The Mark's Price
Elias's grip tightened around the pistol, the weight familiar, but his hesitation lingered for just a heartbeat too long.
The shot rang out.
A plume of smoke erupted from the barrel as the first porcelain mask shattered. The crack of broken ceramic echoed in the narrow room, sharp and final. No scream followed—only the sickening thud of a body slumping to the ground, its black robes billowing like the folds of a forgotten shadow. A silver-tinged mist seeped from the wound where the bullet had torn through, staining the air.
Not human.
The Mark flared to life, a scorching pulse between his collarbones, just before the second attacker lunged through the window. Time seemed to slow as Elias's body reacted on instinct. He rolled sideways, narrowly dodging the blade that slashed through the air where his throat had been a heartbeat before.
The knife struck the floor, and where it touched, the wood disintegrated into dust, rotting in an instant as if it had been touched by decay itself.
Elias's hand shot out, grasping the black vial from the floor, his fingers numb with adrenaline. His second shot went wide as the attacker twisted, the bullet grazing the fabric of his robes, revealing a swirl of darkness beneath—an unsettling void that seemed to defy the laws of nature.
"Three more outside," the Mark whispered in his mind, its voice cold and distant. "One wears your face."
Elias's heart skipped a beat, ice creeping up his spine.
The journal. He didn't even think, grabbing it from where it had fallen. He bolted for the back door just as the front entrance exploded inward in a violent rush of splinters and dust.
The Dredge Dance
The alleyway smelled of sour milk and rotting paper, a stench that lingered in the damp night air. Elias pressed his back against the slick, grimy brick of the wall, the weight of the journal in his hands grounding him. He fought to steady his breath, listening intently to the clack-clack of porcelain masks moving through the fog, each sound a step closer.
Moonlight bathed the journal, making the ciphers dance across the pages, shifting and twisting into new, incomprehensible patterns. The last page, the one marked LIAR in Cassius's frantic handwriting, pressed sharply against Elias's leg where he had stuffed it inside his boot. The sensation of it burned, as though the words themselves were alive, biting into his skin.
The Mark spoke again, dragging him into a vision:
—A man with Cassius's sandy hair and scarred knuckles, moving with the Obsidian Choir——The same man peeling back his face, unraveling it like old parchment, revealing only an empty void beneath—
Face-stealers.
The realization should have frozen him. But it didn't. Cassius's memories surged, and with them, a detached recognition: "Veil of the Unseen. They charge a king's ransom for their work."
A child's laughter echoed in the distance. High-pitched, sweet, and disturbingly out of place.
Elias froze. There were no children in the Dredge after dark.
Slowly, he peered around the corner.
A girl stood under a flickering gas lamp, her figure too still in the moonlight. The yellow dress she wore fluttered like the remnants of a dream, but it was her shadow that made him pause—too long, stretching up the brick wall at impossible angles, defying the laws of nature.
When she turned, Elias's breath caught.
Her eyes—solid silver coins—gleamed in the dim light, reflecting nothing, no iris, no pupil.
"Hello, Cassius," she lisped, her voice high-pitched, unnervingly sweet, as her needle-thin teeth gleamed. "We've been waiting."
The Mark howled in his mind, an unbearable shriek that made his skin crawl.
The Alchemist's Bargain
Elias didn't think—he ran.
Every step felt like fire in his lungs, but he didn't dare stop. The thing wearing a child's skin was already too close. Its limbs lengthened unnaturally with each stride, distorting the air around it like a nightmare stitched together in haste.
The black vial was the only thing that could save him now.
In a frantic motion, he splashed a drop of the liquid across the creature's face. It recoiled violently, its form flickering, unraveling into a tangle of black threads that seemed to stitch and tear at reality itself. But only for a moment—just long enough for him to escape.
The bell tower loomed ahead, a crumbling monument to forgotten time. He dove inside, collapsing against the cold stone walls, trying to calm his racing heart. Outside, the silver-eyed shadows moved like rats drawn to a feast.
With trembling hands, Elias opened the journal once more. The ciphers shifted again, stabilizing, the writing forming a clear and precise formula.
Truth Potion:
3 drops mercury (star's breath)
2 measures poppy extract (dream's blood)
1 drop bearer's blood
Drink under waning moon.
Cassius's kit still held the ingredients. There wasn't time to hesitate. He prepared the potion, the liquid swirling in the vial like liquid night.
As he drank, the Mark pulsed inside him, resonating with the beat of his heart, and the world shattered.
—The chapel walls breathed around him——His hands became layers of screaming faces——The Mark was a mouth, whispering to something vast in the dark—
When Elias's vision cleared, the girl was beside him again, her true form flickering in the edges of his perception. She held the LIAR page in her clawed fingers, her mouth splitting open unnaturally wide.
"Clever alchemist," she crooned, her voice distorted, guttural. "But you're asking the wrong questions."
Elias vomited black bile, his body wracked with spasms. When he looked up, the page in the girl's hand was alight with blue fire, revealing three words written in ash:
YOU ARE THE LIAR