Chapter Ten: The Archivist's Mask
Soot no longer dreamed in silence.
Since claiming the third quill, his sleep had been filled with screaming letters, ink that bled backward, and a child's voice whispering his forgotten name: Kael.
Tali noticed it first—how he had started speaking in glyphs while asleep. How the symbols on his skin shifted even while he was awake. Remiel said nothing, but watched him more closely, as if waiting for something to break loose.
And still, they journeyed on.
The trail to the fourth quill led north, into the Quenched Wastes, a dead zone scorched by prophecy wars centuries earlier. No living cities remained there—only shadows and abandoned temples dedicated to the old tongues.
As they crossed the final ridge before the Wastes, Remiel paused.
His eyes darkened.
"The Ministry has moved."
Soot frowned. "What do you mean?"
Remiel held up a piece of blank parchment. Slowly, without touching it, words began to write themselves:
The Ink Prophet has claimed three. The threshold approaches. Unacceptable. Deploy the Archivist.
Soot's voice was low. "Who's the Archivist?"
Remiel closed his eyes. "Their executioner. The one they send when burning books isn't enough. The Archivist doesn't erase people. He erases the possibility that they ever existed."
Far to the south, behind the golden walls of the Ministry of Absolute Script, a chamber sealed for a hundred years opened for the first time.
The room was dark, filled with shelves of breathing scrolls.
In its center, a figure stirred.
He was tall, wrapped in robes made of unwritten pages, and his face was hidden behind a mask of mirrored glass. The only name he'd ever been given was a title.
The Archivist.
He stepped from the chamber, carrying a blade shaped like a pen dipped in oblivion.
Meanwhile, in the Wastes, Soot and his companions entered the ruins of an old scriptorium. There, carved into the marble floor, was a shattered glyph in the shape of an eye.
The Eye of Knowing.
"This is the entrance," Remiel said.
"To what?" Tali asked.
Remiel knelt, brushing away the dust. "To the Vault of Versions—a place where prophecy once updated itself. Every version of a future, stored. Then the Ministry collapsed it into a single timeline and locked the others away."
Soot reached out and touched the glyph.
The ground shifted.
The world fell.
They dropped into a space not made of stone or earth—but possibility.
Doors stretched in every direction, each labeled with a version of the world that could have been.
In one, Soot saw a future where he had died in the Hollow, still nameless.
In another, he stood atop the Ministry Tower, wearing a crown of ink.
In another, he watched the world burn, and his own hand struck the match.
Tali stepped beside him. "These are all you."
Soot shook his head. "These are all versions of me."
Remiel pointed to a narrow, cracked door with no title.
"That one is real. The fourth quill lies beyond it."
Inside, they found a shrine made of glass pages. On a pedestal, impaled through a copy of the Book of Flesh, was the fourth quill.
But as Soot reached for it, the shrine dimmed.
And a voice spoke behind them.
Cold. Detached.
"Subject: Kael. Condition: Partially rewritten. Status: Threat level escalating."
Soot turned.
And saw The Archivist.
Tali reached for her dagger. "Who—?"
But her hand froze in midair. The Archivist had not moved.
He had only thought it.
"Physical resistance: irrelevant," he said. "All variables reduce to entropy. Ink must not dictate fate."
Soot stepped between Tali and the figure.
"You serve the Ministry?"
"I serve the Timeline. The True One. Not the Thousand Lies."
Soot clenched the quill. "I never chose to be written."
"You were not written," said the Archivist. "You were corrected. And now the error must be removed."
Then he moved.
Faster than thought.
A line of erasure sliced through the air, grazing Soot's arm. It didn't bleed. It simply vanished.
Soot's skin screamed.
Letters peeled away. Identity burned.
He staggered back, gasping.
Remiel threw a quill-shard at the Archivist. It struck the mask—but shattered.
Tali lunged. A symbol of binding flared in her palm.
The Archivist blinked. The spell unraveled before it touched him.
"Fiction cannot bind correction," he whispered.
Soot looked at the quill.
The fourth.
Its tip dripped with untold futures.
He gripped it.
And stabbed it into his other wrist.
Pain erupted—but it was not death.
It was expansion.
Time stretched. All the doors of the Vault flung open at once. Possibility surged into him.
A new script burned across his back.
Quill Four Claimed. Authority: Branching.
He raised his hand.
And chose.
One timeline—one version of the moment—where the Archivist missed.
Reality shifted.
The erasure line bent.
Missed.
The Archivist paused.
"Unauthorized overwrite. Forbidden."
"You forgot something," Soot growled. "Prophets don't read the future. They choose it."
The Archivist looked at him.
Uncertain.
Then turned—and vanished.
Not defeated.
Only delayed.
Soot collapsed to one knee.
His arm trembled where time had been sliced. The ink there didn't flow right. It stuttered.
Tali held him close.
"You're bleeding backwards," she whispered. "We need to slow down."
Remiel said nothing.
He was staring at the glass pages of the shrine.
"The fourth quill wasn't just a tool," he said slowly. "It was a test."
Soot looked up. "A test of what?"
Remiel met his eyes.
"Of whether you'd let yourself become the Ink."