Seal And Breath

The convent smelled of melted wax and old ink, an odor that clung to the throat long before I ever crossed the gate. I had been in dozens of places like it before — cold stone cells, shelves heavy with parchment, the thick silence of people who write so they won’t forget. I knew the smell of fear scrawled onto a page, mixed in with devotion. Tonight, like every other night, I had come looking for names.

The front door bore a seal carved into the wood, dark ink spreading out in rigid lines — a ward, unremarkable, the kind any house of Script used to keep out whoever hadn’t been invited. I stepped closer, tilted my head, and let a word escape that belonged to no language anyone had ever spoken — Vaol, low, closer to a breath than a sound.

The ink shivered. Then it began to come undone, drawing back into itself as though the wood were drinking it in reverse — the lines shrinking, losing their shape, until nothing remained but a pale smudge, stripped of all power. It took seconds. It always took seconds, when the writing was that simple. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

They were the first to appear — three of them, young, with the tense posture of people who had trained for this but never once done it for real. They clutched notebooks to their chests, combat notebooks, the pages still glistening with fresh ink. They wrote fast, each bent over his own, and when they finished, they shouted, all at once, the same word — Kaeth.

From the first notebook rose a column of fire, tall and vicious, roaring straight at me. I didn’t move. I let it come, let the heat reach my skin, and only when the flames were a single step away did I let the word that undid it slip out — Esharin, hissing, almost a whistle. The fire lost its color first, then its shape, and dissolved into gray smoke before it ever touched me.

From the second notebook came a dozen blades, spinning, dead on target. Another word, shorter this time — Krev — and the knives lost their edge in midair, fell like melted metal, useless, against the stone.

From the third rose a wall of earth between the three of them and me — a shield, attempted too late. I almost smiled. I let the last word out, deeper and longer than the others — Ossanor — and the wall crumbled into dust before it even finished rising.

I walked toward them at an unhurried pace, the way one crosses an empty room. The three of them stepped back, but there was nowhere left to go. This time I undid nothing — I let a different word out, Vaenneth, deep, sustained, almost sung, and held it as their bodies lifted off the ground, just enough that their feet lost contact with the stone. Their necks twisted, a dry sound, nearly simultaneous. They dropped, lifeless, the notebooks still clutched in their fingers.

I felt a faint stab behind my eyes — the first of the night — and ignored it.

I moved deeper into the building, into a room where I found the older scribes — five or six of them, gathered around a long table, no combat notebooks, no chance of fighting back. They didn’t retreat. That much, at least, I respected.

“Where are this village’s birth records?” I asked.

One of them, the eldest, lifted his chin. “We already burned everything. We knew you’d come.”

“If you knew I was coming,” I said, “then you should also have known there’s no point hiding things from me. I always find everything, in the end.”

Another, younger, took a step forward, his voice shaking but his words steady. “The prophecy is clear. Those two will be the end of you.”

I tilted my head, almost curious. “We’ll see.”

I left the room and shut the door behind me. I let out a low word, almost gentle — Ashuun — and stood still, listening. On the other side, the sound of their breathing began to change — faster, shallower, the air in the room running out without any of them understanding why. This word weighed more than the others; I had to hold it, feel its weight gathering behind my forehead, instead of letting it go and forgetting it. I looked at the door and let out another word, shorter this time — Krisk — to seal the lock with a dry click. I heard them try the handle, heard nails scraping wood, heard the panic slowly turn into silence, while the pressure behind my eyes refused to let up.

I waited until there was no sound left before I went on searching.

I searched more rooms — cells, a small library, a copying room with quills still wet on the table — and found nothing. No records, no names, no proof the village had ever registered its births at all. I figured they were lying. I kept going.

It was in a cell at the end of the hallway that I found him — a man curled behind a chest, motionless, his head tilted at an angle that didn’t quite track the sound of my footsteps, always lagging a beat behind.

“Where are the birth records?” I asked, my voice the same one I’d used with all the others.

“They were in the cellar,” the man said, without turning toward the right direction. “But they burned it all yesterday. The smell was strong.”

That was when I noticed: the man’s eyes, fixed on some point to my left, never corrected their aim, no matter how I moved.

“Are you going to kill me too?” the blind man asked, his voice steadier than his body.

“No. I don’t kill innocents.” I paused. “Get out of here. Run far.”

I left the cell without looking back.

I searched a few more rooms, undid a couple more minor wards and seals out of habit more than hope — each word leaving a faint residue on the pain that no longer let go of me — but the convent had nothing left to give me. I went out into the courtyard, into the cold night air, and let out one last word, deep — Ossuvael — before walking away from the gates.

The convent began to burn behind me. The flames climbed fast, fed by all that parchment and dry wood, and the orange light licked at the sky, the only source of light for leagues around.

That was when the pain finally filled my head all the way through — the same stab I’d felt while twisting those first necks, grown now into a tight wave behind my eyes that stopped me mid-step. I cursed under my breath, at myself. So much magic, one after another, so many words in a single night; I should have paced myself better, should have been more careful. I brought my hands to my head, waiting for the pain to pass, and lifted my eyes to the moon, veiled now behind a thin curtain of smoke.

I hadn’t found what I’d come for. But there were other villages, other convents, other records still waiting to be burned before I got there.

I vanished into the trees, and the forest closed behind me as though no one had ever been there at all.