The tower was a tomb, its stone walls swallowing sound, save for the scratch of Gregor's quill and the caws clawing through the night. A single candle burned on his desk, its flame trembling, casting his shadow long and jagged, like a man already broken.
The ledger lay open, its page dog-eared where Teon's name bled through in red, the ink smudged, as if it wept. Gregor's hands shook—not from age, but from what he wrote: a letter to the Paragon King, coded, each word a betrayal.
He didn't address it to the King by name. No one did anymore. The throne had too many ears.
The marked threat grows in Ruttenmark. The whispers stir. Advise purge.
His quill hovered, ink dripping like blood, each drop a heartbeat he couldn't silence.
He leaned back, eyes darting to the lockbox on the shelf, its iron surface carved with a spiral that pulsed faintly, cold as a dead star. Inside, a scroll's edge, brittle with dried blood, rattled against a key shaped like a crow's foot—a relic heavier than the secrets it guarded.
Gregor had seen Teon's mark once, years ago, when the boy was still small, still his to raise after the Week of Knives took Mayla. He'd once carried Teon on his back through snowfall, the boy asleep, unaware of the rot blooming in his blood. I raised him like a son, he thought, the words a knife twisting in his chest, but he's theirs now.
The spiral on the lockbox matched the one Teon carved into trees, into sticks, into the earth itself, not knowing that every mark was a prayer the old world had been waiting for.
A crow cawed outside, sharp, joined by a chorus, their rhythm chanting,
Forget their names, forget their names, echoing the lullaby he'd overheard in the Gut—Sura's voice, trembling, singing The rot that remembers will name the world lost. Gregor's breath caught, a drop of sweat tracing the scar where the Ash Clergy's sigil had burned him.
He'd read those words once, in a scroll they burned, its ashes staining his palms like guilt. They'd taken his silence for a week, their sigils searing his skin, but the words stayed, carved in his mind. The marked will rise, and the truth will be paid. Teon. The boy he'd fed, trained, watched grow into a man who carried Ruttenmark's rot in his blood.
The lockbox pulsed again, its light flickering like eyes in the dark. Gregor stood, his chair scraping stone, and lifted it, its weight dragging at his bones. The crow's-foot key rattled, a sound like bones clicking in a grave. He set it down, fingers trembling, and burned a scrap of parchment from his desk, its edges curling with words:
Hollowreach stirs. The whisperer moves.
The ash fell like snow, and the crows grew louder, their chant relentless,
Forget their names, forget their names.
Far above the firelight, past the rooftops and gutter smoke, something watched. It didn't blink. It didn't breathe. Gregor froze, the quill snapping in his hand, ink splattering the ledger like blood, a drop of sweat burning the scar on his palm.
A whisper curled through the room, not his, not human:
The flame is coming. He staggered to the window, heart pounding, and looked down at the Burnpit, where the squad's fire burned, a spark of the grief-born flame he dreaded. Teon stood among them, his shadow long, his mark hidden but alive.
Sura's music box glinted at her hip, its thorns catching the light, like the ones choking the Gut's alleys. Brik laughed, Lune sharpened her blade, and Doma stared into the fire, as if he saw what Gregor did.
He sealed the letter, his hands steady now, the betrayal complete. But the lockbox pulsed once more, and the crows' chant became a dirge, low, relentless, like a lullaby sung by the dead.
"The crows know,"
Gregor whispered, the candle guttering out, plunging the tower into darkness. Below, the squad's fire flickered, a wound in the night, and he knew—he'd lit the spark that would burn them all.