The ink on Aren's palm smoldered faintly, like the fading remnants of a star imploding in reverse. Around him, silence reigned. The bodies of the veiled wraiths had already begun to dissipate into a haze of fragmented runes, their broken forms unable to hold cohesion in the face of Aren's Sovereign Rewrite. He stood alone at the center of the shattered marble platform, the fractured Fracture still echoing with the codex's aftermath.
His breath came in jagged, shallow bursts.
That… shouldn't have worked.
He hadn't meant to issue a Rewrite. Not a true one. It was supposed to be a bluff—a command to buy time. But the Codex hadn't just obeyed; it had responded with hunger.
REWRITE COMMAND ACCEPTEDEffect: Anomaly Deletion Interrupted. Wraith Command Overridden.Codex Rank Progression Accelerated.Memory Anchor Threshold Increased.
Aren stumbled backward and fell to one knee. The glyphs beneath the skin of his arms flickered wildly, unstable, like they were waiting for something to collapse—or evolve.
He grit his teeth. "Not again. Not without control."
Just as he pushed himself up, a voice echoed from deep inside the Codex. Not the usual mechanical system voice. This one was…
Human.
"You shouldn't be able to do that yet."
Aren froze.
He looked around, eyes narrowing, but the world was still. No shadows moved. No wraiths stirred. The voice hadn't come from outside—it had come from within.
He whispered, "Who are you?"
The answer came like a ripple beneath his skull.
Codex Core Echo Accessed. Sovereign-Grade Memory Loop Detected.Echo Origin: CLASSIFIED.Playback Permission: GRANTED (Fragmented).
And then—
He saw her.
Not in full. Not clearly. Just a blur of crimson thread and silver eyes, standing amidst a collapsing world of torn parchment skies and broken stone. Her hair floated like strands of ink, and her voice was filled with fury and something dangerously close to sorrow.
"Don't trust the Archivists. They don't delete mistakes. They rewrite the truth."
The image burned itself into his mind. A Sovereign, or perhaps something beyond that—an echo of a forgotten queen.
The vision snapped away, and the ink on his body surged.
Codex Synchronization: 31%Codex Memory Chain Updated. New Rewrite Pathway Unlocked: "Echo Command"
Aren gasped. "What the hell is happening to me?"
But there was no answer. Only the sound of wind beginning to gather. Reality was restitching itself around him. The Fracture's collapse had been temporarily halted, but not undone. He had minutes—maybe seconds—before the anomaly closed or the Archivists sent something worse.
He had to move.
He found Veema where the flames of the second floor still danced—hunched, bloodied, but alive.
"Hey." His voice broke as he knelt beside her. "Still breathing?"
She coughed. "Barely. You look worse."
Aren grinned, despite the weight on his shoulders. "Wouldn't be a day in the Fractures if we didn't almost die."
Veema's eyes flicked toward his forearm, where the ink was now shifting like living scripture. Her voice dropped. "You used the Codex again."
He nodded. "I didn't have a choice. The wraiths were executing something. Something final. I had to break it."
"I felt it. The rewrite. You shook the memory threads in the entire sector."
She paused. "Aren… the Archivists felt it too."
"I know."
For a moment, neither spoke. The flames crackled. The broken world around them trembled.
Then Veema reached into her satchel and pulled out a small crystalline shard. "You need to see this."
He took it. It shimmered faintly—a memory anchor, but one forged by external means. Imperial craftsmanship, likely stolen or scavenged. Aren pressed it to his temple.
The vision that flooded his mind was cold and perfect.
A girl, no older than fifteen, standing trial. Her eyes were wide, terrified. She had no name, only a designation: Anomaly 7243. Her crime? She remembered things that no one should. Things from before the Archive was sealed.
The sentence was deletion.
But the moment the Archivist's blade struck her memory thread, the image shattered—and she laughed.
"You can't erase what I've already rewritten."
Then she vanished, not destroyed, but self-deleted—a ghost in the system.
Aren pulled away from the memory shard, eyes wide.
"Who was she?"
Veema's voice was low. "The first Sovereign to go rogue. She burned her name from the Codex itself. The Archivists couldn't find her thread again."
Aren whispered, "She's the one who spoke to me… inside the Rewrite."
Veema's expression hardened. "Then we're in deeper than I thought."
They traveled quietly through the crumbling passages beneath the Fracture's eastern wing. Aren used a weak Echo to hold the collapse at bay—barely. Each step was a race against memory decay, and each breath carried the threat of being swallowed by a rewrite anomaly.
They emerged near the edge of a ruined archive vault, once a spire of crystal and obsidian, now broken like the vertebrae of a dying god.
Aren held up a hand. "Wait."
There, amid the rubble, something moved.
A figure cloaked in violet and bone-white metal. Its face was featureless, save for a single vertical eye that pulsed with amber light.
Veema hissed, "Archivist."
But Aren's Codex flared.
Designation: JUNIOR ARCHIVIST – OBSERVER GRADECombat Clearance: Restricted.Memory Rewriting Priority: Observation Only.
Aren didn't wait. He stepped forward.
"What do you want?"
The Archivist's voice came as if spoken by hundreds—male, female, child, ancient—all at once. "We did not anticipate a rewrite of that scale. The anomaly's survival was not calculated."
"I'm full of surprises."
The Archivist tilted its head. "You do not possess the authority to execute a Sovereign-grade command. Explain."
Aren clenched his fists. "I don't owe you anything."
For the first time, the Archivist stepped forward.
And Aren felt it: a hum in the Codex. Not threat—resonance.
Veema touched his arm. "Wait… look."
The Archivist removed something from its robes.
A fragment. A cracked slate of obsidian ink.
A Codex shard.
"This belonged to the one you saw," it said. "The girl who burned her name. You are walking her path. Be warned, Sovereign-in-draft—she broke the world, and then rebuilt it to forget her."
Aren reached out—but the Archivist retracted the shard.
"When the time comes, you will face her Echo again. Do not mistake memory for mercy."
With that, the being vanished in a flash of threadlight.
Only silence remained.
They made camp beneath the remains of a sky-bridge, lighting a fire in a crevice untouched by the Codex surge. Aren sat quietly, rolling the memory shard Veema gave him between his fingers.
"What are we doing now?" she asked.
Aren looked up at the stars—wrong, flickering things in a rewritten sky.
"We follow the Echos. We find out what happened to that girl… and why the Codex chose me."
Veema narrowed her eyes. "You think she's alive?"
"I don't know. But the Codex is changing. I can feel it evolving."
He looked at the shifting script on his arms.
"She left behind a message—maybe more. If she found a way to become a Sovereign and rewrite fate itself, then I need to learn how."
Veema nodded. "And if the Archivists come for us?"
Aren's gaze turned hard.
"Then I'll rewrite them out of the story too."