A Memory Not My Own

The Quiet Spire rises from the mist at the edge of the world, where few tread and fewer return. It is a ruin—a jagged relic left behind by those who sought meaning in silence.  The priests of the Mournwatch vowed to the Silent God, deity of patience, endings, and unanswered prayers. They guided others through grief, performing rites and carrying burdens of the living and dead.

It is a belief that every burden must be laid down—by its bearer or by those left behind. The Mournwatch priests wander alone, traveling from battlefield to village, laying souls to rest and bearing witness to lives that might otherwise go unnoticed. They offer no promises of divine intervention, only the reassurance that every path, no matter how long or broken, ends in stillness.

For young Orin, serving in the Mournwatch was an honour and a curse. Gaethon, his mentor, guided him into the order, shaping him into a Watcher. Under Gaethon’s stern hand, Orin learned rituals of release, the weight of silence, and the cost of carrying burdens not his own—a lesson Gaethon warned would haunt him.

The study inside the spire was old, cool and heavy with memories. A lantern swung, casting shadows over shelves of worn parchment. The faint smell of wax and damp stone mingled with the familiar scent of old leather ledgers.

Orin sat at the oak table, bent over a parchment, his fingers aching from hours of copying rites, ink staining his hands. Across from him sat Gaethon, his mentor—stern, steady, and more shadow than man beneath his worn cloak.

They had worked for hours, Orin’s eyelids drooping with exhaustion. But the silence between them was familiar—like the stillness before a vigil. Gaethon’s quill hovered mid-stroke, frozen in thought.

The rain tapped steadily against the window, soft and rhythmic as a heartbeat. Droplets slid down the glass in twisting patterns before vanishing into the night, lulling Orin toward sleep.

Gaethon hadn’t moved in some time. His hand stayed suspended above the page, expression unreadable. Orin glanced over, waiting for the quill to scratch, but none came. Gaethon sat still, lost in some thought too heavy to set aside.

The faint flicker of the lantern cast the room in shifting shades of amber and shadow. Outside, the wind stirred, whistling softly through the cracks in the stone walls. It carried with it the scent of wet leaves and distant earth, a reminder that the world beyond the spire moved on, even when the work within did not.

This was their life—hours spent in quiet labour, recording the stories of those whose voices had fallen silent. The work was dull, but necessary. Orin understood that much, even if he did not always believe it.

They shared the silence, Gaethon and Orin, bound together by duty and the unspoken weight of the past. And in that moment, Orin allowed himself to believe that perhaps, for once, everything was as it should be.

Orin shifted, stifling a yawn. He dipped his quill and leaned in to continue, the words blurring under his tired gaze. Hours weighed on him—his hand ached, and each blink made his eyelids heavier.

The rain outside continued its soft rhythm. Orin found himself watching it again, tracing the path of a droplet down the window. The drop slid slowly, lazily curving across the glass—until it vanished.

He waited, expecting the next raindrop to follow a new course, but it didn’t. The same drop appeared in the same spot, sliding the same path as before. Orin frowned and shifted in his chair.

He shook off the discomfort, blaming his fatigue. Just tired. Too much work. But the strange repetition clung to the back of his mind, like a thread pulling loose from a tapestry.

He forced himself to refocus, but the ink on his parchment seemed darker than it had a moment ago, as if the words had been written hours earlier. Orin glanced up at Gaethon, hoping for some sign of acknowledgment—perhaps a grunt or a nod—but his mentor remained motionless.

Gaethon’s hand was still frozen, quill hovering above the parchment. It struck Orin as odd now. How long had the man been sitting like that, unmoving? Orin watched closely, waiting for Gaethon’s hand to shift even slightly.

It never did.

“Gaethon?” Orin whispered, the word breaking the stillness like a pebble dropped into a deep well.

Silence.

The elder Watcher sat perfectly still, as if he had become a statue. His weathered face was serene, eyes fixed on the page before him, lips parted slightly, as though about to speak—or as though caught mid-breath, frozen in time.

The unease settled deeper in Orin’s chest. He’s just deep in thought, Orin told himself. He does that sometimes. And yet, something about it felt wrong.

Orin leaned closer, peering at Gaethon’s eyes. They were unfocused, glazed with that faraway look he sometimes had during rites. But even when lost in thought, Gaethon always moved—his hand would twitch, his lips would shift. This stillness was unnatural, unsettling.

A gust of wind slipped through the cracks in the stone, extinguishing the candle by Gaethon. The flame vanished, leaving only a thin curl of smoke in its place.

Orin reached across the table to relight it, his fingers brushing the wick.

It was cold.

Not the kind of cold left behind by a snuffed-out flame, but a deep, unnatural chill—like the wick had not burned in hours. Orin pulled his hand back sharply, the cold stinging his fingertips.

He glanced toward the window again, hoping for some kind of anchor—something to ground him in the present. The rain continued its relentless rhythm, the same droplet sliding along the same path, over and over.

The lantern flickered, shadows stretching unnaturally along the ceiling like grasping fingers. Orin blinked, and they snapped back, as if they had never moved.

