Episode 9 – What Goes Through the Ink
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> "I wasn't born.
I am what remains when you erase all the others."
The figures in the circle nodded as one.
"You've started," said the Voice.
But Leander understood. This wasn't the beginning.
It was an act of invocation.
And something—or someone—was already responding from the other side of the page.
>And something—or someone—was already responding from the other side of the page.
The pen stopped moving.
It was the page that was trembling.
Beneath it, the table.
Beneath the table, the stone.
And beneath the stone, something that had been locked away for centuries.
And which Leander had just opened.
A trickle of ink rose from the notebook and snaked down his arm. He tried to step back—too late.
The ink penetrated his skin like an invisible bite, hot and icy at once.
Then he heard a name.
Not a word. A name.
Not the one he knew.
An older name.
A name that called to him from within.
> "Ath-Emen-Raël."
The empty stands shuddered.
The hooded figures disappeared in a black breath.
The room split open.
A chasm opened on the ground, swallowing the stone circle.
Leander fell, endlessly, without air, without a cry.
And the Codex fell with him.
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When he opened his eyes again, there was no up or down.
A red desert stretched as far as the eye could see. The sky wasn't a sky, but a moving canvas of closed eyes.
The sand pulsed gently, like a heart.
He wasn't alone.
Before him, a figure had just emerged from the sand.
First a hand.
Then a shoulder.
Then a faceless face.
A form made of solid ink, half liquid, half smoke.
And yet alive.
It stood fully upright. Tall. Immense.
Its arms were claws of words, its legs formed of forgotten lines.
It spoke. Or rather, the air began to resonate with its intent.
"You read me."
"You named me."
"And now... you are mine."
Léandre felt his memory crumble.
Faces blurred in his head. His mother. His dog. His school. First names, streets, colors—everything was slipping away.
Erased.
He screamed.
But in that scream, he understood.
It wasn't a creature.
It was a piece of himself, written long ago.
Something he had wanted to forget.
And that he had locked away in the Codex.
—I am your other name, Leander.
—The one you erased to exist in this world.
—But now that you've called me back, we must merge.
—NO! he shouted.
He wanted to run. He wanted to flee. He wanted to vomit up what he had read.
But too late.
The being reached out an inky hand and placed it on his chest.
The world exploded.
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A black sea.
Bodies suspended from inverted crosses.
Sewn mouths.
Foreign memories.
He lived other lives.
A man murdered in a well.
A girl burned for singing forbidden words.
A scribe who had betrayed the sacred language and written God's name backward.
He had been them all.
They were his reincarnations, his curses, his mistakes passed down from script to script.
And now they were returning.
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Leander woke up in a white room. Naked. Cold.
Before him: the Codex.
But on the cover, the name had changed.
> Codex of Ath-Emen-Raël.
Underneath, written in black blood:
"A forgotten name is a weapon."
And Leander was no longer exactly Leander.
He stood up.
His hands were longer.
His skin paler.
And in his voice, another timbre spoke with him.
—I remember everything.
—And I'm going to start rewriting it all.