Interlude: The Last Day Anyone Remembered Me
They say death is silence.
But erasure is worse.
Because it's not silence.
It's being talked over.
Being looked at—and seen through.
It's watching your name turn into a question no one dares to ask.
My name was Lyra.
I say was not because I'm dead.
But because I no longer am. Not in the way that matters.
It began on the 17th of this month
That was the day he came to our town.
He wore a smile but had no mouth.
Walked like he owned the street, but cast no shadow.
He wasn't real—yet somehow, he was the most convincingly real thing I'd ever seen.
Everyone else forgot they saw him. Except me.
I think it's because I didn't look at his face.
I looked at his reflection in the bakery window.
Mistake.
That night, I dreamed of mirrors cracking in reverse. Of people rehearsing conversations they'd never have. Of books rewriting themselves while you read them.
I woke up bleeding from the eyes.
But when I screamed for help…
No one knew who I was.
Not the landlord.
Not the grocer who sold me pears every Tuesday.
Not even Eiren, my little brother.
He looked right at me and asked if I was lost.
I tried to hug him.
He flinched.
He said he didn't have a sister.
The god—Velkaris, they called him in the cults I later hunted down—had begun consuming me.
Not my body.
My place in the world.
Every connection, every mention, every record was being unwritten.
And the worst part?
I could still see it happening.
In one of the forbidden archives beneath the Thirteenth Cathedral, I found a scrap of parchment, buried in mold and holy oil:
"The Faceless Sovereign does not kill. He convinces the world you never were."
"To defeat him, one must be remembered by someone who refuses the lie."
So I made a choice.
If no one else would remember me…
I'd make him remember.
Even if it cost me what little was left.
I stole a relic from the Cathedral Vault—a coin etched with his sigil.
A cursed object, bound in oath and ash.
I gave it to Eiren.
He didn't recognize me.
But I whispered my name into his ear, again and again, like a prayer scratched against reality:
"I am Lyra. I am your sister. I am real. I am real. I am real…"
And for a moment, just one—
He looked at me like he knew.
Then the city flickered.
And I was no longer standing in front of him.
I woke by the Whispering Fountain, barefoot, in a coat too large for me, memories leaking like blood through my thoughts.
I had one last chance.
If he reads the letter.
If he follows the trail.
If he chooses to believe—
Then I will exist again.
If only for a moment.
But if he forgets…
Then even this story will have never been told.
End of Interlude