He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, trying to rub away the exhaustion clouding his mind. “Too much ink. Too much rain,” he muttered, more to himself than to Gaethon.

The silence pressed in heavier now, thick and suffocating. Orin reached again for the quill, eager to finish the work and be done with the strange night. But as he dipped the quill into the inkwell, his gaze drifted down to the parchment beneath his hand—and he stopped.

It was already filled.

Every line, every word, copied perfectly in his own handwriting.

Orin’s heart skipped a beat. He stared at the page in disbelief. The same burial rite he had just started copying was complete, written out as though he had spent hours working on it. Yet he had no memory of writing those words.

Frantically, he flipped from page to page. Each one was already filled, each in his own neat, deliberate script.

His breath quickened, and his skin prickled with cold. This doesn’t make sense. Had he lost time? Had he fallen asleep without realizing it? But no—he felt no lingering haze of sleep, only the deep fatigue that clung to him.

The lantern light flickered again. The air grew colder, the silence heavier.

And then Gaethon spoke.

"Orin, you alright?"

The voice was low, steady—familiar in tone but somehow wrong. It carried no emotion, no inflection, as if spoken by someone who only pretended to know how a voice should sound.

Orin’s head jerked up. His heart pounded in his chest as he looked across the table at Gaethon. But the old man hadn’t moved. His quill hovered above the parchment, lips parted in the same expression as before.

The words Orin had just heard—Gaethon’s words—had not come from Gaethon at all.

The shadows on the walls stretched again, crawling toward Orin like living things. The wind outside fell silent. Even the rain stopped mid-fall, droplets suspended in place on the window like glass beads.

Orin’s heart thundered in his chest. A deep, gnawing fear slithered through him—a fear that something unseen had been watching him all along, just out of sight, waiting for him to notice.

Orin gasped, every instinct screaming something was wrong. His hands trembled as he steadied the parchment, his mind circling back to the cold wick, Gaethon’s eerie stillness, and pages filled by a hand he didn’t recall moving.

And that voice—Gaethon’s voice. Or at least something that had tried to sound like him. It echoed in Orin’s mind, flat and lifeless, like a reflection distorted on the surface of dark water.

He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled through his nose. Focus. His mentor had warned him before—when exhaustion creeps in, the mind can play tricks. Maybe that’s all this was. Too many hours in the dim light. Too many nights without sleep.

But when he opened his eyes, the rain on the window hadn’t resumed. The droplets were still frozen mid-fall, glittering like shards of crystal against the dark glass.

Orin clenched his jaw, breathing steady to suppress panic. He reached for a fresh parchment, but froze as his hand touched the paper.

His heart pounded harder. No. I didn't write these. I couldn't have...

He flipped through the pages, frantic. Each one was complete, as if he had been working for hours, copying out rites and prayers without a single error. But the ink was dry—long dry—and the pages were cold to the touch, as if they had been sitting untouched for days.

Orin’s breath hitched, and for a moment, the room tilted around him. His hands clenched the edges of the parchment, crumpling it slightly, as though grounding himself in the sensation of paper might anchor him in reality.

Then, from across the table, Gaethon moved.

The motion was so sudden that Orin nearly knocked over the lantern. The old man’s head twitched— a small jerk, almost imperceptible—and his eyes shifted, meeting Orin’s with unsettling precision.

For a moment, they locked gazes. Gaethon’s expression remained serene, but his eyes were wrong—flat and empty, like the surface of a still pond hiding something terrible beneath.

Gaethon spoke again.

"Orin," he said, the same tone as before. "Are you alright?"

Orin’s stomach churned. The words were identical to the ones he had heard earlier—perfectly identical, down to the lack of inflection.

Gaethon's lips hadn't moved.

Orin lurched back from the table, his pulse hammering in his throat. He stared at Gaethon, willing the man to move, to break the eerie stillness that had settled over him. But Gaethon remained frozen, hand still poised above the parchment, as if caught in the middle of some forgotten moment.

A shiver ran down Orin’s spine. He felt it again—that creeping sensation of being watched. Not by Gaethon, but by something else. Something unseen.

He spun, scanning the room for someone—or something—in the corners. But the study was empty, shelves sagging under ancient tomes, walls cracked with age. Nothing had changed, yet everything felt slightly out of sync.

Then, he felt it—a cold touch at the nape of his neck.

Orin cried out, jerking away from the touch. He spun around, but there was no one behind him. His breath hitched as he scanned the room again, gaze darting between the shadows.

The lantern swung gently on its hook, casting shifting patterns of light across the walls. And then he saw it—just for an instant, in the window’s reflection.

A figure stood behind him.

It was tall and pale, its leathery skin stretched tight over a gaunt frame. And its face—its face was his own, twisted into a soft, knowing smile that stretched far too wide.

Orin’s breath hitched. He stared at the reflection, frozen in place, unable to tear his eyes away. The creature tilted its head slightly, mimicking his movements with unsettling precision. Its grin deepened, showing rows of teeth that looked more like cracked porcelain than bone.

