The candle was dying.
Elias Vayne watched its final flickers stutter across the page, shadows shivering over silvered runes that writhed like worms beneath his gaze. The Canticle of Hollow Stars lay open before him, inked in ash and blood and madness. It had cost him everything—his position at Brythane University, his last silver marks, and whatever remained of his reputation as a man of reason.
Now, only faith remained. Or desperation. There was no real difference anymore.
A bead of sweat fell from his brow onto the vellum. The ink hissed. Smoke curled up from the point of impact in fine, pale threads.
"To walk the Path of the Nameless," the manuscript whispered—not in sound, but in something deeper, older— "one must first unmake the self."
The window shuddered in its frame.
Not the wind.
The night was still. Suffocatingly still.
Elias didn't look up. He knew they were coming.
Three knocks.
Measured. Inevitable.
On the third, the wood splintered near the bolt. The door swung open without a sound.
Three figures stepped through, draped in black so dense it swallowed the candlelight. Their masks were porcelain-white, gleaming faintly—smooth, inhuman, and featureless save for the vaguest hint of a brow ridge, like something sculpted in mockery of a face.
"Elias Vayne of Brythane," the leader said, voice buzzing like flies behind glass.
"You have been weighed," murmured the second, stepping forward with a knife that swallowed the light.
"Found wanting," the third finished, flat and final.
Elias's fingers inched toward the inkpot. The desk before him was chaos—notes scrawled in margins, stolen fragments of lost rituals, letters written in cipher and code. Years of forbidden knowledge gathered in one fragile place.
The leader tilted its head. The mask caught the candlelight at a sick angle—wrong, impossible—and Elias's stomach lurched.
"You read," it said, "what should not be read."
The knife moved.
Elias dove sideways.
The blade grazed his forearm—and screamed through him. Not pain. Not at first. But a hollowing, a tearing. His skin withered in an instant. Veins blackened like paper caught in flame.
It's stealing time, he realized. Not blood. Time.
He flung the inkpot before he'd even decided to. It shattered against the leader's mask, splattering black ichor that hissed and steamed. The mask twisted. The figure hissed—a noise like wind through a bone flute.
Elias didn't wait.
He ran.
Straight through the window.
Glass exploded around him. Cold air tore at his face. The cobblestones rushed up like a promise.
His satchel burst open in the fall. Pages scattered, swirling like torn feathers. They caught the air, slowed him—just barely.
He hit hard. Agony screamed up his arm. Blood in his mouth. Bones maybe broken.
The pages settled around him, glyphs glowing faintly silver on the stones.
Above, the Choir's leader watched from the shattered window, motionless.
"Run," it whispered.
So Elias ran.
The chapel had been abandoned for decades. The air reeked of mildew, old incense, and something that might have been blood once.
He slammed the doors shut behind him and barred them with a crumbling pew. His right arm hung useless, fingers curled like claws.
He limped to the altar and spread the remaining pages across its worn stone. The glyphs had rearranged themselves during the fall—no longer scattered. A circle. Precise. Waiting.
"To walk the Path of the Nameless," he read aloud, barely above a breath, "offer blood to the Hollow Star."
His arm throbbed. The black veins had reached his elbow.
He pressed his palm to the central sigil.
"I offer this life."
The pages ignited. Silver fire. Smoke curled upward, forming a nine-pointed star. At its center, an eye opened.
And blinked.
Flame punched into his chest. He screamed. The pain was... divine. Horrific. Cleansing. A star carved itself beneath his collarbone, the lines writhing like living things.
The doors burst open.
The Choir stood silhouetted in the moonlight.
Knives raised.
Elias reached toward them—
And the world tore open.
Consciousness returned in pieces.
The bite of rope around his wrists.
The stink of straw and iron and blood.
A voice sneering, "Confess, Locke, and the hanging will be quick."
Elias—no. Not Elias.
Broad hands. Scarred knuckles. A tattoo of alchemical circles along the forearm.
The Mark beneath his collarbone burned. Still there. Still alive.
Memories flickered. Unfamiliar. A workshop. Betrayal. A name—
Cassius Locke.
The jailer kicked the chair. "Last chance, alchemist."
Cassius Locke's lips curled into a smile.
Elias Vayne's mind sharpened.
The Mark whispered its first truth:
"The man with the keys is lying about why you're here."
And its second, softer, colder:
"He doesn't have the keys."