The Annotated

The letter arrived in the final week of the final term of autumn.

Thick cream envelope. Crimson wax seal. No return address.

Inside: a single card, printed in fine black ink.

_You have been selected for The Annotated Oral._

The handwriting below was not printed. It was too angular. Too exact.

_Tonight. South Archives. Third Vault._

Julian Raye had heard rumours. Whispers passed between exhausted students at midnight in library corners. “The Annotated Oral,” they said, with a shrug or a shudder. One student each year. No syllabus. No witness. No result posted.

Those who returned from it were changed. Sometimes brilliant. Sometimes empty. And sometimes—rarely—missing.

Still, Julian went.

He couldn’t not. To be chosen meant something.

They didn’t pick the top student. They chose the most… promising.

---

The South Archives were not open to undergraduates. But the lock turned when Julian approached. The hallway smelled of dust, chalk, and dried lavender. On the walls: portraits with blank faces, names carved out of the plaques.

He descended stone steps until he reached a narrow door. Black iron. No handle.

It opened for him.

Inside: a circular room. A low table. A candle. A single chair with arm restraints bolted to the sides.

Across from it, already seated: a figure in a grey robe and gloves. Their face was smooth, pale, and ageless. Eyes like scorched parchment. Calm.

“You are Julian Raye,” the Examiner said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Julian replied.

“You are here for your Oral. Please sit. The examination will begin shortly.”

He sat. The candle flickered. The door behind him closed.

“This is a test of memory, comprehension, and truth,” the Examiner said.

Then came the first question:

“When you were eight years old, you lied about the neighbour’s dog. What was the lie, and why did you tell it?”

Julian stared. His mouth went dry. How—

“Answer, please,” the Examiner said.

So he did.

When the words left his lips, something warm buzzed at his collarbone. A faint itch. He looked down and saw the thinnest line of text appear, glowing faintly on his skin.

The letters were too small to read at first—curved, precise, margin notes of memory. As he stared, the text faded slightly but didn’t vanish. His heart stuttered. He rubbed at it. The skin felt normal, unbroken. The light was inside him now, etched beneath the surface like a tattoo only truth could reveal.

“Next,” said the Examiner.

Julian sat straighter, trying to steady his voice.

“Why did you end your friendship with Callum Dryden in your third year?”

Julian swallowed. “He—he submitted part of my thesis outline as his own. I confronted him. We stopped speaking.”

A second line unfurled across his left wrist.

“That is not why,” the Examiner said. “Try again.”

Julian’s mouth opened, then shut. A pause. “I was jealous. He got the fellowship. I didn’t.”

The line brightened, then dimmed. Accepted.

The Examiner did not nod or respond.

“Next: What was your mother’s final sentence to you?”

Julian jerked upright, his voice breaking. “That’s not relevant—”

“It is. Answer, please.”

“I don’t—”

A sharp sting flared across his ribs. He gasped. A fresh line of script carved itself just below his skin, glowing like cauterised ink.

“She said…” He closed his eyes. “She said, ‘You’re just like your father.’”

A long silence.

Then: “Next.”

Julian stared at the Examiner. “How do you know these things?”

“This is a test of truth, Mr. Raye. The archive is not interested in credentials. Only confession.”

He tried to stand. The armrests clicked, locking him in.

“You agreed to the Oral the moment you spoke,” the Examiner said. “And now, you are being recorded.”

---

Julian struggled against the restraints, but they didn’t yield. He could feel the text crawling, as if ink moved beneath his skin, settling into place like typeset.

The Examiner’s voice was softer now.

“What dream have you never spoken aloud?”

He hesitated.

“I wanted to publish before I was twenty. I wanted my name on something permanent. Immortal.”

A pulse of heat across his chest. He gasped, but this time the pain didn’t stop.

The Examiner leaned forward slightly. “And what did you sacrifice to try?”

“My father’s funeral.” His voice cracked. “I missed it.”

Lines burned up his spine.

He was beginning to tremble. Each word branded more of him. His hands were shaking.

He tried to scream, but the room remained still. Sound didn’t echo here.

“I want to stop,” he whispered.

“The archive does not forget. Nor does it leave unfinished volumes.”

The Examiner stood. Their gloves were gone.

Beneath them: ink-stained hands. Fingers that dripped gently onto the stone.

They placed a palm on Julian’s forehead.

One final question: “What is something you’ve never told anyone—not even yourself?”

Julian’s lips parted, but no sound emerged. His thoughts spiralled: memory, shame, want. At thirteen, he saw himself stealing books he’d already read just to hold something no one else had touched. He saw himself forging a professor’s signature. Lying in scholarship interviews. Smiling through jealousy so thick it left teeth marks on the inside of his cheeks.

But beneath it all, a smaller truth shivered.

“I’m afraid,” he mouthed. “That nothing I do will be worth remembering.”

The Examiner said nothing. The room leaned in.

Ink blossomed from Julian’s mouth and ears, trickling from his eyes in delicate lines. The script no longer etched his skin; it replaced it. The ink didn’t write on him. It unwrote him — replacing bone with bindings, blood with narrative.

He saw, just before the dark closed in around him, that the candle had gone out.

---

When the door opened again, the chair was empty.

In the centre of the room, a new volume sat on the low table. Bound in pale leather, its title freshly embossed:

RA/YE, J.

*Confessions. Annotated.*

And somewhere in the archives, the Examiner lifted a fresh envelope, and elsewhere, another student stirred in their sleep — dreaming of something they wouldn’t remember until it was too late.