The air did not move. It resisted. Each breath Jorren drew was a theft, wrested from the Maw's still lungs. The violet flame had vanished, but its absence left a hollow hum—like the afterimage of a scream burned into the silence. His thigh throbbed where the obsidian shard dug deep, not bleeding so much as weeping—a slow, viscous seep of dark fluid that smelled of burnt parchment and old copper.
He shifted, dragging himself away from the altar. The sigil—Observe, Offer, Obliterate—was scorched into his vision. Its lines now flickered faintly, like embers beneath ash, and the fourth circle, half-erased, pulsed once, softly, as though it had heard him remember it.
Replacement. The word curled in his chest like smoke. Not force. Not defiance. Substitution.
He tried to hold the thought. It slipped.
A blink. A pause.
And then he was on his hands and knees, mouth full of copper, the ground colder than before. The wound on his leg had stiffened, the shard pressing deeper with each shudder of his pulse. But the pain was distant now—something observed, not felt. Like watching a man drown through a sheet of cracked glass.
How long? he thought. How long was I gone?
There was no answer. But the obsidian wall across from him bore a fresh gouge—long, frantic, clawed from stone. His fingers ached. He didn't remember making it.
Time wasn't stolen all at once. It was shaved. Shaved like slivers from bone. A breath too long. A step too slow. He reached for his satchel—still slung across his shoulder, thank the hollow gods—and his hand hesitated in midair, suspended for a heartbeat too long before closing around the strap. A twitch. A gap.
Missed moment.
He opened the satchel. The book inside—Treatise on Liminal Contracts, bound in pale leather—was damp. The pages had begun to fuse, ink bleeding into ghostly smears. One passage, circled weeks ago in fading blue wax, now read only: ...the contract consumes the witness to preserve the sealed...
He remembered circling it. He remembered why.
But he didn't.
A whisper of stone on stone.
He froze.
The sound was not mechanical. Not like the bone-ward's rusted joints or the Maw's grinding corridors. This was softer. Footsteps. Bare feet on cold rock. Slow. Measured. Not hunting. Searching.
And then—a sound that unknotted something deep in his chest.
A sigh. Human.
Not a groan of the dead. Not a cry of madness. A breath exhaled in exhaustion, in sorrow.
Jorren pressed back against the altar. The sigil flared once—faint violet behind his eyelids—then died. He didn't dare use the Echo. Not again. Not without knowing what it would take this time. Last time it was the memory of his mother's voice. Before that, the scent of rain on wheat fields—his childhood home, gone now, not just from the world, but from him.
The footsteps stopped.
Silence.
Then—whispered, close—"You shouldn't be awake."
The voice was low. Female. Tired. Real.
Jorren turned his head.
She stood ten paces away, haloed in the dim phosphorescence bleeding from the walls. Not a specter. Not a construct. Flesh and bone. A woman, wrapped in tattered layers of grey cloth, her hair shorn close to the scalp, one arm bound in strips of blackened leather. Her eyes—wide, dark, aware—locked onto his. No fear. Only caution. And something older: recognition.
She stepped forward. "The Maw doesn't let scholars last this long."
Jorren tried to speak. His tongue felt thick, delayed. "I—I haven't… lasted."
A flicker of something in her face—not pity, not amusement. Understanding.
She knelt, slow, giving him space. "You've already forgotten part of this conversation, haven't you?"
His breath caught.
He searched his mind. The footsteps. The sigh. Her voice—you shouldn't be awake—yes. But… had she said more? Had he answered?
Nothing. A gap. Like a page torn from a letter.
She watched him realize it. "It takes in silence. You won't feel it happening. One moment you're speaking, the next… you're standing somewhere else, with words in your mouth you don't remember saying."
Her gaze dropped to his leg. "And it's feeding on you already. The black blood. That's not injury. That's unraveling."
Jorren touched his nose. His fingers came away stained, dark as pitch. "What… am I losing?"
"Time," she said. "Not just memory. Duration. The Maw doesn't erase you all at once. It peels you from the world in increments. Skips you. You'll blink, and find days gone. You'll speak, and realize your voice has finished a sentence you didn't start."
She reached into her sleeve. Pulled out a shard of polished bone, etched with tiny grooves. Held it out. "This helps. A little. It measures what the Maw steals. Each groove—the passing of a minute the Maw can't hide."
He didn't take it.
"You're not alone," he whispered.
"No," she said. "But I'm the only one still here. The others… they blinked out. Not dead. Just… skipped. One moment they were beside me. The next—empty air. Like they were never part of the moment at all."
She leaned closer. "You used the Echo at the altar. Violated Rule IV. That's why it's accelerating. It's not just taking memories now. It's claiming your presence. Soon, you won't just forget your past. You won't be in your present."
A beat.
Then she said, "You asked me a question an hour ago."
Jorren stiffened. "I… didn't."
"You did." Her voice was gentle. "You asked if the Binding Sigil could be broken. I told you yes. That someone had done it before. You didn't believe me."
"I don't—"
"You also said my name," she interrupted. "You called me Elaina."
Jorren's blood turned to ice.
He hadn't.
He couldn't have.
He didn't know her.
He—
A flicker.
A spark behind his eyes.
And for one fractured second, he saw it: her face, streaked with soot, whispering in the dark, her hand pressing the bone shard into his palm as he gasped, feverish, unaware—"Don't forget the fourth circle. Replacement, not force. They're coming. They're already here."
Then it was gone.
He blinked.
She was still kneeling.
Still watching.
But now… she was crying.
Not from sorrow.
From fear.
Because she saw it in his face—the moment he remembered not remembering.
And then, faint as a dying breath, the voice returned. Not in his ears. In the walls. In the blood in his veins.
SYSTEM NOTICE: Contract Compliance Reassessed.
Subject: Jorren, Designation: Scholar-7.
Time Debt Exceeds Threshold.
Initiating Forced Adjustment.
The ground didn't shake.
His pulse did.
And in the space between one heartbeat and the next
he was standing.
On his feet.
Weight on his injured leg.
The pain was behind him, as though it belonged to a moment already discarded.
The woman—Elaina—was ten paces back, mouth open, reaching.
But no sound came.
Because time had already moved on.
And Jorren had not.