The Forgotten Tongue
The morning after Selena's return, a slow, strange hush wrapped itself around the city. Not silence—but the kind of stillness that lingers before a scream. Even the crows avoided the rooftops.
Loki awoke to find Selena already up, tracing the edge of her tea cup with one finger. She didn't look at him, but spoke as though she'd been waiting.
"The feather... it didn't just show me something. It left something inside."
He sat up slowly, ruffling his hair. "What kind of something? Please don't say a talking ghost. I've already got one of those in my mirror."
"A memory that isn't mine. Words in a language I never studied. And when I close my eyes, I see—"
She stopped, her breath hitching slightly.
He crossed the room and sat beside her. "What do you see? Please say it's me with a better haircut."
Her eyes met his. "You."
He blinked, mock-suspicious. "Ah, so not the haircut."
"But not now. Not this version of you. A... broken version. Standing in a place with no sky. Saying goodbye to someone who never existed."
Loki stilled. There was something sharp behind his smile.
To Selena, that moment felt like a glimpse behind the curtain—a flicker of the version of Loki he tried so hard to charm away. She wasn't sure if what she saw scared her or made her feel closer to him.
He reached out, brushed his fingers across hers. This time, she didn't just let it happen. She turned her hand and held his. Her grip was warm but firm, grounding.
"Well," he said with a crooked smirk, "that's grimly poetic. Let's avoid skyless goodbyes for a while. Not really my aesthetic."
They sat like that until a knock came. A single tap on the loft door.
Loki rose with a flair and opened it to reveal a boy no older than fifteen, pale-eyed and dust-covered, holding a scrap of parchment.
"You're needed at the southern wall," the boy whispered. "The Weavers sent me."
Loki arched a brow. "Of course they did. Always with the drama. Ever try sending a pigeon instead of a ghostly child courier?"
The southern wall was an abandoned ward of Carcera, flooded during a failed elemental binding three years prior. Now it existed between official maps—a place for orphans, smugglers, and forgotten relics.
As they approached, Selena noticed the way Loki fell quiet. His posture relaxed, but his eyes were alert. A predator in a jester's mask. She had once thought him reckless. Now, she realized it was precision dressed in chaos.
The Weavers were waiting.
Not in person.
But in the form of a shimmering rune inscribed across a collapsed gate: a shifting ouroboros coiled around a cracked mirror. Calder Veyron was already there, hunched over the stone with a knife in one hand and a bottle of ink in the other.
"What are you doing?" Loki asked, arms crossed. "Practicing interpretive surgery on stone again?"
"Trying to unseal this lock without bleeding. So far, no luck."
Selena knelt beside him. "This symbol... I've seen it. In the memory the feather gave me. It's not just a lock. It's a language."
"You can read it?" Calder asked, surprised.
"I think I can feel it."
Loki leaned in with mock caution. "If it starts whispering sweet nothings, I'm leaving. I don't share attention with ancient sentient doors."
The air shimmered as she traced the edges of the rune. Loki watched her fingers move like she was unlocking a heartbeat, not a vault.
Then, the gate melted.
Not physically—but perceptually. One moment it was stone. The next, it was a stairwell plunging into candlelit fog.
Loki's smirk returned. "Well, that's ominous. But on the plus side, cursed stairwells always make for great stories. Assuming you survive."
Calder grinned. "Then you'll enjoy what's below. The Assembly believes something older than the Sequences lies buried here. A medallion."
Selena tilted her head. "Linked to the Memory Cities?"
"Exactly. And to the Whisperer who speaks in riddles."
Loki cracked his knuckles. "Fantastic. Nothing like chasing forbidden artifacts through foggy death tunnels to bond with your fellow misfits."
They descended for hours—or perhaps minutes. Time was uncertain in the stairwell. The deeper they went, the louder the buzzing grew. Not from insects, but thought. Whispered, tangled, unfinished thoughts.
Loki joked, but each wisecrack was a mirror deflection. He didn't like how the walls bent toward him when he wasn't looking.
Selena could feel his unease, but said nothing. Instead, she reached out and lightly brushed her fingers along his arm as they walked. It was a small gesture. But it steadied them both.
Finally, they entered a chamber that should not have existed: a cathedral made of mirrored stone, with ceilings carved in mathematical impossibility. In the center stood a child.
A girl with pale skin and hair like lunar moss. She sat on a dais of broken glass, smiling.
"You're late," she said.
Selena's breath hitched.
"Who are you?"
The girl blinked slowly. "Eira. I'm not supposed to exist. But here I am."
Calder stepped forward. "You're the Threadless."
Eira nodded. "The last witness of the First Thread. And the one who remembers the medallion you came for."
"Where is it?" Loki asked. "Please don't say you hid it in a dimension of teeth."
She patted her stomach. "I ate it."
Loki tilted his head, amused and curious. "Of course you did. And how was it? Crunchy? Existentially chewy?"
Selena shot him a look, part reprimand, part affection.
"Because memories rot if you leave them alone," Eira said. "And because you weren't ready until now. But I remember it. Word for word."
She recited.
An ancient tongue spilled from her lips—guttural, elegant, impossible.
Selena's mark burned.
She understood every syllable.
When Eira finished, the walls shifted. A rune ignited in the air, spiraling around her.
"I'm coming with you now," Eira said.
"Why?" Loki asked, voice quieter than before. "Because our lives weren't already complicated enough?"
She looked at him, unblinking.
"Because the eye is opening. And you're going to break something important."
Loki grinned, but there was weight in his smile. "That's oddly encouraging. Welcome aboard, doom child. I'll clear a spot between chaos and heartbreak."
Selena watched them both. And for the first time in days, she smiled—not because she understood what was coming, but because she knew she wouldn't face it alone.