The moment I finished speaking, the room stirred like a wind had passed through it—not loud or sudden, but persistent. The older maid didn't need to speak. She stood first, her joints cracking softly beneath the weight of quiet resolve, then turned toward the others with a glance that said everything: we move.

The eight younger maids stood too, some slowly, others more eagerly, like they had been waiting for permission. Isaac muttered something under his breath—half a curse, half a prayer—and joined them without hesitation. In minutes, the manor creaked with movement. Footsteps echoed up rotting stairwells. Doors long swollen with moisture were pried open. Dust was disturbed for the first time in years.

They searched. Every drawer. Every desk. Every shelf still barely clinging to the wall. They scoured the manor for books—anything with mythology, folklore, historical fragments. Isaac kicked in a pantry that turned out to be a mold-ridden study. One of the maids found a ledger filled with old tavern songs—useless, but amusing. Another discovered a water-damaged religious tome written in triplicate, each translation fighting with the other on every page.

And then she found it.

The black-haired maid—the same one who had laughed dryly during my speech—approached me, brushing dust from her sleeves. She held something close to her chest.

"Okay, Walker Duarte-Alizade," she said, tone serious despite her earlier mirth. "I have… something. But just so we're clear—it's from my personal collection. My mother gave it to me before she passed. So…"

She exhaled. "You will give it back."

She handed it over before I could reply.

It was bound in deep green leather, cracked with age but still intact. The gold lettering on the cover shimmered faintly:

Lost Poems, Plays, and Works of Wallace D. Vex

I nodded, meeting her eyes with quiet gratitude.

"I'll return it," I said, and meant it.

She tilted her head. "You'd better."

Without another word, I activated my speed reading. The world blurred as my skill took hold. The pages turned, my fingers flicking across them like wind through a field.

And the works of Wallace D. Vex unfolded.

Wallace D. Vex is one of the most enigmatic and controversial playwrights and authors of the pre-Union literary era. Known primarily for his theatrical works, allegorical poems, and lost epistolary collections, Vex's writing straddled the boundary between political satire, speculative theology, and surreal tragedy. His stories often danced between madness and metaphor, and it is said that he was banned from no less than six city-states for "irreverent depictions of monarchs, gods, and myths rendered too human."

Though only a handful of his complete texts survived the cultural burnings of the Lost Federation Revolution, fragments of his genius remain scattered across old theatre records, private manuscripts, and obscure collections—like the volume now in your hands.

Below are his most famous works in their order of relevance.

1. The Dagger and the Dancer

Though not featured in this summary, it is worth noting that The Dagger and the Dancer remains his most sought-after play. It is infamously banned in several regions for its alleged subversive content and rumored prophetic imagery.

2. The Magpie Crown

A one-act tragedy that unravels the story of a shapeshifting beggar who replaces a tyrant king, only to realize he has inherited the monarch's madness. Told almost entirely through rhyme, The Magpie Crown is often cited as Vex's commentary on inherited trauma and cyclical violence. The play's final scene—where the beggar plucks out his own eyes to "see clearer"—has been quoted in at least four royal suicide notes throughout history.

3. Hollow Saints of Ashvale

This poem-cycle blends prose and meter in a dizzying format that shifts linguistic structure mid-stanza. It tells the story of the city of Ashvale, which is blessed with seven immortal saints—none of whom can speak, only scream. The saints bless or curse citizens at random, based on unknowable criteria. By the end, the city descends into a mute apocalypse, where everyone screams and no one listens. The work is often used in academia to explore themes of religious overreach and the existential dread of misinterpreted divinity.

4. The Flesh That Forgot Its Name

A surreal prose novel, this is Vex's most experimental work. It follows a body that wakes up without memory, name, or gender, and begins assembling an identity through stolen memories. Each chapter is written in a different genre—romance, war memoir, myth, even cookbook—and features conflicting information about the narrator's past. The final chapter is blank, save for the line: "Now you know me."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Many believe this to be Vex's metaphorical autobiography, though he denied writing it up until his disappearance.

5. The Firelance Epistles

A collection of fictional letters between a condemned scholar and the sentient weapon tasked with executing him. What begins as a snide exchange slowly turns into an unlikely friendship. The scholar writes daily, begging the weapon to wait one more day, until eventually the weapon itself starts writing back. The letters become meditations on justice, duty, sentience, and the cruelty of fate.

The final letter reads only: "I have waited long enough. Goodbye, my only friend."

6. The Salt Wedding

Set in a future where oceans have turned to salt deserts and love is taxed by governments, The Salt Wedding tells the tale of a rogue archivist who marries the last living raincloud. The two fall in love, despite the archivist evaporating slowly with each embrace. The wedding, held in the ruins of a drowned cathedral, is famously staged with no dialogue—only thunder, music, and dripping pipes.

7. Choking the Sun: A Fragmented Epic

This unfinished epic poem spans multiple timelines and mythologies. It features gods who kill themselves out of boredom, titans who turn into cities, and suns that plead to be extinguished. Many pages are intentionally missing, while others are scribbled with annotations from supposed "future readers." The poem ends mid-sentence, with a footnote from Vex himself:

"I ran out of time. Or perhaps the sun did."

