I have heard many languages in my time.

Some carved into stone, others whispered in dreams, a few so dangerous they were meant to be forgotten forever.

But nothing—nothing—was as unsettling as the words that came from a child who should not have known them.

For he spoke in a language that had no history.

A tongue that belonged to a race that had never existed.

And the moment he uttered his first words…

The world listened.

The First Word That Should Not Have Been

The village of Calden’s Hollow was like any other.

Farmers tilled the land. Fishermen mended their nets. Children played in the streets, their laughter weaving through the market like a song.

But then, the boy was born.

And from the moment he spoke his first word, the world shifted.

Because what he spoke was not the tongue of his people.

Not the dialect of his ancestors.

Not even a language that had ever been recorded in history.

It was something else entirely.

Something impossible.

And the moment his voice reached the air, the wind itself paused to listen.

The Language That Had No Name

His name was Elias.

A farmer’s son, born into simple hands, meant for a quiet life.

Yet from the day he could form words, he spoke only in the unknown tongue.

Not in broken phrases.

Not in confused murmurs.

But in full sentences, with fluency, as if he had spoken it for lifetimes.

His parents thought it was nonsense at first.

Until the village elder, a man who had spent years studying languages of distant lands, tried to understand it.

He could not.

Not a single word matched any language known to man.

Not Latin, not Greek, not the old tongues of the East or the lost dialects of forgotten tribes.

It was something entirely new.

Or perhaps…

Something older than anything ever recorded.

The Words That Woke the Past

At first, the villagers tolerated the strange speech.

Elias was still just a child.

A quiet boy who spent more time staring at the stars than playing in the fields.

But then, things started to change.

His words were not just sounds.

They had power.

Whispers of strange symbols began to appear in the dirt where he walked, as if the earth itself was listening.

Animals would pause when he spoke, heads tilting as if understanding something no human could hear.

And worst of all…

Dreams began to spread through the village.

Dreams of tall figures, with faces that did not belong to any race of men.

Figures that watched, as if waiting for something to return.

And Elias—

Elias never dreamed.

Or if he did…

He never told anyone what he saw.

The Ruins That Answered

I arrived in Calden’s Hollow on a night when the wind refused to move.

The air was too still, as if the land itself was holding its breath.

The villagers spoke in hushed tones, glancing over their shoulders, whispering about the boy and his voice.

They did not treat him as a child anymore.

They treated him as a warning.

“He speaks things that shouldn’t be spoken,” one old woman told me.

“Things that bring whispers in the dark.”

I found Elias sitting near the river, tracing his fingers in the dirt.

The moment he looked up at me, I knew.

This was not a child merely speaking in tongues.

This was something much, much older than the body it had been born into.

And before I could say a word, Elias smiled—

And spoke to me.

Not in my language.

Not in any language I had ever heard.

But I understood it.

The words did not reach my ears.

They reached my mind.

“You have come to see the ruins.”

The Forgotten Civilization That Never Was

I felt something shift in the air.

“What ruins?” I asked.

Elias simply stood, brushing the dirt from his hands.

“The ones that do not exist.”

And then, without waiting for me to follow—

He walked into the forest.

There was no hesitation in his steps.

No uncertainty.

As if he had walked this path a thousand times before, even though no child should have wandered that far alone.

I followed him.

And after nearly an hour of walking, the trees thinned—

And we stepped into a place that should not have been there.

A clearing filled with ruins.

Not old, not broken with time.

But ruins that looked as if they had never truly existed in the first place.

The stones were smooth, untouched by erosion.

Strange symbols lined the walls, glowing faintly as if whispering their own language.

And at the center of it all—

A massive doorway, half-buried in the earth, humming with something I did not understand.

Elias turned to me, his glowing eyes reflecting the impossible city around us.

“This is where they spoke before man was born.”

“And now, they are listening again.”

The Words That Should Never Be Spoken

The ground beneath us trembled.

The ruins breathed, shifting like something waking up.

And for the first time, I realized—

This was not a forgotten city.

This was a place waiting to return.

Elias took a step forward, placing his small hand against the massive stone doorway.

His lips parted—

And he began to speak.

The moment the words left his mouth, I felt them in my bones.

A language that had never been recorded, never written, never meant for mortal minds to comprehend.

And as the symbols on the doorway began to glow, as the ruins trembled with something that should have remained lost—

I knew.

The world had just remembered something it was never meant to recall.

And Elias was no longer speaking alone.

Something beyond that doorway—

Was speaking back.

The Words That Weren’t Meant for the Living

Elias spoke, and the ruins answered.

The glow along the stone doorway pulsed, flickering like a heartbeat.

The language was not a chant.

Not an incantation.

It was a conversation.

And something on the other side was listening.

I took a step forward.

“Elias, stop.”

He did not look at me.

He did not even seem to hear me.

