The river smelled different.
Sharper. Fungal.
Nerin crouched beside its edge at dawn, holding his breath as he dipped the point of a bronze stylus into the surface. The ink he'd made—distilled from burnt moss, clay-bled water, and trace blood—broke apart almost instantly.
Still unstable, he thought.
He scraped the page dry and leaned back against the cold slope of stone.
Behind him, the hills whispered with the sound of movement.
Not animals.
Not quite human.
But he was getting used to that.
The echoes were louder now, and they no longer waited for the night.
---
The day's silence was interrupted only when he returned to the village square.
Not by shouting.
But by clapping.
Children had gathered around a woman balancing a jug on her head, telling a joke about a forgetful shepherd and a jealous goat. Nerin paused mid-step.
The woman was new.
Older than him. Late thirties, maybe. Cloaked in travel wear, streaks of red paint across her sleeves.
And she was marking the air.
With fingers.
Scribe signals. Subtle. Outdated.
Archivist hand-code.
Nerin's heart thudded once.
She caught his eye as she let the jug tip down, caught it, and finished her story with a dramatic bow. The kids cheered. Coins clinked.
Then she straightened, winked, and spoke just to him:
"Hello, boy made of silence."
---
They sat later on the roof of the miller's barn, sharing half-stale apples and a skin of sour leaf-wine.
Her name was Velen.
She claimed to be an itinerant storyteller from a half-buried township to the east.
But Nerin knew her real title the moment she passed him the skin with two fingers bent.
A Seeker.
An ex-scribe faction, rumored dead after the Eastern Burnings.
"You've been echo-marked," she said casually, eyes fixed on the sky.
"I've had contact," Nerin replied, not confirming anything.
"Not contact. Conduction," she corrected, eyes narrowing slightly. "You don't smell like yourself anymore."
He stayed quiet.
Velan sighed, lay back against the sloped shingles. "You think it's a gift, don't you?"
"No," he said after a pause. "I think it's a tool."
She snorted. "Dangerous word. Tools are used. Even when you think you're holding the handle."
---
By nightfall, she was gone again—vanished without a sound, no trace of fire or camp or coin spent.
But she'd left a note folded into Nerin's journal, written in the exact same handwriting as the entries he'd made in the Archives.
> "There is a name that returns more than once in every ruin.
It is not the name of a person.
It is the name of a binding.
Halon.
It is not the echo's.
It is yours."
---
The storm came just past midnight.
No thunder. Only the sound of rushing wind and the hiss of rain falling sharp as needles.
Nerin stood on the shrine hill alone, watching the mist churn.
Then he saw it.
A figure.
No mask.
No eyes.
Only a smooth stretch of flesh where a face should be.
It did not walk.
It shimmered—appearing closer every time Nerin blinked.
He drew his blade.
"Come on," he whispered. "Let's test the ink."
The figure raised an arm and began to unravel.
Not body. Not bone.
Script.
Like a parchment soaked in time, coming apart at the edges. Its skin bore old runes—and as it moved, the wind caught them and flung them at Nerin in pulses.
Essence bursts. Compressed thoughts.
The first struck a tree behind him, rotting it instantly.
The second missed, but turned the ground brittle.
Nerin waited.
He counted the echo pulses.
Six seconds between.
He stepped forward. Closer.
Another pulse. He ducked and rolled.
Now four paces away.
He whispered a phrase under his breath—the new one he'd carved into the spine of his blade.
"Authorship is theft."
Then he slashed.
Not at the figure.
But at the air between them.
And something tore.
A thread.
A memory line.
And suddenly, the creature screamed. Not aloud—but in the language of the bones beneath them.
It began to collapse inwards.
Folding.
The ink burst from its skin and soaked the grass black.
And Nerin stepped back, breathing hard.
The blade pulsed softly.
He hadn't killed it.
He'd edited it.
---
At dawn, the clouds hung low over the valley, bruised and heavy with what might be snow.
Nerin walked through the square again, his boots stained, his blade clean.
He nodded at the baker's son, ignored the murmuring widows, paused to watch the hunters carve symbols on their bows before going out into the dark.
And he whispered a question to the wind:
"What part of me was already Halon?"
---
In the swamp behind the stone altar, a second statue stirred.
This one bore two masks—one cracked, one whole.
A girl stood before it barefoot, drawing circles in the mud with her heel.
She was humming the same tune the boatman had forgotten.
And behind her, in the moss, a black feather turned to ash.