Echo couldn't stop thinking about the notebook. Not the words inside it, but the feeling it left behind.
It wasn't just a record. It was a reminder. Of a world before roles were assigned, before ink had to justify itself, before memory required permission.
They walked through dialogue ruins next. Broken branches shaped like quotation marks hung low over their heads. The air was thick with unfinished scenes, like a rehearsal that had been shut down mid-line.
Ash stepped over a jagged metaphor, the kind too sharp to be decorative.
"You know," he said, "I always thought the Canon just cleaned things up. Smoothed the rough edges. Kept the tone consistent."
Curata gave a dry laugh. "The Canon edits for clarity. But clarity often means control."
They passed a statue half-swallowed by ivy. It looked like a narrator mid-sentence, arms outstretched, mouth open – but there was no plaque. No name. No story.
Echo paused, staring up at the stone eyes.
"I think I've seen this before."
Ash glanced at him. "Where?"
"I don't know. Maybe a dream. Maybe not mine."
He touched the base of the statue. His ink responded – not with resistance, but with recognition. A line shimmered where no words had been carved before.
"The name burned, but the shape remained."
Curata tilted her head. "That's an attribution line. Something used to be written here."
Echo closed his eyes.
The thread at his wrist pulsed again, stronger this time.
Then, just beyond the statue, a shimmer appeared.
Not a portal. Not a break.
A memory.
It hovered like heat over stone. Transparent, but certain.
They watched as a younger figure, no-face, no-name, scribbled wild lines into a manuscript and laughed. Around them, words moved like fireflies. Not disciplined. Not obedient. But alive.
The memory flickered.
And then a single word floated into view. A name.
Ash blinked. "What is that?"
Echo whispered it aloud.
"Verin."
The memory collapsed like ink in water.
Silence returned.
Curata looked shaken. "That name… it doesn't exist in the Canon."
Echo nodded. "That's because someone tried very hard to make sure it didn't."
He stepped back from the statue.
"Verin isn't a ghostwriter. He's a myth who wrote back."
Ash exhaled slowly. "That doesn't sound like someone the Canon would leave alone."
"They didn't," Echo replied. "They tried to erase him."
He looked down at his ink-stained hands.
"But it didn't work."
Curata's gaze locked with his. "Because his name still lives in your memory?"
Echo nodded.
"No," she said, stepping closer. "Because it lives in yours."