The City That Shouldn’t Be - (Part 1)

Chapter Overview

The rebellion regrouped after surviving Veradrix and the encounter with the Pale Censor. The Second Rewrite Font now lives inside Elya, awakening deeper layers of her fragmented self. Meanwhile, the memory scroll reveals coordinates to a mythical location: Draumhollow, a city erased from all known timelines yet still echoing in relics and dreams.

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Night had no place in the ruins of Veradrix.

Time didn't settle it, paced. Stars blinked into existence and disappeared. Moons rewound themselves. Even dreams refused to remain intact.

Zaiya stood alone at the cliff's edge.

The wind whispered her name in reverse.

"Ay-za… Ay-za…"

She didn't answer it. Not yet.

Behind her, the others lay recovering beneath a shattered sky dome. Caltren's glyph burns were still raw. Vaelen sat motionless, sharpening his weapon not out of necessity but routine. Grounding.

Elya lay in a shallow trance, her skin glowing like scripture under the moonlight that refused to stay still.

"She's stabilizing," Nytherion said, approaching from the shadows." For now."

"But she's not… fully her," Zaiya said.

"She's many of her. Which may be the only thing keeping her alive."

Zaiya didn't look at him, but she heard the note in his voice. Guilt. Weariness. Maybe even fear.

"You should have died holding the glyphline," she said.

"I did," Nytherion replied." In a different thread."

Zaiya finally turned.

"You kept a shard of the Spiral."

Nytherion met her gaze evenly.

"I am a shard of the Spiral now."

She didn't kill him. Not yet.

Because the scroll still pulsed in her hand.

The following map had formed a whole, strange triple spiral, spiraling inward to a point with no known bearing.

It whispered a name…

Draumhollow.

"Ever heard of it?" she asked.

Nytherion nodded slowly.

"I chased a memory through seventeen provinces once, trying to find Draumhollow. No one remembered it. No one ever lived there. But everyone I met dreamed of it."

Zaiya rolled the scroll and tucked it under her cloak.

"Then it's real."

"It shouldn't be."

"Then it's exactly what we need."

The Half-Buried Road began where the map ended.

It wasn't marked on any glyph scroll. It had no name in any tribunal archive. Yet when Zaiya unrolled the final image from the Rewrite Font's memory scroll, the land before them responded, a ridge of fractured stone and mirror-glass terrain formed a path toward the horizon, where no road had been hours earlier.

Elya stirred behind them. She was awake, barely.

"This road… isn't real," she whispered.

"No," Vaelen said, eyes scanning the jagged sky, "But it's dreaming us forward."

They moved slowly.

The path wound through landscapes that refused to stabilize, an orchard where every tree bore different memories, a river that flowed backward through seasons, and ruins of cities that had never been built yet decayed all the same.

"How much longer?" Caltren asked, limping with each step.

"We're not measuring this in miles," Zaiya murmured." We're measuring it in remembrance."

At dusk (or what passed for it), they reached a bridge woven from bones and starlight.

A monk sat cross-legged before it, hood drawn low, face veiled in mirrorcloth.

He did not look up, but he spoke as they approached.

"Five threads. One false. One fractured. One fading."

"You know us?" Zaiya asked.

"I do not know you," the monk said." But the Hollow remembers."

He stood, revealing a wooden staff crowned with a shard of rewritten script, a glyph that shimmered not with power but with absence.

"You seek Draumhollow," he said." But it will not let you enter until you give it something."

"What?" Vaelen asked." Gold? Names? Blood?"

The monk tilted his head.

"You must give it the truth you fear most."

The wind fell silent.

Even the ground held its breath.

Zaiya stepped forward.

"I condemned my own mother to erasure."

The monk nodded once. Then turned to the others.

Caltren stepped forward.

"I rewrote rebel testimony to protect myself. Dozens died forgotten."

Elya's breath caught in her throat.

She looked at Zaiya, eyes flickering between them.

"I don't know which me is real."

The bridge shimmered, accepting her offering.

Then came Nytherion.

He hesitated.

Then whispered.

"I served the Censor long after I stopped believing. I kept killing because it was easier than stopping."

The bridge pulsed dimly but not in rejection.

Only Acceptance.

They crossed.

On the other side, light bent.

Sound curved.

And suddenly, there it was.

Draumhollow.

A city suspended across a sea of broken time, its towers made of dreams, its streets humming with memory.

It shouldn't exist.

But it did.

And it had waited for them.

Draumhollow was beautiful in a way that hurt.

It shimmered like the memory of a dream you almost remembered just out of reach, perfectly shaped and cruel for its perfection. Its streets were lined with structures that shimmered between architectures, shifting subtly with every blink.

One building had a spire like a harp string.

Another resembled a city gate drawn in charcoal, still smudging itself.

The air itself smelled like something different to each of them: cinnamon, ink, smoke, or ocean wind, depending on which future the city thought they were meant to inhabit.

Zaiya placed her hand on a nearby wall.

The stone felt warm.

Then cold.

Then… regretful.

"It's remembering for us," she whispered.

They passed through the Plaza of Forgotten Tomorrows, a space filled with glass statues. But each statue reflected a different version of the person who stood before it.

Elya stopped in front of one.

The figure inside had her face, but it was older and hardened, wearing the robes of a Tribunal Grandmaster.

"What is this?" she asked, eyes wide.

"A version of you that was," came a voice.

A robed figure approached.

His face was lined with silver runes. His right eye was a swirling pool of memory. A cluster of mnemonic feathers adorned his cloak.

"Welcome to Draumhollow," he said."I am Thaless, Archivist of Lost Tomorrows."

The party gathered as Thaless led them toward a tiered temple at the city's center. He spoke calmly, but every word echoed twice, once now and once before.

"This city was never real. But it always might have been.Every soul that dreamed of something better helped build it.Every life cut short added another echo."

He turned to Elya.

"And you… are one such echo."

Elya stopped.

"What?"

"You were born inside the Second Rewrite Font," he explained."A construct of layered hopes, tethered to glyph light.You are not from one world. You are from all the ones that tried to become real."

Zaiya's eyes narrowed.

"She's not even a memory."

"She's something older," Thaless said."She is an unspoken possibility."

Suddenly, Nytherion stumbled.

He clutched his chest, breathing heavily.

The Spiral inside him pulsed its tendrils, flaring under his skin.

"It's… whispering again."

Thaless's gaze turned dark.

"The Pale Censor marked him.Her will survives inside that shard.If he remains, she will reconstitute herself."

Nytherion dropped to one knee.

"Then cut it out."

Zaiya stepped forward.

"We don't kill allies."

"You might have to," Nytherion whispered, voice strained."Before she wakes up through me."

Thaless gestured to a chamber beyond the temple, a vault of spiraling paths and reflection pools.

"Each of you must face a trial in the Court of Liminal Memory.To stay here to survive the Hollow, you must anchor who you are in the face of what you might have been."

"And if we fail?" Caltren asked.

Thaless said,

"Then you will be remembered… as someone who never was."