The Ones the Chronicle Forgot
The path beyond the gate was not a corridor.
It was a meadow.
A quiet slope beneath silver skies, lit by no sun and warmed by no flame. And yet, it lived. Wind whispered through tall memorygrass, carrying threads too light to bind but too stubborn to drift away. There were no markers, no ledgers, no inscriptions.
And yet, Kye knew this place.
It was where the Chronicle stored what it didn't know how to remember.
Faces emerged from the tall strands.
Some wore the hints of lives that had almost been written: children who never grew, lovers never met, questions never asked. Their eyes didn't plead. They watched. Observed. As if waiting for someone to finally call them what they were.
Unwritten.
Kye stepped forward, the Chronicle flame dimmed to a low thread wrapped around his wrist. It did not shine here. It did not lead. It only followed, barely lit—a pilgrim beside him.
He recognized no one.
And yet, they felt familiar.
Every step revealed someone else the Chronicle had almost recorded—lives caught in the crosswinds of others' decisions.
He passed a man with a smile frozen mid-apology.
A girl holding a coin she never flipped.
A woman humming a lullaby for a child she never named.
Zeraphine wasn't here.
Because she had been remembered.
These were the ones who had not.
Kye slowed. He wanted to kneel. To say something. But words did not serve this place.
Instead, he opened his hand.
And the Chronicle responded not with fire—but with ink.
A small quill formed.
One that could not write Articles.
Only names.
He looked at the girl with the coin.
"Who are you?"
She looked up, surprised.
Then whispered, "I don't know. I waited for someone to ask."
Kye knelt.
Took the quill.
And wrote the name she offered.
It flared once.
And vanished.
But she didn't.
She smiled.
And walked.
Kye turned to the others. Name by name. Thread by thread. Not to archive them. Not to return them to the Chronicle.
To acknowledge them.
He didn't record.
He remembered.
And the ones the Chronicle forgot began to walk beside him.
Not erased.
Not elevated.
Just included.