The air around Elya shimmered.
The false version of herself circled slowly, elegant, flawless, empty like a statue brought to life and filled with silence.
"You hesitate," it said."Even now, you question whether you belong with them."
Elya clenched her blade tightly. "And yet, I fight."
"For what? A girl with too many voices in her head? A traitor clinging to guilt?"
Elya struck.
The clash rang through the warped air like cracked glass.
Steel met steel, but her double moved like a reflection, anticipating every strike, every angle, every heartbeat.
It knows how I think, Elya realized, because it thinks the same.
But it didn't feel.
It didn't bleed.
It didn't regret.
As they fought, the real battlefield blurred in the background.
Within the dome, Zaiya sat cross-legged, blood pooling beneath her, arms etched with burning glyphs. Each breath brought more voices. Each voice, a piece of her soul fracturing.
One voice cut through the others:
"You are not strong enough alone."
"Let me in."
A glowing wisp hovered before her, Yelthra, Aetherborn of the Written House. Former voicekeeper of the spiral archive. Long erased.
Zaiya hesitated.
"You'll overwrite me."
"I'll reinforce you."
Zaiya exhaled and let her in.
Elsewhere, the Pale Censor watched with serene interest.
She gestured to the Ledger.
Another name brightened on its obsidian face:
ZAIYA AVEL-KAI
Inside the dueling space, Elya landed a strike, cutting across her double's cheek.
The wound did not bleed.
Instead, a line of text scrawled across the false skin: "UNIT 7-CLR."
"You're not me," Elya said.
"Not anymore," the double replied, smile fading. "I'm what you fear to become. Forgotten. Used. Perfect."
Elya lowered her blade slightly.
"That's the problem with perfection."
She moved faster than thought, sliding under the next swing and driving her blade up, through the thing's spine and skull.
"It breaks too cleanly."
The Writ-forged double shuddered then collapsed into a pile of blank parchment and memory dust.
She staggered out of the warped zone, bloodied but alive.
Zaiya looked up.
"You won?"
"No," Elya muttered. "I just kept my name."
The ground shook.
Everyone looked up.
The Ledger spun.
Zaiya's name now burned on its face.
The Pale Censor smiled.
"Let's see how many voices she can hold before she breaks."
Zaiya's name flared on the Ledger.
The script crackled, twisting unnaturally across the obsidian surface like it resisted being written at all.
She stood slowly, bones aching under the weight of countless voices echoing in her soul.
Elya ran to her side.
"They're trying to delete you."
Zaiya nodded.
"Then I'll have to write louder."
With a deep breath, she stepped forward and drew a spiral mid-air, not one taught by the Writ, but a forbidden glyph from the Spiral Houses of Nytherion.
It pulsed red.
Then blue.
Then white so bright even the Ledger dimmed in response.
The Pale Censor narrowed her eyes.
"She dares invoke origin-ink?"
She raised a hand to strike, but Vaelen moved first.
He crossed the field like a blade through silk, shattering pilgrims in his path, each step marked with a name shouted to the heavens.
He leapt, not at the Ledger, but at the monolith's heart, an eye of code, hidden behind flickering names.
He struck it with the flat of his halberd.
A resonance burst from the impact.
Not damaged communication.
The Ledger paused.
Spoke.
A mechanical, female, ancient voice echoed from within:
"RECOGNIZED: BIRTHNAME KEY DETECTED.""UNLOCKING... 'VAELEN KAI-RETH.'""SEEDLING: SANCTIONED."
The Pale Censor froze.
"That name was erased, how"
"I remembered it," Vaelen said. "That's all it takes."
Zaiya's glyphwork spiraled outward, reaching the Ledger like vines seeking sunlight.
She shouted:
"I bind this name to the undone to the forgotten who remain unyielding!"
"I anchor myself in the memory of those who chose to suffer instead of forget!"
The Ledger shuddered.
And for the first time…
It reversed.
Zaiya's name dimmed then vanished from its execution queue.
The Pale Censor let out a hollow cry, more emotion than she'd shown in a century.
"You don't understand what you're unleashing!"
Zaiya took one step forward.
Her eyes were light.
Her blood was ink.
Her voice was more than mortal.
"That's the point."
The battlefield quieted.
The names stopped falling from the sky.
The Ledger… retreated.
Not destroyed.
Not defeated.
But repelled.
The Pale Censor's cloak peeled into scripture as she vanished with it—escaping into the fold of time.
Later, around the remnants of a fire, Vaelen sat apart from the others.
Elya approached and sat beside him.
"Kai-Reth, huh?"
He didn't look up.
"A name I was never supposed to speak."
"But you did."
He nodded.
"And now we all remember."
Zaiya stared into the distance.
The Ledger would return.
But now… so would they.
"We're not forgotten anymore," she said."We're written in blood and breath."