Chapter 3: The Pact That Screamed
Darkness was not the absence of light here.
It was a presence.
It coiled around Sol's limbs as the Hall of Ink and Flame dissolved into something older—deeper. One by one, the floating scrolls vanished, the glyphs on the walls melted into whispers, and the ground beneath him turned to glass. Below it? Nothing. Above him? Stars that pulsed like they were breathing.
Sol stood alone in the Pact Chamber.
Or perhaps... he stood inside himself.
A voice like ink being poured echoed from nowhere. It didn't speak words—it pressed them into his mind, like brands.
In front of him appeared a mirror, made of glass so clear it felt like water. His reflection stared back—but it wasn't quite him. Its eyes were gold, like Kael's. Its body was cracked, like porcelain. Something moved behind the mirror-self—shadows writhing, like a thousand limbs seeking purchase.
"To bind the Pact, you must bleed."
The mirror cracked. And a spiral formed on the floor beneath him—three rings interlocked, the same symbol he saw on the throne. Blood dripped from his fingertips without a wound. It soaked into the spiral.
And then the world shattered.
The Trial had begun.
The stars blinked out one by one, replaced by an eye—a singular, sun-sized eye suspended in void. It had no iris, no pupil—just layers of flesh and script circling inwards.
Sol could not breathe.
The voice returned:
"The thing you face is called Uer-Vaq'thun, the Tongue That Swallowed Silence.A thing that existed before existence. A mistake the gods buried and forgot."
It fell.
It descended.
A mouth opened across the sky, filled not with teeth—but with scrolls made of skin, each whispering screams in forgotten tongues.
Sol collapsed to his knees.
"What... what am I supposed to do?" he gasped.
"Choose your weapon," the Trial whispered. "Choose what you are."
Three images appeared in front of him:
A black quill, feathered with smoke.
A mirror shard, reflecting nothing.
A burning chain, still locked to a wrist bone.
Sol reached out. His hand hovered—then closed around the quill.
It sank into his skin.
His veins lit up with symbols. His voice was stolen. For a moment, he couldn't scream.
And then everything stopped.
Uer-Vaq'thun didn't move like a beast.
It folded into the world like language gone wrong. The void around Sol became warped parchment, space bending and curling into letters that tried to bind him, twist him, rewrite him.
"It's trying to erase me," Sol realized.
His body melted—no, not physically. His concept of self began to fracture. Memories cracked. Name. Face. Voice. Gone.
But then...
He wrote.
Without knowing how—his hand moved, the black quill now grown from his fingers. Across the air itself, he wrote:
"I am Sol Veyne. I deny the Void's name. I declare my own."
Reality shuddered.
The monster screamed—not in sound, but in absence. The Trial shattered. The eye cracked. And the scripts that made up the thing unraveled like lies spoken aloud.
Sol fell.
He awoke at the center of the Hall of Ink and Flame.
Breathing. Barely.
The spiral on the floor now burned into the stone. In his palm, a sigil, pulsing faintly.
The Pact had formed.
The whispers were louder now. Clearer. His name... heavier.
Kael stood nearby, arms folded.
"Not bad, rookie."
"What… what was that thing?"
Kael's face darkened.
"A fragment of the First Mistake. They let one into every Trial, hoping it kills us. If it doesn't…"He glanced at Sol's hand."…then you become something not so easy to erase.
Sol looked up at the throne again.
It was still empty.
But for the first time, he felt something sitting on it.
Watching.
Waiting.
And it whispered:
"One name remembered. Six more to go."