His voice was calm, his lips moving with perfect fluency, forming words that did not belong in this world.

And that was when I saw them.

The shadows moving between the ruins.

Not cast by the trees.

Not shifting with the wind.

They were figures.

Tall, silent, standing at the edge of the clearing—

Watching.

The Unseen Observers

The ruins had been empty when we arrived.

Now, they were not.

The figures did not move.

They did not approach.

They simply stood there, their elongated forms blending into the cracks of the stones, the corners where the eye did not want to focus.

I knew better than to assume they were illusions.

They were here.

And they had always been here.

The moment Elias had spoken their language, they had noticed.

And now, they were waiting.

For what, I did not know.

But I had no intention of letting Elias finish his sentence.

I reached for my staff—

But the moment I did, Elias’s voice rose in pitch.

The ruins trembled again, and the doorway—

It began to open.

The Gateway That Should Have Stayed Closed

A low, groaning noise filled the air as the stone door shifted, centuries of stillness breaking in an instant.

Dust did not fall.

Time had not touched this place.

Because time had never been allowed inside.

A thin, black void stretched between the widening gap, not like darkness, but like a space where nothing had ever existed.

Elias finally stopped speaking.

His voice cut off, his breath coming in slow, steady pulses.

His gaze never left the doorway.

I stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Elias.”

He blinked.

Then, for the first time since we arrived, he looked at me.

And what I saw in his eyes wasn’t the mind of a child anymore.

It was something older.

Something that had been waiting for this moment.

“They are waking up,” he whispered.

And before I could ask him who they were—

Something moved inside the doorway.

The Race That Never Existed

It did not step forward.

It did not emerge.

It simply… was.

A presence beyond the threshold, stretching the fabric of what I could comprehend.

A silhouette too tall, too thin, too impossibly shaped for the human mind to fully process.

Not a person.

Not a god.

Something else entirely.

Something that had once been here, long before humans were meant to be.

And now, because of Elias, it had noticed the world again.

A whisper slid through the clearing.

Not through the air.

Not through sound.

Directly into my mind.

“You are not meant to remember us.”

The voice carried weight, as if reality itself was bending beneath it.

I held my ground.

“Who are you?”

The presence shifted, the void stretching wider, the stone doorway glowing with inscriptions I could not read.

“We are what was before.”

“Before your kind, before your history, before the world forgot.”

“And we are listening again.”

The figures around the ruins moved now, stepping forward.

Not attacking.

Not rushing toward us.

Simply watching.

As if waiting for an answer.

And Elias—

He smiled.

The Memory That Was Never Supposed to Return

I turned sharply to the boy.

“Elias, stop this.”

But he didn’t.

He stepped forward, toward the open doorway, his fingers brushing against the glowing inscriptions.

“You think I am speaking their language, but I am not.”

His voice was calm, too calm.

“They are speaking through me.”

The air thickened, pulsing with energy that made my skin crawl.

This wasn’t a ritual.

It wasn’t a summoning.

It was a conversation between a race that had never been—and a world that had forgotten them.

And we were standing in the middle of it.

The Choice That Could Not Be Unmade

The whisper in my mind returned.

“We have no need for you, wanderer.”

“Only the child.”

The figures around us moved closer, their forms shifting, flickering, as if trying to become something else.

Something the world could recognize again.

I gritted my teeth.

“And if I say no?”

The presence in the doorway paused.

Not in hesitation.

But in curiosity.

“Then tell us… how does your kind choose who is forgotten?”

The words sent a chill through my spine.

Because that was their nature.

They had been forgotten not by time, not by destruction, but by design.

Something in the fabric of the universe had chosen to erase them.

And now, they were trying to undo that decision.

I looked at Elias.

The glow in his eyes had not faded.

He was still there.

But so was something else.

Something using him to be heard again.

And if I let this continue—

The world would not forget them anymore.

The Unspoken Decision

The doorway was open.

The ruins were shifting, reforming, becoming real again.

The figures in the clearing stepped toward us, not with hostility—

But with expectation.

Waiting for me to decide what came next.

I could stop Elias.

I could seal the ruins again, force the language back into silence, let history remain as it was intended.

Or…

I could let the world remember them.

And deal with the consequences of bringing back a civilization that had once been erased for a reason.

The weight of history settled on my shoulders.

And I knew, without a doubt, that whatever choice I made—

It would change the course of reality itself.

The Decision That Could Not Be Unmade

The ruins hummed with energy, shifting as if they were breathing for the first time in eons.

The doorway remained open, revealing the void beyond—a space where something ancient was waiting to return.

Elias stood at its threshold.

The child was no longer just a child.

Something had awakened inside him, something that was not human.

And the figures surrounding us—

They were watching, waiting, expecting me to choose.

I could feel their anticipation in the air, pressing down on me like the weight of an unseen storm.

Would I seal the doorway and bury their memory once more?

