The Archivist
Echoes of Memory: The Tale of Vas’Reth and the Archive
Recovered from among the decaying records of the Hollow Archive, this fragment speaks with a voice half-lost to time. The Black Dog Tavern presents it here as found, a transmission from the edge of memory — where the Echo hums and the last custodians of reality whisper against the dark.
I write because I still can. The others have already faded — not into death, but into silence. Their names drift somewhere beyond language, caught in the slow current of the Echo. If I set my thoughts down quickly enough, perhaps they will remember me when I am gone.
The Echo is not a place. It is the dream of a universe that cannot bear its mistakes. Once, long before my time, the cosmos tried to mend itself, and the wound that formed became the Echo — a tide that eats at what is real, polishing truth into reflection until only memory remains. ¹
It began quietly: a whisper behind time, a faint distortion in the order of cause and effect. Then came the Gleaming, and with it, the first unravelling.
The Forgotten City
I remember Vas’Reth, though I never walked its streets. I remember its towers of glass and gold, its gardens perfumed with roses that no longer exist. The city’s scholars believed that by naming every truth, they could chain entropy itself. They were wrong.
When the Director of Curatorial Affairs touched the corrupted shards of recollection in the Hall of Memory, the walls screamed. Reality tore open. Out poured the first wave of Echo Remnants — grotesque reflections of those the Echo had consumed. The Spire collapsed; the city folded inward. By dawn, even its absence had been forgotten.
Those who survived built the first refuge against oblivion — the Hollow Archive — a place neither in the Real nor fully beyond it. Here, we anchor what remains. The Archive moves through collapsing timelines like a ship through stormwater, its halls shifting to avoid the pull of unbeing. Each corridor hums with partial memory; each record is a defence against the darkness.
The Walkers
From the ashes of Vas’Reth came the Echo Walkers, who learned to traverse the spaces between. They walk through fractured timelines, repairing what can be mended, burying what cannot. We do not fight to win — we fight so that something endures.
Every mission costs them pieces of themselves. To stand too long in the Echo is to forget who you are. That is why each Walker carries an Anchor — a single belief, memory, or purpose that keeps the self from dissolving. Lose the Anchor, and you are rewritten.
Some among us are Preservationists, clinging to the memory of what once was. Others are Watchers, who observe without interference, believing that action hastens decay. And some have become The Faded, half-ghosts wandering the Archive, dreaming of rest.
The Departments of Memory
The Archive endures because of its many hands. The Conclave of the Algorithm seeks to solve reality with patterns. The Echo Vault imprisons truths too dangerous to utter. The Index of the Unspoken erases names that should never be known. The Department of Residual Thought follows the psychic spoor of entropy. The Office of Abstract Ordinance forges weapons from paradox. The Archivist Reclamation Corps rescues the lost from the brink. And the Lexicon Adrift rewrites language itself, believing that words shape existence.
Each believes they alone can hold the line. Each is both right and doomed.
The Things That Hunt
Death is not the enemy — unbeing is.
The Forgotten claw at us, begging to be remembered. Echo Doubles wear the faces of our comrades but carry wrong memories. Temporal Shadows stalk us through reflections. The Hollow Archivist steals our memories and catalogues them in black ink. The Curator displays stolen experiences in impossible galleries. Void Walkers are holes where reality has been cut away. And through them all drifts HIM, entropy’s perfect gentleman, who smiles as he unthreads our existence.
He never commands. He offers. He whispers that peace lies in surrender, that the struggle itself is vanity. Many believe him. They walk with him into the Entropy Garden, where memory blooms once and fades forever. Those who remain recite their names until their throats bleed.
He hates creation — the irrational spark that builds where nothing should. That is why we keep writing.
The Philosophy of the Fading
The Echo does not feed on guilt. It feeds on regret — the map of every path not taken. Each act of remembrance is rebellion. Each record, each scar, each story whispered aloud defies the silence that wants to erase us.
Identity decays like paper in flame. The more we struggle to remain, the more the Echo tests our conviction. Yet somewhere within this endless unravelling lies a truth: even despair can be catalogued. Even loss can be remembered.
The Last Entry
I do not know how many cycles remain. The corridors shift faster now, the Archive trembles in its foundations. I can feel my own memories thinning like worn vellum. Soon I will forget my name.
But before I fade, I leave this record for those who will come after. Remember what we were. Remember Vas’Reth, though it never existed. Remember the Archive, even if its halls turn to dust.
Because the Echo cannot consume what is still being spoken.
We remember Vas’Reth.
We remember the Echo.
We remember you.