The Quiet Rooms swallowed her steps. No echo, no drip, no whisper. Only silence pressed close, heavy enough to choke.
Seren pulled her scraps close, pencil tight in her hand. She had written all her life because speaking wasn't hers. Here, even the paper seemed to hold its breath.
She traced the stone sliver the keeper had given her. Three etched lines, faint but sharp. When she pressed her fingers to it, her ears rang with phantom voices — Kael's rasp, Riven's laugh, her own voice that never was. Then the silence snapped shut again.
She wrote quick: Record stone = proof. Echo stored.
The shelves around her shifted. Papers that had looked dead flickered faint, names glowing for a breath before fading again. A record. The Labyrinth kept them like trophies.
She pulled one loose. Letters scrawled across it in a trembling hand: Paid in silence. Voice taken. Debt never cleared.
Her chest tightened. She shoved the scrap back.
The system didn't speak to her, not like it did to Kael. But the stone pulsed faint in her palm and her pencil moved almost on its own: Silence = coin. Write enough, and you can pay back.
For the first time, she wondered — if she kept writing, not just notes but rules, laws, choices — would the Ledger see her words? Could she bend it like Kael bent the Tide?
She tested. She wrote on a fresh scrap, neat and slow: This silence is mine. Not debt.
The paper trembled. A ripple moved across the shelves. One name that had been half-erased flared brighter for a moment, as if refusing to vanish.
Seren's eyes widened. Her hand shook. She tucked the paper into her pouch quick.
Steps stirred behind her. Not sound — impressions, like feet written on stone. Another keeper stood there, taller, robed in deeper gray. His face was wrapped in cloth, only his eyes showing: pale, watchful.
He lifted a hand. Signed slow: You write?
Seren signed back: I remember. I deny.
The keeper tilted his head. Then he reached into his robe and dropped a folded page onto the shelf between them. Letters were carved sharp: Records can cut. But cuts bleed both ways.
Then he was gone, fading like smoke into stillness.
Seren picked up the page. Her pencil moved fast: Weapon. Record as blade. Dangerous.
Her chest shook, but her eyes were bright. She was learning. Silence didn't just bind — it could fight back.
Then the sound pressed faint through the stone. Not loud, not near. Just one toll, patient.
BOOOONG.
The shelves shivered. Scraps rattled.
Seren wrote the gong down too. Words were her weapons now.