Morning came slowly to Shattered Hollow, if it could be called morning at all.
The light that bled through the veiled sky was pale and bruised, a soft grey that made the streets look like old charcoal sketches—half-erased, half-forgotten. Mist clung to the alleys and rooftops like a memory that refused to leave.
Kyren stood near the fractured window of the safehouse, fastening the last clasp of his coat. The mirror across the room reflected a young man whose eyes looked far older than his years. Beneath the collar, the black threads of his Marking pulsed faintly beneath his skin, like ink that had sunk too deep to ever wash away.
He touched the coin in his pocket, fingers closing around the cold metal. Duskreth. The name echoed now like a whisper embedded in bone.
Last night, he'd made the decision.
Today, he would leave Fall's End.
The name Ash and Ink had surfaced through too many fragmented whispers to be a coincidence. A place spoken of only in half-sentences and hush-toned warnings. Some claimed it didn't exist at all—others, that it existed only for those who were already marked. Either way, it had become the next thread in his unraveling path.
A sharp knock drew his gaze to the door.
"Kyren," said Oryn, the barkeep turned contact who'd let him hide here for the past few nights. "Fog's thinning. If you're heading to Greyheart, best go before the patrols shift."
Kyren nodded silently. He didn't expect a goodbye—only space to disappear into the city again.
As he stepped out into the street, the cold wrapped around him like an old cloak. The Hollow was quiet this early. Too quiet.
He moved swiftly along back routes, familiar now from his nights wandering the ruinous maze of District Seven. The further he got from Fall's End's heart, the more Ashgrove seemed to breathe, like it was waiting for something. Watching.
The mist began to break apart as he crossed the boundary toward District Four, Stonehaven—the Ironholt, as it was called now. A district of silent industry and slumbering forges. The ancient stonework here was cracked but proud, remnants of a time when craftsmanship had meant something more than survival.
Every district in Ashgrove had its personality. Its shadows.
And yet none felt quite like Greyheart.
It was where the city had started. Where the first stones were laid. Where records whispered the rifts had first begun to bleed through, long before they were noticed.
And somewhere within its mazelike interior was Ash and Ink.
He kept moving. Not fast, but steady. One breath at a time. One step toward the puzzle. Toward the thing that had started with a coin and a mark and a night he couldn't remember fully anymore.
The closer Kyren came to Greyheart, the more the city seemed to shift beneath his feet—not physically, but in the way one's mind begins to tremble before a revelation. The buildings grew older. Not ruined, not abandoned—preserved. As if the entire district was a memory no one dared alter.
District One—Ashgrove's Heart, as it was once called—was the birthplace of the city's soul. The buildings bore the wear of centuries not as decay, but as scripture. Every crack in the stone whispered of things that had been, and things that should have never been allowed.
The light here was dim, though the sky overhead was clear. Something about the district seemed to drink in brightness and exhale shadow. Every lantern flickered as if unsure of its own existence.
Statues lined the walkways—some broken, others whole. Eyes missing, wings cracked, hands cupped in poses of offering or prayer. Each figure wore a nameplate rusted into illegibility. Not even the city's archives dared restore them.
Kyren moved with quiet steps, alert. Not for danger, but for meaning. The kind of meaning that didn't always reveal itself to logic but tugged at instinct—intuition shaped by something deeper than reason.
The people here… walked differently. Either with the rigid confidence of those who had lived in Greyheart their entire lives—or the stiff hesitation of outsiders who didn't know how to belong. Some avoided his gaze. Others lingered a second too long.
He heard snippets of conversation in strange dialects. Saw a boy playing jacks using pieces shaped like broken runes. Glimpsed an elderly man bowing three times before a sealed sewer grate.
Kyren lowered his hood further.
He wasn't afraid. But Greyheart was not a place for the uninvited.
It took him nearly an hour to find the right path.
A cracked statue marked the turn—one of the Raven-King, half-devoured by moss. Kyren ran his fingers briefly along its surface and felt a pulse, faint and cold, like distant thunder echoing through the stone.
Then came the half-collapsed market arch, overgrown with weeds and twisted vines that hadn't been cleared in decades. Beyond that, a narrow street choked with silence. No birds. No footsteps. Just wind brushing the surface of forgotten things.
At the end of the street, tucked between two crooked buildings, was the alley.
It wasn't marked.
It didn't need to be.
Kyren stepped in and felt the world bend. The alley was impossibly narrow—walls on either side seemed to lean toward him, as if whispering confessions. The scent of charred ink and singed leather hung in the air. Somewhere far off, a bell chimed once, then fell silent.
At the end stood a door. Dark wood. Ash-caked. Vines crawled up the sides like veins over old flesh. No number. No name.
Only a symbol carved above the frame—a quill, wreathed in flame, caught in the moment before it burned away.
He knocked once.
No answer.
Again.
Still nothing.
Kyren turned, half-ready to leave—then paused as a low creak answered him from behind.
The door opened.
The light inside was dim, golden, soaked in the color of slow-burning lanterns and aged parchment. The walls were lined with shelves—but not of books. Bottles. Glass vials. Rolled scrolls bound with wax. Jars containing ink that shimmered, or pulsed, or shifted color when he looked too long.
The air was thick. Not stale—but dense, like it remembered every word ever spoken within its walls.
"Close the door," a voice said—soft, yet firm.
Kyren obeyed.
The woman behind the counter wore a mask shaped like a cracked inkwell. Ornate. Lacquered black with silver filigree creeping along the edges like vines. Her robes were layered, ink-dark with grey underlinings. Threaded runes flickered faintly when she moved—barely perceptible, as if written on the air itself.
"You're early," she said. "The threads haven't finished weaving."
"I wasn't invited," Kyren replied, voice calm. "But I've been pulled."
She tilted her head slightly. "There are few who come to this place without being summoned. Fewer still who leave unchanged."
Kyren didn't blink. "I've already changed."
"Not enough." She gestured toward him. "You've been marked. I can see it—Threadbound, but unstable. Something tethers you, but the knot is loose."
"I'm searching for ink," Kyren said. "Ink that bites. Ink that remembers."
A long silence.
Then she nodded, slowly. "You seek the Ink of Memory and Flame. It is not a gift. It is an ordeal."
"I don't need comfort," Kyren said. "Only truth."
"Good," she replied. "Because the ink will not comfort you. It will show you things—etched in your blood, bound in your Pattern. Things that will wound before they heal."
She stepped away from the counter and walked into the back room. The light dimmed further, lanterns responding as though they, too, feared what lay beyond.
Kyren hesitated at the threshold, one hand brushing the coin in his pocket. It felt cold today. Heavy.
"Come," her voice echoed back. "But understand—once the ink touches your soul, it writes in both directions. Past and future."
Kyren stepped forward.
Not blindly.
But willingly.