CHAPTER 5: THE NAME BELOW THE NAME

Elian couldn't sleep.

Not because he was scared- He was used to that. Fear was routine. It was the puzzle in his mind that wouldn't shut up> The Seventh is near.

He sat on the floor in Mux's room, surrounded by unplugged wires and whispering laptops. Mux was perched upside-down on the ceiling, typing without touching the keyboard.

"Still nothing in the records Aunt Tyrraline lets us see," Elian said.

Mux blinked, rotated sideways, and tapped a floating panel with his toe.

"Try the forbidden ones," he said without speaking- His voice manifesting as text across a hovering screen beside Elian.

"Which ones?" Elian asked.

Mux just grinned.

~

A minute later, Elian found himself inside an interface that looked like a busted retro RPG- Pixelated, ugly, blinking red with fake blood textures.

"What is this?" Elian asked.

Mux's voice-text answered>

"Vecca's old server. She hides forbidden histories in bad code. Keeps humans from reading it."

Elian moved his cursor across the game-world, through a crumbling temple guarded by poorly drawn skeletons, into a vault labeled LORE TRASH DO NOT ENTER.

The room inside was text.

Old text.

Hundreds of files written in Burmurlerk's ancient alphabet, rendered in cracked font. Elian clicked one at random.

It opened with a scream- literally. A soundfile launched itself into the speakers: something howling like a dragon being strangled in a bell tower.

"Sorry," Mux typed. "Vecca's idea of fun."

Elian clicked another.

This one opened with a title>

SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN

Name: [REDACTED]

Alias: The Unformed, The Echo Crown, The Bone-Inheritance

Believed to be the only being never born, only made.

Last seen in the dreams of Queen Yrmeta.

Elian stared at it.

"Made?" he whispered. "Not born?"

He scrolled down.

At the bottom of the entry, there was a glyph.

One he'd seen in his dreams.

The one carved into the nightmare's chest.

Then, a blinking cursor appeared beside it.

And a line typed itself.

> You're not supposed to see this.

Elian's blood turned to ice. He stood up. But Mux was gone.

Not vanished- Not missing. Just not there.

The computers shut off one by one.

And behind him, someone exhaled.

A voice- Not real, but pressing into his mind- Whispered> "You are not yours."