His heart thundered in his chest as he turned to face the thing directly—but when he whirled around, the room was empty.

He snapped his gaze back to the window. The figure was still there, grinning at him from the other side of the glass. And this time, it had moved closer—just behind his shoulder, its hollow eyes locked onto his.

Orin staggered back, his pulse roaring in his ears. His hand brushed against Gaethon’s shoulder—and that was when everything shattered.

Gaethon crumbled beneath Orin’s touch.

His body disintegrated into a fine ash, collapsing silently onto the table in a heap of dust and brittle bones. Orin stared in horror as his mentor’s form dissolved, leaving behind nothing but empty robes and a scattering of gray fragments.

“No...” Orin whispered, his voice breaking. But he already knew the truth—Gaethon had been gone long ago. What sat across from him was only a hollow remnant, a shadow of memory or dream.

The walls of the study began to peel away, curling like parchment exposed to flame. Beyond the crumbling stone lay only endless blackness, a void that stretched far beyond sight or understanding. The lantern sputtered out, and the shelves dissolved into nothing, as if they had never existed.

Orin stumbled back, his heart racing. The cold was unbearable now, sinking into his bones. The room—Gaethon—everything was unraveling, slipping away like sand through his fingers.

They were gray and shriveled, the skin cracked and dry, as though his body were already dead. His fingers curled inward, stiff and lifeless, unrecognizable as his own.

I’m not Orin... The thought struck him like a blow. I never was.

The thing in the reflection—the creature with his face—smiled softly, as if amused by his realization. It leaned closer to the glass, placing a skeletal hand against the surface.

And then it whispered, in a voice like the softest breath:

“Time to wake up.”

The cold seeped deeper into Orin’s bones, numbing him from the inside out. His mind reeled as he stared at his withered hands, cracked and gray like the ashes of a forgotten fire. Panic clawed at the edges of his thoughts, but beneath the fear lay something worse—recognition.

This isn’t real.

His heart pounded in his chest, desperate and wild, but some part of him knew that this moment—the study, the pages, even Gaethon—was already over. It had ended long ago, and all that remained now was the memory, playing itself out like the dying embers of a dream.

He looked up, eyes wide with terror, and saw the figure in the window grinning back at him. The creature pressed closer to the glass, its hollow eyes shimmering with cruel amusement. It raised one skeletal hand to the surface, tapping lightly with a cracked fingernail—tap, tap, tap—as if signaling the end of some long-forgotten game.

Orin’s throat tightened. His body felt heavy, too heavy, as though he were sinking into the floor. His reflection—the creature—tilted its head, smiling with a strange, almost tender expression, as if to say, You were never supposed to be here.

He staggered backward, but the room around him continued to dissolve. The stone walls peeled away like old parchment, curling at the edges before crumbling into dust. The oak table disintegrated under his touch, the ledgers and scrolls vanishing into the void beyond.

Everything was coming undone—his world, his memories, even his sense of self, unraveling like a frayed thread pulled too tight.

Standing in the reflection, just inches behind his own image, was the creature—the real Orin. It smiled gently, almost kindly, as though it were welcoming a long-lost friend home. Its skin stretched too tight over its skull, and its empty eyes shimmered with something like relief.

It was never you, the creature seemed to say without words. You were just a shadow. An imitation.

Orin gasped, his breath hitching in his chest, as the horrifying truth settled over him like a shroud. I was never Orin. I was just... something left behind.

The reflection leaned closer, its voice a soft whisper, brushing against the edges of his mind.

“Wake up.”

The study crumbled into nothingness, Orin tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy, his form turning to ash with each breath.

He stumbled forward, reaching desperately for the table that no longer existed, for Gaethon’s familiar presence, for anything to hold on to—but there was nothing.

His hands—those shriveled, brittle things—continued to fall apart before his eyes. Pieces of himself drifted away, scattering into the void like dust on the wind.

I was never real... The thought came to him not as a revelation, but as a quiet, inevitable truth. He had been nothing more than a flicker of memory, a shadow trapped in a loop of forgotten time. And now that the loop was ending, there was no place left for him to go.

From the reflection, the real Orin— solid, and complete—stepped through. His grin was gentle now, sympathetic, as though he pitied the creature that had worn his face for so long.

The two of them stood there for a moment—Orin, whole and real, and the shadow, crumbling into nothing. The creature raised a hand, not in malice, but in farewell.

And with that, the real Orin turned and walked away, leaving the memory to rot in darkness.

Orin paused at the doorway, glancing back one last time at the empty, disintegrating room. His expression was unreadable, though there was the faintest glimmer of recognition in his eyes, as if he knew the weight of the memory that had just ended.

He stood there for a heartbeat longer, his hand resting lightly on the doorframe. Then, with a soft exhale, he whispered, “It’s done.”

And he stepped out into the endless night, leaving the fading shadow behind.

The imitation that thought it was Orin felt itself slip away. It tried to hold on, but there was nothing left to grasp, no shape or form to cling to.

Endings are not failures. They are release.