There was writing on the wall.
From ceiling to floor, rows of characters were carved into the stone without a single gap, blanketing the inner walls of the repository. Koyoi tilted his head back, looking up at the vault above. The script continued in an unbroken tide, indifferent even to the seams between the stones.
They were names.
A single line for every single name. The calligraphy was ancient, and the color of the ink varied wildly: some were black, others gray or brown, and a few were even etched in gold. It was a vast accumulation of records, a history gathered over centuries—perhaps even millennia.
Kuon directed the pale blue glow of his artificial eye toward the wall. Under its light, the characters seemed to float off the surface, revealing even the faint, spindly annotations carved beneath each entry.
"It is a record of names and the cosmic Principles those names once held," Kuon said, his voice low and strained. "The origins of the names, their attributes, and the circumstances of their extinction. Everything is written here."
His artificial eye began to pulse, tracking the text at an increasing speed.
Koyoi stepped closer, trying to read a line at eye level. He couldn't. He could recognize the shapes of the characters, but the meaning refused to take root in his mind. It wasn't just the archaic script; the characters themselves were growing faint.
"Kuon, these letters—"
"They’re vanishing," Kuon interrupted.
The focus of his artificial eye locked onto a single point on the wall. The blue light intensified, casting a sickly pallor over Koyoi’s profile.
"They are being erased at this very moment. Look."
Following Kuon’s finger, Koyoi watched as a line of text began to pale from the edge inward. The ink turned to gray, the gray to white, and then the white simply melted back into the raw texture of the stone. In seconds, the line was gone. The row below did not shift up to fill the gap; it simply left behind a hollow void.
Koyoi caught his breath.
The next line began to fade. This time, it was faster. Instead of starting from the edge, it began at the center. The heart of the name vanished first, leaving the characters on either side to crumble into meaningless fragments.
"…It’s the Observer," Kuon muttered, his jaw tightening. "They aren't doing this from the outside. They’re bleaching the records from within the repository itself. They're tampering with the walls directly."
"Can’t we stop it?" Koyoi’s voice trembled.
"We can’t. All we can do is read. We have to read them before they disappear and transcribe them into the index. That’s our only choice."
Kuon threw open the ledger and pushed his artificial eye to its limit. The blue light flooded the entire wall. His reading speed was preternatural; as his eye captured a line, his hand flew across the paper to copy it. Three seconds per line. But the characters on the wall were vanishing in two. He couldn't keep up.
Asahi stepped up to the wall. "Where is the erasure starting?"
"From the top," Kuon replied, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. "The lines closest to the ceiling are going first. The bottom half is still intact for now."
Asahi looked up. Near the ceiling, the white surface of the stone was already exposed. The wave of erasure was sweeping downward like a receding tide.
Koyoi reached out toward the wall. His fingertips brushed against a line that was mid-fade.
It was warm.
At the moment the characters vanished, a faint heat lingered on the stone surface—the final trace of a name. Koyoi gathered that warmth through his fingertips and closed his eyes.
He thought he heard a voice.
It wasn't words. It was the presence of someone who had tried to call out a name, only to fall short. The sensation traveled from his fingers up his arm, sinking deep into his chest. Inside his pouch, the Shizuku pulsed once in a powerful, sympathetic throb.
"This line… it was someone’s name," Koyoi whispered.
The warmth beneath his fingers died. The stone grew cold, leaving not even a shadow of where the letters had been.
"They were all names. Every single stroke was proof that someone was here."
"Yes," Kuon answered, his hand never stopping. "And that proof is being systematically annihilated. They mean to bleach the entire repository. If the records are erased, the very fact that they ever existed will vanish with them."
"Hurry," Asahi said, turning to Kuon. "How much time do we have?"
"I don't know. But the speed is increasing. As the upper lines vanish, the rate of erasure for the lines below is accelerating."
Kuon’s hand was a blur. His eye chased the lines while his fingers carved the names into the ledger. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple and splashed onto the page.
Koyoi knelt by the base of the wall.
Near the floor, the characters were still vivid. The ink was dark, the carvings deep. It seemed the oldest records were at the bottom, with the newest additions at the top.
That meant the most recent names were being erased first.
"Kuon, the letters down here are still clear. But the ones above are already—"
"I know. I'm moving down." Kuon dropped to his knees, placing the ledger on the floor and focusing his blue light on the lowest rows.
Asahi glanced toward the shadows at the end of the hall. "Does the wall continue further back?"
"It does. The records cover every inch of the inner walls. But the further back you go, the older the records are. If the erasure hasn't reached that far yet, there should be untouched entries in the depths."
"Then I’m going in. I'll leave this part to you." Asahi gripped the hilt of his greatsword.
Kuon looked up for a fleeting second. "You're going alone?"
"Reading walls isn't my line of work," Asahi said over his shoulder. "But if something in the back is doing the erasing, it’s my job to stop it."
His back disappeared into the darkness of the passage. The sound of his footsteps echoed against the stone, eventually fading into silence.
Koyoi knelt beside Kuon. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I'll read them aloud. You write them in your notebook. If we work together, we can save twice as many."
Koyoi opened his ledger. His hand was shaking as he gripped his brush.
Another line of text vanished from the wall.
Koyoi forced himself not to look up. If he watched the names disappear, his hand would freeze. He had to focus only on the words that still remained.
Kuon read the first name aloud.
Koyoi’s brush began to race across the paper.