Dream Memory - Rurik Daln - The Purging of the Mirror

The corridor is quiet — not in the way silence normally behaves. Not empty. Not serene.
But held.
 
Like the walls themselves are waiting.
 
The Ministry’s Propaganda Bureau rarely darkens its own halls. The truth, after all, requires light.
But tonight, that rule breaks. Tonight, light would only betray.
 
He moves like the silhouette of a forgotten thought — pale skin stretched tight over a wiry frame, ash-ringed eyes locked on the figure ahead. His armor creaks softly, worn and dark like old charcoal. His mohawk flickers slightly as air moves, though no breath escapes him.
 
Rurik Daln walks ahead with practiced grace, boots clicking over tile, cloak pristine, gloves white and immaculate. His shoulders radiate certainty.
 
"Minister Vonn wants the new creed lines by morning," Rurik mutters to himself, annoyed. "As if faith can be drafted."
 
He watches from the shadow of a filing alcove, eyes reflecting a single dim glow behind him:
a lantern.
Cracked. Hanging from a rusted wall-hook.
Burning with black flame.
 
It whispers like a teacher, like a choir of dry leaves.
 
“This face was never yours.”
“This tongue never spoke truth.”
“He mimicked righteousness, but forgot the weight of belief.”
 
He steps forward. Quiet. Measured. Inevitable.
 
Rurik half-turns, sensing movement too late.
 
“What the he—”
 
Whip
The garrote hisses through the air — a loop of taut silver wire etched with spiraling flame-script: a glyph-prayer to the Forgotten Flame.
 
It bites into Rurik’s throat like a righteous serpent. The glyphs ignite — not in fire, but in absence. Sound fails. Light drowns.
 
Rurik thrashes. Scrapes metal against stone. Eyes bulge. Fingers claw.
He tightens the wire with steady hands, not angry — devotional.
 
“I reclaim the lie,” he whispers. “And return the silence to your gods.”
 
Rurik’s final twitch echoes in the dead corridor.
 
But he does not stop.
 
He pulls a jagged ritual blade — serrated and burnt black.
With no emotion, he mutilates the face.
 
First the eyes, then the cheekbones, then the lips.
He cuts deep, scraping the bone, reducing symmetry, erasing memory.
The tongue is removed.
The fingers — crushed and dropped into a rusted pipe.
The brain, too, is pulled free, severed at the stem, and wrapped in waxed cloth inscribed with a sealing curse.
 
“The Flame will not suffer pretenders to be remembered.”
 
The black-flamed lantern in the corner flares with approval.
Its light casts no shadow — it simply erases what once was.
 
“He cannot be raised.”
“He cannot be traced.”
“He cannot be mourned.”
 
He stands over the remains, panting now, but not from exertion.
From clarity.
 
This was not revenge.
This was purification.
The shedding of a mask that had grown too clever, too dangerous, too close.
 
From the shredded garments, he pulls a badge — the mark of authority. A pass to words no longer spoken.
He pockets it.
Not for power.
For leverage.
 
“The world writes lies in stone,” the lantern whispers. “But you — you are the fire that scours the monument clean.”
 
He walks away, Morrow once more.
 
Behind him, the body begins to burn — not visibly, but in essence.
The identity of Rurik Daln unravels from memory. Within hours, even the Ministry will forget he existed.
 
Later as his true self, he sits cross-legged beneath the pipes in his forgotten lair, head bowed, mohawk limp with sweat.
Before him, the same black-flamed lantern sways gently in unseen wind.
 
He places a single black fingernail into a brass bowl and whispers:
 
“One fewer lie. One truer flame.”
 
And the lantern smiles.