The first thing Neno Vaulden knew was cold stone beneath him. The second was the sound of paper breathing.

His eyes snapped open. The ceiling above was cracked and stained, its faded murals depicting a faceless figure with outstretched hands. He lay on the floor of a ruined chapel, its air thick with the scent of wax and old parchment. The candles had long since melted to their wicks, leaving behind dark puddles that reflected something moving in the shadows.

His fingers twitched. Something was in his hand.

A page.

Torn. Crumpled. Stained with ink.

Neno sat up slowly, his body aching as though he had been asleep for years. The silence in the chapel was unnatural—not the stillness of an empty place, but something else. Something watching.

He unfolded the page.

His own name was written there, over and over, the ink dark and wet as if it had just been inscribed.

Neno Vaulden. Neno Vaulden. Neno Vaulden.

The words bled into the fibers of the paper, stretching, twisting—until beneath them, new letters bloomed, forming a sentence that should not be.

"Seek the Mouth of Saranja before it speaks your name."

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The words shifted as he read them. As though they knew he was looking.

A breath caught in his throat.

Then—a sound.

Footsteps.

He turned sharply toward the chapel’s entrance, where the light from the broken stained-glass window bled across the stone floor. A man stood there, draped in tattered robes. His breath rattled in his chest, his fingers twitching like a puppet’s limbs. His face—no, what was left of it—was streaked with ink, his lips stained as though he had been drinking from a well of black.

The man took a shuddering step forward.

“The Gospel…” he whispered, eyes locked onto the page in Neno’s hands.

Neno stiffened. He felt something wrong in the way the man moved—his limbs slightly out of sync, as if his body had forgotten how to function.

“What—” Neno started, but the man lunged.

Fingers like claws seized his wrist.

“You read it, didn’t you?” The man’s voice was desperate, a pleading rasp. His breath reeked of old paper and something rotten. “Do you hear it yet?”

Neno wrenched his arm away, stumbling backward.

The man stared at him—eyes wide, bloodshot, unblinking. Then, his lips began to move, forming words that sent ice through Neno’s spine.

"It already knows you exist."

The ink on the page trembled.

And then, before Neno could react, the man’s body began to tear.

Not like flesh. Not like bone.

Like paper.

His skin split along invisible seams, peeling apart into curling fragments, each piece marked with unreadable text. His mouth gaped open in a silent scream as his body unraveled, scattering into the unseen wind. The ink-dark remnants drifted in slow spirals, caught in an unfelt current.

Then, nothing.

Neno stood frozen, his heartbeat hammering in his skull. The air in the chapel had changed—thicker now, weighted with something unseen. He looked down at the page in his hands.

The ink was moving.

The words were changing.

New letters crawled across the surface, twisting into place.

"Do not run. It is already listening."

Somewhere beyond the chapel walls, from the depths of Saranja, something sighed.

Long. Slow. As if awakening.

And the candles, long since melted down to wax, flickered back to life.