The words seared themselves behind Elias's eyelids.
YOU ARE THE LIAR.
Black bile dripped from his chin, splattering the warped floorboards of the bell tower. It steamed where it hit the wood. The silver-eyed girl—no, thing—watched him with her head cocked at an impossible angle, gaslight from below flickering in the wet gleam of her teeth.
"Poor, broken Cassius," she crooned, voice full of oil and echoes. Her shadow climbed the wall behind her, arms stretching unnaturally long, fingers tapering into spider-thin limbs. "Did you really think you could outrun what you are?"
The Mark burned between his collarbones—branding pain, ancient pain. And then came the whisper, layered and wrong: Cassius's voice woven through Elias's thoughts.
"She lies through her teeth. But so do you."
Elias's hands moved—no, Cassius's hands. Scarred, steady, certain. They loaded the pistol with mechanical precision. The faces engraved into the barrel twisted as if caught mid-scream, contorting in something between agony and laughter.
"You're Veil of the Unseen," he said. It was Cassius's voice that left his throat, rough with blood and memory. "Since when do face-thieves ally with god-killers?"
The girl giggled, the sound wrong in a dozen small ways—slightly off-key, slightly delayed, like a chorus of her own echoes. Her yellow dress rustled despite the still air.
"We don't ally," she said sweetly, stepping closer. Her knees bent backward like a bird's, popping as she moved. "We collect. What others forget. What others leave behind."
A too-long finger tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Faces. Names. Lives."
The Mark flared. White-hot. Pain cracked his skull wide open, and visions invaded—
—A silver knife carving a star into a crying infant's chest——A hundred faces bubbling, melting into his own——Standing over Elias Vayne's corpse, Cassius's smile stitched across his lips—
He staggered. When his sight returned, the girl was suddenly nose-to-nose with him. Her breath smelled of mildew and wet parchment.
"Ask yourself," she whispered, breath ghosting across his cheek, "why you remember Elias Vayne dying..."
Her needle teeth gleamed like fishbone in the dark.
"...but not Cassius Locke ever being born."
The Mercury Gate
Smoke clung to the broken eaves of the Dredge District as Elias fled. His boots—Cassius's boots—splashed through stagnant water and ash. The pistol in his hand grew heavier with every step, its engraved faces weeping warmth into his palm.
The Mark pulsed beneath his shirt, a second heartbeat whispering of porcelain masks and knife-teethed saints waiting in the fog.
Brythane University rose from the shadows like a broken jaw. Its alchemy wing was long abandoned, windows shuttered, doors chained. The tarnished brass plaque still read:
PROFESSOR ELIAS VAYNEExperimental Thaumaturgy & Applied Transmutation
Cassius's hands made short work of the rusted lock.
Inside, time had died but refused to rot. Dust blanketed everything. Glass beakers sat mid-boil atop cold coals. A dissected rat skeleton was still pinned to a board with silver needles, its mouth open in eternal scream.
And there it was—at the center of the room.
The mercury mirror. Seven feet tall. Framed in cracked obsidian. Its surface dark and still, like tarnished silver waiting to swallow.
The Mark throbbed in time with Elias's pulse.
"Look."
His reflection shimmered. Cassius's features stared back—hard lines, old wounds—but behind them, other faces began to bleed through. Elias's own. And others. Dozens. Distorted, half-remembered.
The mirror rippled as his hand rose, unbidden.
Cold metal touched his fingertips.
Then it swallowed him whole.
The Birthright
The vision didn't arrive—it ripped into him.
—A cavern hewn from living stone, its walls weeping black fluid like tears——A silver-haired woman, chained to an altar, the Hollow Star blazing in her chest——A knife in his hand—Cassius's hand—its edge humming with unspoken names—
"Finish it," the woman gasped. Blood soaked her collarbones. Her eyes were too human. Too knowing. "Before they—"
Porcelain masks surged in from every crevice. Obsidian blades drank the firelight.
Cassius—Elias—someone else—drove the blade into her heart.
Her blood spilled.
The Hollow Star shattered.
And the world unwound itself.
Elias tore away from the mirror with a ragged gasp. He staggered backward, hand reflexively clutching his chest where the Mark still burned, seething with memory. In the warped reflection, only a hollow-eyed stranger stared back, wearing Cassius's face like a borrowed skin.
The final whisper came not from the Mark, but from somewhere deeper—behind his ribs, behind the marrow:
"The first truth is this: You didn't steal Cassius Locke's life."
"You were born in that cavern, slick with a dead woman's blood."
"And the name you wear?"
"It was never yours to begin with."