This was the room that read men—not their words, but their weaknesses. A mirror built by minds too old to blink.
The last to hesitate here was never seen again.Not erased—rewritten.
Rayon stepped in, and the silence closed like teeth behind him. The door dissolved into the wall, seamless. No handle. No memory of sound.
The floor gave nothing back—not echo, not dust. As if even the past refused to settle here.
Glyphs coiled across the walls—ancient, asymmetric, pulsing not with light, but with thought. They moved when he didn't look.No order. No grammar.Just judgment.
He walked slowly. Not out of caution, but defiance.He never walked straight toward anything anymore.Sideways paths were harder to predict.
The walls here pulsed slower. Like a heart about to forget its rhythm.
From the ceiling, black threads hung low, brushing his shoulders. Not cords—memories unspooling.Some felt cold. Some felt familiar.
Then came the door.
It opened without request, revealing the impossible corridor: three Rayons, each facing him with different expressions.
One smiled.One bled.One waited.
The smiling one stepped forward, voice soaked in sweetness.
"If you surrender now, you'll be praised. They'll write songs about your restraint."
The bleeding one shook his head.
"If you fight, you'll lose yourself. Like last time. Like always."
The waiting one tilted his head, studying Rayon with unblinking patience.
"Which version are you now, really? The boy who bled? Or the man who made others bleed in return?"
Rayon said nothing. His eyes passed over them as if they were weather.
But the third figure's mouth twisted—not in malice, but in memory.
"You looked away when they drowned her."
A flicker. A crack, not in his stance, but beneath it.
His breath caught—just once—then smoothed. Discipline reasserted itself like a fist behind glass.
"Then I will not win," he said. "I will unplay the game."
The illusions collapsed like smoke under water.
He passed through.
At times, he felt heavier—regret made flesh. At others, light enough to forget his own gravity.
The corridor bent—then twisted. Glyphs followed him, trailing on the walls, whispering in shapes.
His fingers brushed one.
It burned like the first truth: small, searing, unforgiving.
Then came the pedestal.
A book, closed and waiting. Pale leather binding. No title—just anticipation.
He hesitated. For a flicker of a second, his fingers twitched—an old habit from sparring drills.Then he opened it.
And the room opened back.
Images spilled from the pages, not drawn but extracted—memories pulled like teeth.
A woman at a river, screaming into the current.A hand reaching for a crown—Rayon's own, too young to wear it.Bilden, broken and laughing.Talia, standing at the field's edge. Wind in her hair. Her voice steady.
"If they break you, break the meaning—not the shell."
Another image: a mirror. Cracked not from impact, but from something inside it trying to get out.He remembered the sound it made—not shattering, but sighing.Like something dying that had overstayed its welcome.
The book closed itself.
Rayon stood still.
Behind the final door, the Council waited.
They sat not on thrones, but on echoes—each one a shape of old authority. Shadows wove through their limbs like veins.
The Recorder spoke first, voice dry as parchment.
"He walks without a Tag."
The one with iron nails for teeth clicked them in thought.
"A piece outside the board. He should not exist."
Another stirred tea made of smoke, scrying him in spirals.
"He wrote nothing. And yet, left ink behind."
The Watcher leaned forward, voice smooth as memory.
"He moves sideways. As if he remembers a game we forgot how to play."
No one spoke for a long while.
Then the glyphs on the chamber walls pulsed one last time.
They dimmed.Not in warning.In recognition.
As if even the gods knew:
He could not be read.Only written.