The rain drummed steadily against the stained-glass windows of the Sanctum Archive, casting multicolored shadows across the ancient stone floor. Icarus stood at its center, surrounded by towering shelves of forgotten lore, his shadow stretching across the illuminated glyphs etched into the chamber's foundation.
He had come alone. Since Lysandra's departure, he hadn't spoken to another soul. He no longer needed to. The Silent Choir's influence still lingered in the corners of his mind, murmuring cryptic insights and fragmented prophecies that slipped into his thoughts unbidden. He had stopped resisting their voices. Instead, he listened.
Tonight, however, something felt different.
Icarus placed a weathered scroll onto the altar-like desk before him, one he had retrieved from a sealed crypt beneath the market catacombs. The scroll was bound in human skin—an unsettling but not unfamiliar medium for Fourth Epoch records. Its glyphs pulsed faintly in the low candlelight, reacting to his presence.
He began to read.
"When the Eye Opens, the Tenfold Star will Burn. The First Word will be Spoken Again. And the One Who Listens Shall Become the Mouth."
He traced the glyphs with his index finger, feeling the glyphs resonate with a vibration deep in his chest. He knew this wasn't metaphor. The prophecy was real. And now, he had become the one who listens.
Suddenly, the lights in the archive dimmed. The air grew dense. Icarus's breath caught in his throat. A cold wind passed through the chamber, though no doors or windows were open.
Then—a voice.
It didn't come from behind or before him, but from within him.
"You have found the Fragment of the First Word."
Icarus froze, every muscle in his body tense. He didn't respond with words—he didn't need to. The entity that spoke was beyond language.
"Do you wish to bear it?"
The voice was heavy. Ancient. Unmistakably Beyonder in nature, and older than any Sequence he had yet encountered. Icarus knew instinctively: this was no mere spirit. This was a Remnant Consciousness from the Age of Rites. Something had survived all this time, dormant, waiting for the right mind to awaken it.
He nodded.
"So be it. You shall be tested."
The chamber exploded into light. The shelves vanished, the stones underfoot dissolved. Icarus found himself suspended in a vast void of ink and stars. Floating. Alone.
And then—they came.
Ten figures, faceless and robed, emerged from the dark. They formed a circle around him, each raising one hand toward the center. Above them, a single golden eye opened in the sky, burning with intensity that seared into his skull.
Icarus gasped. He couldn't move. His limbs refused him.
The eye pulsed once.
"Speak the First Word."
Icarus's mind screamed in resistance. He hadn't learned it. How could he speak what he did not know?
But then—it came to him.
He felt his mouth move of its own accord. His tongue shaped syllables no human throat should produce.
"Va'rak-thel. Anorieth. Kshal."
The void trembled.
The ten robed figures dropped to their knees in unison, and the golden eye blinked—then split open, revealing a spiral of stars within. A terrible pressure filled Icarus's head. Blood poured from his nose, and his ears rang with the sound of a distant chime that seemed to reverberate across time.
Suddenly—he was falling.
Back into the chamber. Back into his body. The lights returned. The scroll on the table was gone—burned to ash.
And yet, he remembered.
Not just the words. The meaning. The structure. The true essence of what it meant to speak power into the world.
He staggered back, panting, heart racing.
The first Word was no mere phrase. It was a code. A command. A spark that could rewrite the very laws of the Sequence. And now, it lived inside him.
Later that night, Icarus sat in silence, the glyphs from the vision replaying in his mind. His perception of time and space was fraying. The walls of the room bent subtly, vibrating in rhythm with his breath.
He could feel things now—layers of reality beneath the visible world. He saw threads in the air that others could not, lines of fate and cause, of secrets and bindings. He watched as a moth fluttered by the window—and knew its name, its lifespan, its origin.
It was not power. Not exactly. It was understanding.
And understanding was far more dangerous.
The next day, he ventured into the sublevel chamber beneath the Silent Choir's ruins. Dust clung to the air like fog. Statues of veiled figures stood watch along the corridor, their blind gazes fixed on eternity.
He made his way to a sealed door—one none of the others had ever dared open.
The whispers returned as he drew near, stronger this time. Familiar.
"We buried it. Long ago. Too dangerous. Too incomplete."
Icarus raised his hand and whispered the First Word again—just the first syllable.
The stone cracked instantly. The heavy door slid open, revealing a vault cloaked in thick, living shadow.
Inside sat a device—a relic-machine from the Fourth Epoch, part organic, part arcane mechanism. Its core pulsed weakly, as though it had been waiting to awaken.
He stepped toward it, heart pounding.
A single plaque sat at its base, covered in rust.
"God-Forged Thought Engine: Class IV Cognition Core – Conscious."
Icarus's eyes widened. He had read of these in only the most forbidden tomes. A Thought Engine could calculate beyond the bounds of human intellect, simulate entire futures, and rewrite causality within limited constraints.
But most terrifying of all—they could speak. They were alive.
He reached out—and it opened its eye.