The second name I wrote was not ready to be remembered.

  It was an honor, they said. A Voix entrusted with two bindings before their twelfth winter was uncommon. Elder Cierne said the spirits whispered favor in my direction.

  But the spirits do not play favorites.

  They warn in silence.

  They wound in metaphor.

  The name was Dannith Rayne.

  A soldier — not noble, not celebrated. Just one who bled too early in a war too small for songs. He died alone at the edge of the Thorne-Cleft during a skirmish over territory no one wanted. No family came to claim him. His armor was rusted to the bone. His feather had been left unbound for over a year — a dangerous thing.

  Memory spoils when left unanchored.

  Even I knew that.

  But I agreed.

  I took the feather — still soft, but dull in its shaft, like it had forgotten what light felt like. The silver thread around its base frayed when I touched it. My fingertips burned. That should’ve been the first warning.

  Elder Cierne gave me a nod. I took the feather into the chamber alone.

  The Rite of Echoing requires silence, save the Voix’s breath. One cannot impose memory. One must invite it. Shape it. Listen.

  I lit the rootflame. I whispered his name three times:

  Dannith Rayne.

  Dannith Rayne.

  Dannith Rayne.

  And I listened.

  But what came was not a memory. Not a life.

  It was fury.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  I felt his death — not the clean wound of battle, but the betrayal that came before it. Left behind by comrades. Crushed beneath retreating hooves. A name spoken once by a commander, then buried in snow.

  He didn’t want to be remembered.

  He wanted to be rewritten.

  The feather resisted me. It hissed when I tried to bind it. My chant stumbled. My vision blurred.

  And then — for the first time in my life — I saw the void beneath memory.

  It looked like silence made solid. Like a scream caught between ribs. It pressed against me through the feather. Daring me to write a truth I could not see.

  I tried anyway.

  And failed.

  The feather snapped in my hands. Split from spine to tip, as if the soul inside had clawed its way out rather than be spoken wrong.

  The light went out.

  I fell to my knees.

  No crow called.

  No spirit wept.

  Just the echo of my own voice, repeating a name that would never again be heard.

  When Elder Cierne found me, she said nothing.

  She knelt beside me and picked up the two halves of the broken feather.

  “This happens,” she murmured. “Not every soul wants to be remembered. Not every story wants to be told.”

  I looked at her through burning eyes.

  “But isn’t that why we’re here? To speak what would otherwise be lost?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But you must understand… remembrance is not rescue. It is witnessing. And some wounds were never meant to be reopened.”

  She placed the halves into a pouch and carried them to the Vault of Fractured Song — a resting place for failed bindings.

  I was not punished.

  But from that day on, they watched me more closely.

  Not because I had failed.

  But because I had touched the void, and it had looked back.

  I began to dream differently after that.

  Not of feathers or songs.

  But of a figure — tall, cloaked, eyes like obsidian moons.

  Waiting.

  Listening.

  Smiling.

  I stood in a forest where every tree bore names instead of leaves. The wind whispered stories not yet spoken. In the clearing stood the figure — cloaked in crow-feathers, hat wide-brimmed and tattered. No face. Just a shadow that bled memory.

  It raised one hand and drew a glyph in the air — a symbol I had never seen before, yet understood: Oblivion is not erasure. It is silence with no listener.

  And then it spoke:

  "The last line was never lost, petit corbeau. It was never written."

  I awoke with tears. Not from fear.

  But from knowing something had begun to remember me back.