Names That Cannot Be Written
The glyph appeared just before dawn.
Keiran hadn't slept. Not after the Echo-Well. Not after her voice.
He'd wrapped his wrist in cloth, hoping to muffle the pulse of the mark. But still it glowed through—violet and black, rotating faintly beneath his skin like it was no longer flat, no longer static.
When he unwrapped it, the glyph was waiting.
New.
Curved like a spiral folding in on itself.
But when he looked directly at it—
He forgot what he was looking at.
He tried to draw it.
The moment the quill touched paper, his hand stuttered. Froze.
By the time he blinked, the ink was smeared. The lines broken.
And the page—
Blank.
He tried again.
This time with chalk.
Same result.
Worse: he couldn't remember the moment the chalk snapped.
It was in his hand. Then gone.
His fingers were bleeding.
At midday, Rell found him in the courtyard.
"You look like a dead candle," she said, eyeing the bandages.
He didn't answer.
He simply unwrapped the cloth—slowly.
She looked.
Then frowned.
"What... what did you want to show me?"
Keiran froze.
"The glyph."
"What glyph?"
She blinked again. Confused. Then rubbed her temples.
"Why are we out here?"
Keiran stood. His heart racing.
The mark wasn't just eating names now.
It was removing them from possibility.
By dusk, three more people forgot what they'd just seen on his skin. One collapsed. Another wept. The third—an Archivist—began reciting childhood verses in a language no one recognized.
They sent for a Glyph-Seer.
She arrived by nightfall.
Wrapped in ash-silk. Barefoot.
Her eyes were gone—burned out long ago. Runes crawled along her cheeks. She had no tongue.
But she saw.
And when she touched Keiran's wrist, her breath caught.
She trembled.
Then opened her palm and etched a word into the dirt.
Each line hurt her. Blood spilled from her fingertips.
But she finished it.
One word.
Ashbound.
She collapsed before she could write more.
Keiran didn't sleep again.
He stared at the glyph.
And each time he tried to remember its shape—
He forgot something else.
Small things.
A street name.
Rell's middle name.
The sound of Lys's laugh.
By dawn, the glyph pulsed in sync with the moons.
One full. One darkening.
Not yet aligned—but close.
Close enough for the mark to speak.
Not in words.
But in absence.
A voice, hollow and dry, filled his head.
"You are not the first to bear this name."
"But you may be the last."
He stood at the mirror.
And for one terrifying moment—
He didn't see himself.
Just a blur.
A place where a person should be.
And the glyph on his wrist?
It smiled.