"To wear another man's death is to sew a curse into your shadow."
They left the shrine just before dawn.
The wind didn't howl. It hummed. As if the cords that once lined the walls of the Sixth's domain still stretched somewhere behind them, frayed but not gone.
Yin hadn't spoken since the collapse. Not from fear—but reverence. The silence they carried now wasn't empty. It was earned.
But Aren's steps were different.
He walked slower.
As if something in him had changed—some tether gone, but not severed cleanly.
The final thread from the shrine remained tied to his wrist. Black. Faint. It didn't tighten. It didn't move.
It just lingered.
"Where to now?" Yin asked as they broke camp in the early light.
Aren stared at the scroll.
The Sixth's sigil had faded.
And another had begun to emerge.
Not the Seventh.
Not the Eighth.
But one that had no number.
Just a symbol: a knife pointing backward.
The scroll didn't bleed.
It pulsed.
Like a heart trying to remember what it used to feel.
They passed into the Hushed Valley by mid-morning. A narrow gorge, lined with graves that bore no names. Only marks.
Spirals. Thorns. Hooks. Unreadable glyphs carved deep into stone.
"These aren't burial sites," Yin said, frowning.
"No," Aren replied. "They're markers."
"For what?"
"For deaths."
"That's what graves are."
"Not the ones you survive."
The wind shifted.
And every marker around them whispered.
Soft.
Indistinct.
Like the echo of a voice through the water.
Yin turned pale.
"They're speaking."
Aren nodded.
"They're asking why I still have something that doesn't belong to me."
At the edge of the valley, they found it:
A broken altar. Circular. Surrounded by stone tablets sunken into the mud.
Each tablet had a symbol.
One of them—carved with twelve slashes—glowed faintly red.
Aren stepped forward.
And the ground opened.
Not physically. But spiritually.
Like the memory of a grave had been disturbed.
Aren staggered. Fell to one knee.
Something behind his eyes split open.
He was someone else.
Just for a moment.
The angle of the sun was different.
His hands were thinner. Younger. The smell of incense clung to him like shame.
He was kneeling at the altar.
Not Aren.
But someone who wore his face.
And that someone was dying.
Not from poison. Not from ritual.
But from replacement.
Aren came back to himself gasping.
Yin caught him before he hit the ground.
He looked around.
Nothing had changed.
But everything felt wrong.
"I'm… not the only me," he muttered.
Yin stared.
"You're not making sense."
He wiped the sweat from his brow. "I think I died once. But it wasn't my death. It was someone else's."
The scroll flared open.
Not on command.
It wanted to be seen.
A new page appeared.
Not written in his ink.
But something darker. Older.
It read:
-- " Scroll Three: The Death That Wasn't His
A stolen end. A borrowed grave.The mask does not forget the face beneath.
[☠] This vow is impure.
[❖] To sever the chain, one must bleed what was never theirs. " --
Aren swallowed hard.
"This is a memory I didn't earn."
Yin helped him to his feet.
"Do you know whose it was?"
"No."
"But they want it back."
The wind howled.
And the markers around them shuddered.
One cracked.
Another fell over.
And then—
A shadow moved.
No shape.
No face.
Just the idea of a person.
And behind it, eleven more.
Cloaked in red. Faceless.
Their mouths sewn shut.
And in the center—
A figure not present.
Not missing.
Just wrong.
The Twelfth?
No.
The Thirteenth?
Unclear.
The figure that didn't fit.
The scroll whispered:
"They have come to collect."
Yin stepped forward, blade out.
"What are they?"
Aren didn't blink.
"Scarlet Thirteen."
She frowned. "But there are only twelve."
Aren's voice dropped.
"There were thirteen."
"And one of them died wrong."
The ground split.
Not with force—but memory.
Like a moment replaying beneath their feet.
And from it rose a body.
A corpse.
Not rotted.
Preserved.
And it wore his face.
Not similar.
Not close.
Identical.
Yin choked back a cry.
"What is this?"
Aren knelt.
Touched the corpse's face.
It was cold.
It was him.
But it wasn't his.
"I think I inherited a death," Aren whispered.
"And I don't think I was supposed to."
The eleven figures began to hum.
Low.
Vibrating.
As if the shrine system itself was tuning.
The wrong note.
The dead note.
The impure vow.
The scroll trembled in Aren's hands.
The corpse opened its eyes.
Not with life.
With memory.
"You stole my ending."
"Now wear my beginning."
Aren staggered back.
The figures advanced.
The air grew heavy.
The corpse reached out a hand—
And touched his heart.
Aren screamed.
And fell into the memory.
He was in the Garden of Masks.
He was laughing.
Someone beside him—unknown—smiled.
Then—
Blood.
Knives.
Ritual.
He saw his own face fall into water.
And someone else rise with it.
He came back gasping.
The corpse had vanished.
The scroll closed.
And burned at the edges.
Only one word remained:
-- " UNCLAIMED. " --
Aren stood.
Shaking.
Eyes wide.
"I think someone wore me."
Yin stepped closer. "You mean…"
"I was a vessel."
"A puppet?"
He shook his head.
"Worse."
"A placeholder."
The silence stretched.
And then the scroll opened again.
A new line forming.
This one written in trembling, bleeding strokes:
Next: Chapter 13 — "The Ones Who Feast on Memory"