8. Dreams for Dead Puppets

A children's fable turned political allegory, this tale follows wooden puppets who believe they are real people. When a great fire sweeps the city, only those who accept their hollowness survive. The moral is widely debated—some call it nihilistic, others see it as a meditation on embracing limitation.

While other works are attributed to Vex, they are not confirmed by the man of myth. There are hundreds of stories people claim to have been inked by him, and even more claim that Vex inspired. We will never know. Wallace D. Vex vanished under mysterious circumstances after staging an unauthorized performance of The Dagger and the Dancer in a city that later declared it apocryphal. No confirmed grave exists. He is survived only by scattered works, contradictory rumors, and the stubborn persistence of his voice in forgotten corners of libraries.

Some call him a madman. Others, a prophet.

Most simply call him Vex.

I looked up at her—the black-haired maid who'd given me the book. My eyes locked on hers like I was loading a crossbow. She stood there, hands empty now, having passed on something far heavier than paper.

"You. Name. Now."

The command snapped like dry wood in a quiet forest. My voice, honed too sharp, hit the room like a war drum. The others froze. Eight sets of feet halted mid-step in the hallway. Isaac paused with his hand on a rusted doorframe. The silence roared.

And she… laughed.

It started low in her throat, curling upward like the first thread of smoke from a lit fuse. "Oh, look at you," she said, her voice a practiced blend of sass and silk. "The prince who says he knows nothing but has already mastered the tone of divine fury."

"I didn't ask for critique," I said, jaw tight.

"No," she said, unbothered. "You asked for my name. Very aggressively, might I add. Should I kneel, Your Highness? Or would you prefer I scream it under duress?"

I exhaled, nostrils flaring. "I'm not in the mood for theatrics."

"Then perhaps you shouldn't wear your title like a stage costume," she shot back. "You say you don't know anything about being a prince, yet the moment something stirs you, you bark like you were born to rule. Which is it? The humble pauper or the hidden blade?"

"I'm trying to lead."

"No," she said, cocking her head, "you're trying not to drown in a legacy you didn't ask for. That, I respect. But don't swing authority around like a saber when your hands are still bleeding."

I stepped forward.

That surprised her.

Good.

We were only a few feet apart now. The room hadn't moved. The maids were still frozen, eyes flicking between us like it was a fencing match and neither of us had yet scored a touch.

"You gave me something valuable," I said, keeping my voice level now, measured. "A book passed down from your mother. That means you trust me."

"Or I was desperate to get you to shut up."

I smiled. Barely. "But you did. Trust me. Even if just for a moment. That matters. That means something."

She folded her arms. "You don't get to play earnest now. Not after going full 'royal edict' on me five seconds ago."

"Maybe I overcorrected."

"Maybe you're scared."

That shut me up more than I liked.

She arched her brow. "Oh, I see. That hit. Got it. Not the prince voice. Not the command. Not the 'I'll treasure this land' speech. No, what gets you is a girl seeing the crack in the mask."

"I don't wear masks," I said quietly.

"No," she whispered. "You are the mask. And you're still figuring out what's underneath."

Her words weren't cruel. They weren't even smug. They were... precise. Measured. Like someone watching a storm form over a horizon and knowing exactly what kind of flood it would bring.

"You're not afraid of being wrong," she said. "You're afraid of being right. Of being the thing you were born into. Of becoming just another Duarte who plays at nobility until the blood dries."

I stared at her. "Who are you?"

Her lips quirked again, faint and dangerous. "A maid."

"You don't talk like a maid."

"Maybe you don't know how maids talk."

"Maybe I know when someone's hiding behind a uniform."

"Maybe I know when someone's using a title to avoid a conversation."

We were too close now—emotionally, verbally. The air between us carried more than dust and tension. There was understanding in the fire, a kind of sharp-edged empathy.

"You think I'm trying to control this room?" I asked.

"I think," she said, stepping slightly closer, "you're trying to hold it together. And you're terrified if you let one crack show, the whole thing collapses."

I exhaled, slower this time. "I'm trying to fix something I didn't break."

She nodded, just once. "And I'm trying to protect something I thought was already lost."

We stood like that, two strange souls meeting in a dead place. Her hair was a little out of place, her braid slipping loose from whatever rushed bun she'd worn earlier. Her cheeks were flushed with more than exertion. Mine were burning for reasons I didn't want to analyze yet.

"Tell me your name," I said again. Quieter. "Please."

She paused, as if weighing whether she'd lose something by saying it aloud.

"My name is Alexandria." She gave me a crooked grin. "Just as yours is Alexander. Maybe we were meant to argue. Or maybe we were meant to rebuild this place together."

She leaned in, just close enough to brush the edge of my coat.

"After you're done diving into Wallace D. Vex," she whispered, voice slipping beneath my skin, "come find me. We need to have a long, long discussion."

And with that, she turned, braid swaying like a punctuation mark behind her. I didn't stop her.

I just stood there, holding her mother's book.

And for the first time since waking from that coma, I felt the story begin.

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