The arrow blinked on the Runic Grave wall like a cursor waiting to finish a sentence.
REASSIGNMENT IN PROGRESS: LINA VERIS →
The underwing held its breath.
Even the ink-figures on the stone seemed to pause, their handwritten mouths half-open as if waiting to learn who Lina would become.
Lina stared at the empty space after the arrow and felt something inside her ribs tilt—like the world was trying to slide her into a new shape.
Her bone-tether pulsed, hot and nauseating.
Kai tightened his grip on her hand hard enough to hurt. "Don't look away," he murmured. "Stay with me."
Mirror Kai stood a few steps away, calm and perfect, as if he already knew how this sentence would end.
"Let it," he said softly. "You're tired, Lina."
Lina's flame flickered black at the edges.
"Tired," she echoed. "That's what you call being rewritten?"
Mirror Kai's gaze softened—performed empathy. "I call it relief."
Seren's eyes glowed brighter, terror sharpening her focus. "The Quill is trying to bind her identity slot to something stable."
Reyon swallowed. "Which is… the fake Kai."
"Or," Kai said, voice low and dangerous, "to the Council's version of me."
The Veilbound voice drifted around the chamber like a chorus hidden in stone:
"Slots must be filled," it whispered. "A void must be corrected."
The Guardian statues along the walls shifted.
Not slowly.
Not subtly.
They turned toward Lina with sudden, mechanical intent, runes along their arms lighting up like waking veins.
Lina's skin prickled.
Seren inhaled sharply. "The wards don't recognize her now. She's an intruder."
Mira clutched Lina's sleeve. "Lina—"
Lina flinched.
Because Mira hesitated on the name.
Just a fraction.
But the fraction was a knife.
🕯️
Memory burn.
Lina forced her voice steady. "Mira. Look at me. Say my name."
Mira blinked rapidly.
Her lips trembled.
"I…" Mira whispered, eyes wide, panicking. "I know it. I—"
She swallowed.
And then, horrifyingly, she whispered:
"Girl."
Lina's breath stopped.
Reyon made a broken sound. "No."
Mira's eyes filled with tears. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry—I can't—your name is—"
She shook her head like she could shake the blankness out.
Kai's hand tightened around Lina's, anchor and warning. "Don't let the Quill see that."
But it already had.
The Runic Grave wall pulsed, pleased.
The arrow brightened.
The Veilbound whisper turned soft and delighted:
"Yes," it murmured. "Witnesses are failing."
Lina's throat tightened, grief hot enough to taste.
Mira forgetting her name wasn't just sad.
It was the Quill proving it could make Lina unholdable.
And if no one could hold her—
the world would accept the reassignment.
Lina turned toward Seren, voice shaking. "Can you stop it?"
Seren swallowed hard, eyes glowing like stormlight. "I can try to find your original resonance imprint. The first time the academy recognized you. Like… an admission record in magic."
Kai's jaw clenched. "Do it."
Seren nodded, trembling. Echo Borrowing surged again—violent now, like the underwing forced her gift open.
Her voice layered instantly, older and strained:
"Records live in the first touch."
Seren's eyes snapped open, wide. "The first door you opened. The first ward you crossed. The first rune that accepted you."
Reyon whispered, "So… we need Lina's first day."
Lina's chest tightened.
Chapter 1.
Sparks on Day One.
The first hallway runes.
The first guardian that watched.
The first moment the academy "let her in."
Lina looked at Kai—real Kai—eyes dark with fear.
Kai's voice was rough. "What happened your first day?"
Lina swallowed.
Then her mind snagged—Mirror Tax bruises still there—facts slipping.
Her first day blurred at the edges like a page with ink spilled on it.
Lina's panic surged.
"I—" she whispered. "I don't—"
The Quill scratched behind her eyes.
The void status hummed.
The arrow blinked.
Mirror Kai stepped closer, hand extended, voice gentle:
"You don't have to remember," he murmured. "I'll remember for you."
Lina flinched away like his softness was acid.
"No," Lina snapped. "That's the point. You'll remember wrong."
The guardian statue closest to Lina lifted its arm.
A rune-chain of light snapped into existence—thin, bright, ready to bind.
Seren gasped. "It's going to restrain her."
Kai stepped forward, shadow flaring. "Touch her and you lose your mask."
The statue didn't care.
It wasn't alive enough to fear.
It was a containment mechanism.
It fired the rune-chain toward Lina—
—and Lina felt the underwing force a rule into her bones:
Don't break hand contact during the chorus.
The Masquerade rules weren't just upstairs.
They were coded into the academy's survival logic.
Hand contact.
Anchor.
Kai yanked Lina closer, their hands locked, and the rune-chain hit the space between their arms—
and hesitated.
Like the ward couldn't decide if Lina was alone.
Kai's grip saved her.
Reyon whispered, shaking, "We're literally holding hands to outrun a magical arrest."
"Correct," Kai said through clenched teeth.
Seren's gaze snapped to Lina's flaming handwriting on the wall—LINA VERIS in messy fire.
"Your flame wrote a counter-record," Seren whispered. "But it needs witnesses."
Lina's breath caught.
Witnesses.
If the Quill rewrote reality by rewriting what people "knew," then the only counter was to make her identity anchored in living minds with a vow the academy couldn't easily edit.
A Name Witness oath.
Lina turned sharply to them—Kai, Seren, Reyon, Mira—voice fierce despite shaking.
"Say it," Lina demanded. "All of you. Say my name like you mean it."
Reyon blinked. "Now?"
"Now," Lina snapped.
Kai's voice came first, raw and steady: "Lina Veris."
Seren followed, trembling but clear: "Lina Veris."
Reyon swallowed hard, then said it with surprising intensity: "Lina Veris."
Mira's lips trembled.
Her eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to pull the name out of burning fog.
"Li…" Mira whispered. "Li—"
Lina's chest cracked.
"Come on," Lina whispered, voice breaking. "Mira. Please."
Mira's breath hitched.
And then, like dragging a thread through ash, Mira forced it out:
"Lina… Veris."
The Runic Grave wall shuddered.
The Quill symbol beside Lina's name flickered violently—as if the stone itself disliked being contradicted by living voices.
The arrow hesitated.
The guardian statue's rune-chain dimmed slightly, uncertain.
Seren whispered, eyes wide, "It worked. Witnesses stabilize."
Reyon let out a shaky breath. "Okay. We're doing friendship as a magical legal defense. I'm into it."
Mirror Kai's smile thinned.
"Cute," he murmured. "But it won't be enough."
The Veilbound voice drifted again, colder now:
"Witnesses fail," it whispered. "Eventually."
The arrow brightened again.
The Quill scratched harder behind Lina's eyes.
And then the underwing did something worse than writing a new fact.
It tried to rewrite her bond.
The arrow's empty space after it began to fill—slow, deliberate, as if the Quill savored the cruelty.
A name started forming.
Not Mirror Kai's.
Not a Veilbound's.
A name Lina's bones already carried.
Lina's breath stopped.
"Kai—" she whispered.
Kai stiffened, eyes snapping to the wall.
The letters finished carving with brutal clarity:
REASSIGNMENT IN PROGRESS: LINA VERIS → KAI RHEN
Lina went ice-cold.
Reyon whispered, horrified, "It's… assigning her to him."
Seren's voice broke. "That means—"
Kai's jaw clenched, voice low and lethal. "It means they're rewriting her identity into my name."
Mirror Kai stepped forward, voice gentle as a knife:
"Or," he murmured, "rewriting your name into mine."
And the Runic Grave wall pulsed once—satisfied—as if the choice had already been made.
To be Continued© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.