Or would I let them return—and risk unleashing something that had been erased from history for a reason?

I clenched my fists.

“Elias, step away from the door.”

His glowing eyes met mine.

And he smiled.

“It’s too late for that.”

The moment he spoke—

The ruins came alive.

The World Begins to Remember

Symbols on the walls flared, pulsing in a rhythm that matched Elias’s breath.

The figures around us—no longer just shadows, but partially formed beings—began to shift.

Their shapes became sharper, more defined, as if the world was slowly remembering what they were supposed to look like.

And the voice in my head returned, calm, expectant.

“The forgetting is ending.”

“We are returning to what was once ours.”

The air grew thick, pressing against my chest.

The sky above us dimmed, not from the setting sun, but as if something beyond the sky was pressing through.

The world was rewriting itself.

And I realized—

If I didn’t act now, there would be no stopping it.

The Language That Controlled Reality

Elias turned back to the doorway, his hands pressing against the stone, his mouth moving as the forgotten language flowed from him effortlessly.

It was not just speech.

It was command.

The words bent reality, causing the very air around us to shift.

Each syllable he uttered was like a key unlocking a past that should have remained closed.

The figures at the edges of the ruins stepped forward, their bodies taking solid form.

I saw their faces now—

Tall, angular, with eyes that held no reflection.

Not human.

Not gods.

Something other.

Something that had once walked this world before man existed.

And now, they were stepping into it once again.

The First One to Cross the Threshold

One of them approached Elias, placing a hand on his shoulder.

There was no malice in the movement.

No aggression.

Only recognition.

“You are our vessel,” the figure murmured, its voice both distant and near.

“You have brought our language back. Now we will bring back our world.”

Elias did not resist.

He belonged to them now.

Unless I stopped this.

Unless I sealed the door.

But before I could make a move—

The first of the forgotten beings stepped through the gateway.

And the past—the one that had been erased—

Began to overwrite the present.

The Collapse of Time

The ruins shifted, growing taller, as if reversing their decay.

The trees that had surrounded them withered into dust, as if they had never belonged here in the first place.

The very air around me tasted different, the scent of soil and stone replaced by something unnatural.

The figures stepped fully into the world, their presence solidifying.

And as more of them passed through the doorway, I realized the terrifying truth.

They weren’t just returning.

They were rewriting the world to what it had been before.

This was not an invasion.

This was a reset.

And humans—

We were never part of the original design.

The Fight for the Present

“No.”

The word ripped through the ruins, and for the first time, the figures paused.

They turned toward me, their expressions unreadable.

“This world belongs to the present. You cannot take it back.”

One of them—taller than the others, wearing robes that shimmered like water—stepped forward.

“We are not taking it.”

“We are restoring it.”

“It was never meant to be yours.”

I tightened my grip on my staff.

“Then why were you erased?”

The air tensed.

The figures did not answer immediately.

And that silence told me more than their words ever could.

They had been removed.

Not by time.

Not by war.

By something stronger than them.

And if something had been powerful enough to erase their existence, then perhaps—

I could erase it again.

The Language That Could Undo

I looked at Elias.

He was still speaking, his voice intertwined with the pulse of the ruins, his words giving form to the beings returning.

But language was a tool.

A weapon.

And I had learned many languages in my time.

I took a step forward, focusing on the inscriptions along the ruins.

They were not just decorations.

They were instructions.

The first language of the forgotten race.

A language powerful enough to write reality itself.

And just as it could be spoken to bring something back—

It could also be spoken to send something away.

I placed my hand against the stone.

And I began to speak.

The Banishment of the Erased

The moment the words left my mouth, the air cracked.

Elias stumbled, his chant faltering.

The figures turned toward me, their expressions unreadable.

The doorway began to flicker, no longer a stable bridge, but a fractured connection.

The ruins trembled again, this time in protest.

Because I was undoing the return.

The figures moved quickly, too quickly, as if they could stop me before I finished.

But they had forgotten something.

I was not just a spectator in this game.

I was someone who had seen countless realities shift, and I knew how to force history to stay buried.

I spoke the final word.

And the doorway collapsed.

The Price of Forgetting

A deep, resonating silence followed.

The figures froze, their forms losing shape, as if they had never been meant to exist in this version of reality.

One by one, they faded.

The ruins around us crumbled back into decay, retaking their place in history as nothing more than forgotten stones.

Elias fell to his knees, gasping, his glow vanishing.

The moment his body hit the ground, the last trace of the ancient language disappeared with him.

And once again…

The world had forgotten.

Merlin’s Final Words

I carried Elias back to the village that night.

He did not wake for three days.

When he did, he remembered nothing.

Not the ruins.

Not the language.

Not the race that had once spoken through him.

It was as if they had never existed at all.

And maybe that was the truth.

Maybe they had never existed.

Or maybe…

The world had simply decided to forget them again.