The world had been rewritten before.
Elias did not remember it.
No one did.
But the echoes remained—fragmented memories buried beneath the surface of time, names that had once been spoken now lost to the void. And yet, on this night, those echoes stirred once more.
They reached for him.
They whispered.
---
The Awakening
Elias awoke to silence.
Not the stillness of midnight, nor the hush of a sleeping city. Something deeper.
Something wrong.
The air felt heavy, thick with an unseen presence that coiled around his skin like mist. A void stretched through the chamber, not just an absence of sound but a vacuum of presence itself—as though the world outside had paused, suspended in something beyond time.
He sat up slowly, his breath shallow.
The glow of dying embers in the hearth painted the walls in a dull, wavering orange. The scent of wax and parchment still lingered, familiar, grounding. Tall bookshelves loomed around him, their shadows stretching long against the stone walls. Scrolls lay scattered across his desk, some neatly rolled, others unfurled—each bearing records, histories, carefully documented truths.
Everything was where he had left it.
Yet, nothing felt right.
A low vibration thrummed in the air, just beneath the threshold of hearing. Not a voice, not a sound—but a presence.
A hum at the edges of reality.
His pulse quickened. Something was here.
Slowly, cautiously, Elias reached for the nearest parchment. The ink should have been dry, set into the page hours ago when he last wrote.
But the moment his fingers brushed the parchment—
The words moved.
His breath caught in his throat.
Not smudging. Not fading. Shifting.
Letters twisted and reshaped themselves in real time, black ink slithering across the page like living veins. Names that had once been written in certainty now changed, rewriting history as though the past itself was unraveling before his eyes.
A king who had died in battle a century ago had now ruled for another two decades. A treaty signed between two nations had never happened. Wars had been fought that should not have existed.
His hands trembled as he reached for another scroll.
The same.
Another.
Still shifting.
The ink crawled. The parchment breathed.
And then, in the margins, between the shifting lines, one name appeared again and again.
His own.
> Elias Vael.
The one who spoke.
The one who will speak again.
The last voice before silence.
A chill spread through his veins.
The ink pulsed beneath his fingers, almost sentient, as if it knew he was watching.
As if it was watching back.
Elias's breath hitched.
He stumbled back from the desk, knocking over the inkpot. A dark blot spread across the parchment, but the words remained untouched—unfazed.
This was not a mistake.
This was a rewriting.
The whispers pressed closer.
Not voices, not exactly—something older, deeper, beyond speech.
A warning.
A truth.
A memory.
And then, the city bells rang.
---
The Bells of Vareth
The first chime struck like a hammer against stone.
Then another.
And another.
The bells of Vareth should have rung in measured intervals, marking the steady passage of time. But tonight—tonight, they screamed.
Elias shoved open the shutters.
And the city below was breaking.
Not in fire. Not in war.
But in something far worse.
The streets, the buildings—they had shifted.
Structures that had stood for centuries now curved where they should not have. Towers that should have been in the city's heart now loomed on its outskirts. Streets twisted in impossible ways, leading to places that had never existed before.
Even the stars above—wrong.
The constellations were fractured, their celestial paths misaligned. The sky itself had been rewritten.
And the people—they knew.
A merchant stood outside his shop, staring at the goods on his shelves as though they had appeared overnight.
"This isn't… I don't sell these," he whispered, voice trembling. "I own a bakery. I—I own a bakery." He let out a sharp breath. "Don't I?"
A noblewoman clutched her husband's arm, eyes wide with horror.
"Who are you?" she choked out. "Why do you—why do you look like my husband?"
A child sobbed, gripping his mother's sleeve.
"Mama, why don't you know me?"
Elias felt his stomach turn to ice.
The whispers pressed harder against his skull.
This wasn't just an anomaly.
This was a rewriting.
The world was coming apart.
And Elias was at its center.
Then, from the direction of the palace gates, a scream tore through the night.
---
The Silent Monks
Elias turned sharply.
And he saw them.
Shadows moved beneath the flickering torchlight.
They did not walk like men.
They did not move like beasts.
They simply were.
A dozen figures—no, more—drifted through the streets, their forms cloaked in flowing black, their faces hidden beneath veils of midnight.
They moved silently, untouched by the chaos around them.
They did not speak.
They did not hesitate.
They simply advanced.
And where they walked, the city fell silent.
No voices.
No footsteps.
No wind.
As though sound itself refused to exist in their presence.
A cold, measured voice cut through the void.
"Seize the Archivist."
Elias's heart stopped.
They were coming for him.
---
The Flight
For a single, frozen second, Elias did not move.
Then, instinct took over.
Run.
His fingers scrambled for his satchel, shoving scrolls, quills, anything he could grasp inside.
The whispers grew deafening.
"Run."
The thought was not his own.
It pressed into his mind, urgent, commanding.
Not a voice, not a sound—something older, something deeper.
The monks were moving now, slipping through the streets, their silence more terrifying than any war cry.
Elias bolted.
He shoved open the chamber door and sprinted into the corridor.
The palace was not as it should be.
The murals that lined the halls shifted—depictions of battles long past, their figures unfamiliar. The tapestries rippled, not with wind, but with something unseen.
Servants cowered in corners, whispering prayers to gods that might no longer exist.
Because tonight, history was being rewritten.
And Elias Vael's name was the only one that remained.
Find Out Next time on Ancient Legends!