**Chapter Four
The Page That Should Not Exist
Witchlight Market buzzed with nervous energy after the Archivist vanished. People muttered in languages older than the street beneath our feet, vendors pulled their wares back into shadowed baskets, and a few witches made symbols over their hearts that weren’t meant for public use.
Something had happened here, and everyone felt it.
I knelt beside the parchment he’d left behind—because of course he wanted me to find it. The twine binding it wasn’t just decorative; each knot was a Bell?style closure tie, looped in a pattern my grandmother called “the hush stitch.”
A seal meant to keep prying hands away.
A seal meant to shame anyone who broke it.
Dixie’s fur remained puffed to twice her normal majesty. “Don’t touch it bare?skinned,” she warned, voice low.
“I’m not stupid.”
“No,” she said, “you’re anxious, which is sometimes worse.”
Nolan crouched on my other side, eyeing the parchment like it might sprout teeth. “Is that thing dangerous?”
“Yes,” Dixie and I said at the same time.
He straightened. “Great.”
I pulled out a small copper stylus—one of the last things my grandmother had given me before she died. “Let’s see how bad.”
The stylus tapped the twine.
The knots shuddered.
Not loosened. Not snapped.
They unmade themselves.
Unraveled one loop at a time until the twine fell away in a neat line, like a spiderweb melting in sunlight. My stomach twisted.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” I murmured.
Dixie’s tail lashed. “No Bell knot unravels without the caster’s intent.”
“Unless someone altered the latch runes,” I whispered. “Unless someone… rewrote my family’s magic.”
The page rolled open with a soft, brittle sigh.
The parchment was older than anything that should have survived the humidity of New England. The ink looked fresh and ancient at the same time—like it had been copied and recopied, each generation layering intention atop the last.
Nolan leaned in. “What’s it say?”
I didn’t answer at first. My breath hitched. It felt like staring face?first into a wound cut across history.
Because the page wasn’t just a record.
It was a confession.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Handwriting: precise, looping, unmistakably Bell?family script.
Words:
**THE FIRST BINDING FAILED.
AND WE HID IT.**
My pulse slammed in my ears.
Dixie inhaled sharply. “Oh. Oh, Trixie…”
Nolan blinked. “Failed? You said the Bells bound the Hollow King.”
“That’s what I was taught,” I said. “What we were all taught.”
I kept reading.
“The entity did not sleep. It… shifted. We channeled forgettings to slow it. We fed it silence to keep it docile. But silence grows hungry.”
My hands shook so hard Dixie leaned against me for balance.
“Someone,” I whispered, throat tightening, “rewrote this page. Altered it. Or—”
“Or it’s the truth you weren’t supposed to know,” Dixie finished softly.
Nolan exhaled. “Let me get this straight. Your ancestors didn’t bind this thing?”
“No,” I said, voice cracking as realization hit. “They redistributed it. Spread its influence into everyday forgettings to keep it from focusing its hunger. They diluted it.”
“Like thinning poison in water,” Nolan muttered.
“Exactly.”
“And now it’s concentrating again,” Dixie said quietly. “Your wards are collapsing. The Archivist is altering sigils. People are dying.”
The page shimmered faintly—something humming beneath the ink like a trapped fly. A second layer of runes appeared, only visible at a certain angle. Runes I recognized:
Quiet Line codeseal.
My grandmother’s line.
The words under the hidden layer read:
*“The Bell Heir must never know.
She bears the cadence.She carries the echo.If she learns the truth,the Hollow King will turn toward her.”*
I jerked back like it burned me.
Nolan went pale. “They wrote that about you?”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard. “About anyone who inherited Margery’s cadence. But I… I have her pattern.”
Dixie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Which means the Hollow King remembers you.”
Or recognizes me.
Or wants me.
The parchment suddenly convulsed.
A ripple passed through it like a breath.
Ink bled outward, reshaping. Lines twisted, curved, interwove—
—and formed a perfect Null Sigil.
Original form.
Uncorrupted.
But… incomplete.
The broken circle extended, sharpening, splitting into branching paths. A new symbol budded off the center like a parasitic vine.
Dixie hissed. “That’s new.”
Nolan stepped back. “Is it dangerous?”
“Everything is dangerous,” Dixie said. “That’s not helpful.”
I leaned closer. The new symbol within the sigil pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. Not a threat.
A direction.
A location.
Old Town Ward.
Specifically—
I inhaled.
“No.”
“Trixie?” Nolan asked.
“That’s pointing to my grandmother’s old workshop.”
Dixie froze. “The sealed room?”
“Yeah.”
Nolan looked between us. “Somebody want to explain what’s in the sealed room?”
I pressed a shaking hand against my forehead. “Nothing. Supposedly. My family locked it after she died. They said it was empty. But…”
“But the Archivist is pointing you toward it,” Dixie finished. “Which means it’s not empty at all.”
I rolled the parchment up, rewrapped the twine with shaking hands, and shoved it into my jacket.
“We need to go,” I said. “Now.”
Nolan frowned. “We just got here.”
“The Market won’t help us now.” I stood. “The Archivist wanted me to open that page. Wanted me to see the sigil. Wanted me to follow the clue.”
“So we’re doing what he wants?” Nolan demanded.
“No,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “We’re doing what he expects. But we won’t do it the way he planned.”
Dixie purred low. The sound wasn’t comforting. It was hunting.
“Let’s go disappoint a villain,” she said.
Before we left, I glanced back at the Archivist’s stall.
The lantern above it flickered.
For a moment—just a moment—I saw him standing there again, pale eyes glowing ink?black, watching me through a crack in reality.
Then he vanished like an unmade sentence.
