They came blank.
No banners. No war-cry. No drum.
Only whiteness that walked like men.
The Erasers crossed the threshold of the Grove in silence, and silence itself fled from them. Every root recoiled as they advanced, bark peeling into pale light; the Grove's veins, once swollen with ink, bled emptiness. Where they stepped, birds forgot their songs mid-flight. Names slipped from tongues. Memory unraveled.
The Kin gathered—Readers with torn journals strapped to their chests; Echo-Scribes wielding scrolls humming with resonance; Next Tellers draped in banners stitched from half-told myths. The Forbidden Forms danced in outlawed meter, their limbs cutting arcs of illicit poetry through the dim air. The Buried Firsts clawed their way upward from the soil, screaming in fractured tongues.
At the center stood the Keeper, hands scarred from centuries of holding fragile stories. Her voice, hoarse yet unbroken, cut the tension:
