Nevermore.

She was not meant to have a name, but she did. Nevermore was the name she gave herself, a reminder of the curse borne by their lineage. A reminder of the pain she felt the first time she leapt from the pages wreathed in black feathers, and as she did so now. She felt the scent of blood and regret in the palms of her hands, a rough burning sensation with an acidic aftertaste. She Heard his call in her soulwell whilst the tone of copper twixt jade struck thrice in the minds of all present to herald her arrival.

She was not meant to have a name, but she did. She repeated this refrain instinctually, like a prayer. She liked to believe that it helped endure her sentence. Her thoughts danced in speculation while the stories within bound tomes in the bookcases adorning the walls shook as she stepped alight on the cold stone with her feetclaws.

“What news, Raven?” He asked. He did not use her name, for she was not meant to have one. No, he used their name. The notname of all heralds.

She met his golden gaze but for a second before she averted her eyes, pupils darting quickly like scared mice. She focused instead on the white porcelain mask that covered his face and the inky black hands that furnished it. The many hands sought his gilded eyes like corpses rising from their earthen tombs, reaching for even a hint of the life-breath they once knew.

Horrifying as ever.

“A rat has been unwritten.” She said, awaiting his decree. Her life tome appeared in his hands unopened, the moving calligraphy on its surface a persistent mystery for she could not read.

Silence engulfed the room like the stiff embrace of winter. The Raven felt the keratin of her rachis curl in response to the chill touch as billows of fog erupted from the Masked One, the only sign of a break in his composure. The fog settled into the ground not half a moment later, leaving only a chill stillness behind to mark its coming.

“Has the Invincible Mount Tai struck? Or is it the Broken System Group? I had thought both balanced by our recent arrangements. Have they have set aside the Accord, winged one?” He asked, his voice growing louder in time with his steps as he paced back and forth across the room.

“They have not, your Grace. I fear a new House has arisen.”

He was snowballing in his questions and she felt the need to divert his attention lest his ire fall on her. She was not the first herald in this position and she had to think quickly if she wished to preserve her lifetome.

“A new House?” He paused in both thought and steps.

The silence stretched, a cat readying its pounce.

“That’s quaint.” He spat, his voice venomous, “A new House still dares to rise, and so close to our own boundary. Do we have a lock on their cardinal way?”

“They are near, but their exact location defies the cardinals.” She returned. Her every effort went into making her words strong, clear, and efficient. Not a syllable wasted or a half-truth unturned. They had burned heralds for less.

"We will see about that," he purred. The winds whipped themselves into a flurry as they scurried out through the microscopic gaps in the stone walls. She waited as his Maelstrom spirit stirred like a beast awakened from a deep slumber, carrying the messages He wrote to his savants on the breeze.

Sound answered the whipping wind, but not in any language she understood. As a herald, knowledge of other words was forbidden. The Thesis of a herald bound them to illiteracy and the power to [Create]. The power of all heralds was gifted to them by those greater and more novel, in return for her life, latitude and longevity. They struck creativity and choice from the ability of heralds and inscribed them with stagnancy. From the moment the first herald of their line had accepted the task given to them all present and future heralds had lived in the lifetomes of their creators. As one, all heralds were bound to the letters of the messages they brought and doomed to never understand the meaning behind their shape or the invocation of their sound. But Nevermore knew. She knew their scent.

[Speak of your knowledge of the words conveyed, Dear Raven.]

The voice reverberated within her and she stiffened as words she could not comprehend escaped her. She was compelled by the first contract to give a full report. The total message was conveyed from her lips with perfect elocution while pain wracked her every muscle. Her shallow bones echoed with power that heralds were not equipped to hold,her very lifetome and story used as an exhaustive medium.

She coughed up blood as the message ended. Her eyes refocused, and she smelt the untamed wildfire that was the scent of his anger. She could see her end in his golden eyes, a foregone thing, his pupils slitted like a doorway to death that she could walk through.

Her body lifted off the ground involuntarily, buffeted by winds that cut into her. She could feel her blood scattering crimson across the stone.

“I tasted more, your Grace. I have further use to you,” she stuttered.

She felt a listing of his eyebrow [conveyed] to her as she was dropped. Hearing a Crack, her left leg snapped at the knee by viscus winds amidst the fall, her feetclaw and shin clattering to the ground. She shrieked in pain as her bones contracted. Her foreleg was still connected to her soul well in spirit as the pain screamed at Nevermore, clamouring for her undivided attention. In her mind, the bone snapped repeatedly, and the pain refreshed anew, her shrieks accompanying it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The end of my story is so close.

[Speak, Dear Raven.]

“I tasted more, your Grace. I tasted a change in the liminal eclipse. It was not an established rune, your Grace, nor a forgotten one. The re-ordering of fates was small, but I have known the taste of order well. It is iron and blood beset by flowers. Within the runescape, I tasted something new. I say that this is not a language and I swear that I have not broken the sworn oath."

Black blood, like ink, fell from her mouth as she spoke. That alone was enough offence to have her lifetome fall to His ashwords. But He stayed his hand.

A release from her life tome meant only death, and yet she persisted at the edge of the envelope, pushing. A life tomb, Nevermore preferred to call it. Just like her name, they could not take that gallows humour from her either.

"I have lived well-long, your Grace,” she continued, “I have been... rarely used. I had naught to do but ponder the runes. In time and place I tasted them to increase the value of my Message. I have never spoken of this, for I had none to talk to. I just hope to be of use to you."

[Understood,] he conveyed sharply, his words a stinging slap that sent painful echoes through her bones once again causing further cracks to form, splitting apart her hollow skeleton into many branches. She could no longer tell apart her real self from the pain she endured.

“The taste,” she shuddered, “is of many things at once. It is all the dew resting on a new growth and the lifeblood bearing a new calf, a cresting of a fresh wave and the first flight of young wings. None of these are strange by itself, your Grace.”

His eyes gleamed, the taste of his frustration tinged with blueberries became overwhelming.

“The atrocity is the Thread that binds them together.”

Knowing the import of these words she had readied herself and flew at fell speed now that her full Message given. As she escaped to the lifetome now levitating above his hands an explosion of molten petulant anger engulfed the room, chasing her form. She burned as white flames cooked her wings, warping their path to flight even as she fell like a meteor cresting atmosphere into the space between the pages of her lifetome, the book once again resting safely within her core.

Really, her message had been too important for her to fall to ash, but He was not known for being patient. Just His presence and anger was enough to come close to destroying her. With Nevermore's Contract fulfilled she was *safe* once she returned to her lifetome.

Once more wreathed in the comfort of darkness and feathers, she settled down to roost near a runeperch that tasted of a blossoming field. She felt her bones re-knit themselves, her leg reforming. There was no pain here in between the pages. There was only continuance. An inescapable irony when her kind represented the stagnancy of a fallow pool of water.

She looked out at the vast runescape before her as she healed. The gears of life shifted in contemplation, always moving, their machinations stretching endlessly through the aether like many snakes converging on a central point.

The Thread may bring the order she had known her whole life down. For once, she felt hope that her story would be written, and her enemies brought to their doom.

She savoured the taste as she licked her lips. It was the taste of a ripple in the threads and runes of fate that bound us to our mortal trappings. With a Thread loose from the pages and a new rune being born, that could all change.

And with change comes endings.

So did quoth the Dear Raven, "Nevermore."

* * *

“What the fuck!?” I screamed as Colin evaporated, his clothes scattered like ash and his skin charred to nothing before the white of his bones turned red as if bleeding. A pool of clay-like crimson liquid painted the ground in a pool where Colin once stood, reflecting the light of the surrounding fluorescence.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fuck is going on!” Chloe yelled in agreement.

[Clam down,] a chorus of voices responded. With it came emotions of reassurance and concern like a blend of herbal tea, warming me from the inside and massaging away my worries and concerns. How could I be threatened by such good intentions? I thought, even as some part of me screamed at me to shake off this notion and restore my panic.

What resulted was akin to a panic attack. I felt like I was hyperventilating inside my head. My body was shaking, and I was moving. I vaulted stairs and rushed through chairs under desks and weaving between cooking implements. I passed many people. This place was too big. How was this a café in Newtown? I was lost. Where was Chloe, I thought she was right behind me? I looked around furtively and found no one following any longer. The [voices] in my head were growing faint, and I found I could clear them with enough concentration. I focused on the image of a flame in my mind, the only light in the darkness. I often did this when I was stressed and need an outlet to calm down. The flame devoured my worries. It was calming and warm and expressionless. There was no expectation, no need for a mask or lie to communicate. Just the flame and I.

I snapped out of my dissociation as I felt a cool breeze on my skin. I had wandered into a garden. Hedges aligned the side, and they adorned the inside with native wildflowers in dashing bright colours of purple, red, yellow and blue.

I walked for I do not know how long and was met with only more flowers. They were endless. There was no engineering pattern ascertainable, only scantily trodden desire paths that criss-crossed the colours like the bindings in a hastily tied corset.

After a time the wind seemed to still and a clearing arose before me. I sat on the ground and felt the tufts of the longrass on my skin, breaching the folds of my clothes raised high by my posture. Hugging my knees, I leant forward, hoping my conception of self would stop spinning.

Before my thoughts could settle, I felt a presence, a weight on my right leg. An embrace? Raising my eyes, I spied it.

A Golden Line of Thread. The Thread held a shape, an outline of what I can only call a 2D fairy. I felt a kinship to it as though it were both a part of me and knot.

“This day keeps getting weirder and weirder.” I said out loud. It felt better to speak it than to [think]. I didn’t even know if my thoughts were protected or if they were on a loudspeaker to those around me.

The Thread in the shape of a fairy held out its threadbare hand and pet my leg a few more times and I heard a giggle in my mind that sounded like three girls laughing. She moved away from me then and danced around the longrass like an amateur ballerina and I smiled despite myself. I had no idea what it was but it was cute! I could feel it revel in my attention through our bond. I felt tethered to her in some place, but as a companion rather than a prisoner.

“First, I witness a man burned alive, and now this?” I said as I looked down at the knot-me thread. Its head outline lifted and I swear it [smiled] at me in a conciliatory way even as it kept dancing in circles.

“- It’s not a peaceful experience to see someone being unwritten on their first day. For that I apologise, child. We did not know that the man would be a rat,” I heard, as the Greek yiayia Thalia I last spied at the front of the bakery manifested in front of me as if dew on a summer morning. I felt the dancing thread disappear and sensed a warm a throbbing in my wrist on my right side.

“I think you have some explaining to do.” I said, trying my best to make sure my tone didn’t betray my lack of confidence as I stood up. I loomed over Thalia in height but I did not let that fool me. If what AxE said was not a lie then Thalia was also empowered by Lexiconicy or Pentifery, whatever it was called.

“Yes, yes I do.”