before, Silas. You only forgot. Again."

Elsewhere: The Watchtower Without Light

In a hidden observatory, high above the city's edge, a man with no mouth studied shifting constellations made of ink and shadow.

Others gathered around him.

"The Codex chose the boy again," one muttered.

Another, clad in chains of failed prophecy, snarled: "Then we unmake him now. Before the spiral closes."

But the mouthless man raised a hand.

And on the starlit map, thirteen bells began to spin.

Slow. Measured. Inevitable.

"Too late."

"He has remembered the first bell."

[End of Chapter 4]