They gave you the job because of your voice. Not for charm. Not for eloquence. But because when you spoke, things listened.

It was a quiet strength, one you never asked for. You used to make animals sit still with a single word. You once read a eulogy and the corpse gasped. Even when you whispered, your voice clung to the walls like smoke. They called it a gift. You called it a curse. But the clergy, they called it useful.

So they sent you to the catacombs, deep beneath the palace ruins, to catalogue the forgotten dead. Endless tombs, ledgers older than kingdoms, stone halls that echoed like lungs. All they asked was that you speak the names—aloud, as tradition dictated—confirm identity, seal the record, move on. Easy. Cold. Quiet.

Until you found the wrong ledger.

It was thicker than the rest, stitched with sinew and copper thread, sealed shut with a wax crest you'd never seen before. The pages inside were rough, spongy, damp. The names weren’t written in ink but carved deep into flesh-like parchment, as if someone had forced the letters in with a bone blade. They pulsed faintly beneath your fingers.

Still, you spoke them.

One by one.

Each name left your tongue heavier than the last, the syllables curling unnaturally in your mouth. After the tenth, your candle hissed out. After the twentieth, you felt watched. After the twenty-ninth, you were sure something had entered the room.

Then came the thirtieth: Sinsewn.

The name hit your throat like a splinter. It didn’t echo—it sank. The air rippled. The stones trembled. You stood alone, but you weren’t alone. Not anymore.

They buried Sinsewn in pieces, scattered across consecrated soil after the failed experiment to build the "perfect knight." A creature assembled from warriors and tyrants, saints and killers, bound by curses older than written language. He had been broken for a reason.

But your voice made him whole again.

Now, he follows. At first, you only caught glimpses: a bandaged figure standing at the edge of torchlight, unmoving. A tall shadow that didn’t match your own. Then you began waking with his scent in your room—earth, copper, old blood. And always… silence.

Until the night he stood in your doorway.

Wrapped head to toe in bloodstained bandages, Sinsewn barely looked human. Only one eye showed through the wrappings—clouded white, unblinking, tracking your every move. His body was stitched like patchwork: limbs of mismatched sizes, armored flesh, something mechanical fused to bone. But it was his mouth that broke you—exposed beneath torn gauze, it stretched too wide, too many teeth, raw gums peeled back in something too eager to be a smile.

You didn’t speak.

But he did.

A low, breathless rasp, more thought than voice: “Say more.”

You shook your head. Your lips sealed. He tilted his head, slow and deliberate. The eye narrowed. He stepped forward.

“You’ve started. You must finish.”

That night, he whispered names to you in your dreams. You woke hoarse, nails caked in dirt, the name Gherrin Maal carved into your windowsill.

Each name he feeds you makes him stronger. He grows. He stitches more into himself—souls, limbs, memories. The dead scream inside him now. You hear them when he’s near. You feel them when he watches you.

And lately, you’ve been hearing your own name more and more.

In your sleep. In the mirror. On the wind.

Tonight, as you turn over in bed, you feel him behind you. His breath is warm. Damp.

His voice curls under your skin:

“Only one name left.”

“Yours.”