The gutters of Myrrowind stank of dirt, wine, and secrets.
Rain hadn't touched the slums in over a week, and the clouds above hung heavy like soaked cloth—but they never wept. They simply hovered, brooding, like the city itself. Towers leaned like drunkards over narrow streets. Bridges tangled like broken ribs above crooked alleys. Grand spires stood like ghosts of a more glorious past, now draped in soot and despair. Beneath them, the city bled.
Within the street a teen boy moved like a whisper through it all. Unseen.
He passed a cluster of beggars curled beside a collapsed wall, each with hollow eyes and tattered cloaks. A merchant screamed over bruised lemons while a prostitute with eyes lined in silver powder laughed at a guard's threat. Myrrowind didn't pretend to be clean anymore. It had long since stopped pretending anything. It simply endured—and consumed.
His cloak covering his tall, slender frame, was stitched from a dozen different fabrics, all worn, all stolen. His boots had holes in the soles, but they were soft and silent. That was all that mattered.
His hands? Quick. Quiet. Precise.
A stumble. A laugh. A hand brushed a merchant's side. One ring—silver, inlaid with a blue stone—disappeared into a hidden slit in his sleeve. The man didn't even notice.
The boy, his pitch black eyes never stopped looking for his next target.
In Myrrowind, hesitation was a wound. Curiosity was a death sentence. Survival belonged to those who knew how to vanish in plain sight.
And the boy? He didn't just vanish. He adapted.
To the old fishwife on Lantern Row, he was Lio, a mute boy with a limp who swept her steps in exchange for stale bread. To the drunk noble who whispered regrets in the tavern at dusk, he was Kal, a boy in mourning who wore grief like a suit. To the guards at the west gate?
He was nothing at all.
He didn't steal identities—he borrowed them. Like masks. Temporary. Disposable. Never truly his.
Because in truth, he didn't know who he was.
He had memories—of hunger, of cold winters wrapped in canvas blankets, of running. But not of before. Not of family. Not of a name that belonged only to him. And that suited him fine. Names came with roots. Roots got people killed.
This morning, he wore the guise of an errand boy for House Calder, a minor noble family embroiled in petty land disputes. Their real messengers wore blue sashes and bored expressions. Ren had found one passed out behind a brothel two nights ago. The sash was now around him.
A scroll clutched in one hand—inked last night with a false seal—and a forged badge pinned to his chest, He walked into the Marlin Quarter, where high-end merchants sold lies with polite smiles. His target was Braxen, a spice trader known for laundering noble coin through shipments that never existed.
He found him in his private stall, surrounded by guards too sleepy to care. Braxen barely looked at the seal before grunting and handing over a pouch that jingled with coin.
He bowed low. "My Lord sends his regards."
"Tell your Lord to double next week's shipment," Braxen muttered, then turned back to counting cinnamon.
"Yes sir."
He turned, slipped into the crowd, and vanished down a side street. The scroll was dropped into a drain. The badge removed. The sash, stuffed into his satchel.
By noon, he'd changed into a worn tunic, rubbed his face with soot, and now played dice with a group of drunk dockworkers in Lowbridge Hollow. He let them win a few rounds. Laughed. Told jokes. Swore he'd just come back from the Eastern isles with a cargo of sea glass. Before they knew it, he was gone—along with half their coin and the brass ring off one man's finger.
He spent the winnings on stale bread, a new flask, and a broken compass he didn't need but liked the look of. The rest he tucked into the hollow heel of his boot—his fifth hiding place. No one ever survived in Myrrowind with just one.
By late afternoon, he was on the rooftops, crouched above a narrow alleyway that stank of piss and rusted pipe water. He bit into a bruised apple and watched the world below unfold like a crooked play.
Guards swapped shifts at the west wall, their armor ill-fitted and eyes weary. A pair of women haggled over a bolt of dyed fabric. Nearby, two urchins—dirty, barefoot—staged a scene: one weeping, the other pickpocketing a distracted drunk.
He smirked. He'd taught them that.
He tossed the apple core into the alley and leaned back against a chimney stack, exhaling slowly. The smoke of the city had a texture—thick, acrid, familiar. He could taste it in his clothes.
"Busy morning?"
He tensed. A soft voice. A familiar one.
He looked over and saw rich blonde hair and emerald green eyes looking at him. Kana crouched beside him, balanced with the elegance of someone who read too many old books about knife-fighting monks. Her cloak—dark green, stitched with warding runes—was far too fine for the slums. But somehow she never drew blades. Only stares.
He tossed her a coin pouch. "Productive."
She caught it one-handed, raising a brow as she counted. "Three nobles and a merchant?"
"And a tavern owner who can't read."
"Impressive," she said, slipping the pouch away. "One day, someone's going to recognize your pretty face."
He shrugged. "That's the trick. No one ever sees me."
Kana studied him for a moment, as if trying to. "And what do you look like?"
.....
"Ren"
.....
"Ren"
.....
"REN!"
"Sorry Kana, I was just lost in thought."
He responded with a chuckle.
"Any work?"
She pulled a folded map from her satchel and spread it between them on the rooftop.
"There's an old chapel near Lantern Hill," she said. "Pre-Imperial. Belonged to the Solen Order before the gods were banned."
Ren scanned the inked lines. The building was marked in faded red. "Relic vault?"
"Locked. Warded. Forgotten."
"Which means untouched." His eyes lit up.
"No Court sigils. No guard runes. It's off their maps."
That was rare. The Hollow Court—the city's secret hand, cloaked in masks and blood-oaths—didn't often miss things.
"If they haven't raided it, either it's worthless…" Ren began.
"Or dangerous," Kana finished.
Ren grinned. "Either way, let's steal it."
That Night
They met under a dead tree behind the chapel, the moon a crooked grin above them. The Temple of Solen loomed like a forgotten god—its stone steeple cracked, its walls bound in ivy and rusted chains. Wind tugged at the broken stained-glass windows, and the silence around it was too thick, too complete.
"This place feels cursed," Ren muttered.
"It's holy," Kana corrected, adjusting the clasp on her runed cloak. "Or it was. Before the gods were outlawed."
Ren gave her a look. "Same difference."
They climbed through a jagged window, glass crunching beneath their boots. Inside, moonlight filtered through the ruined ceiling, casting fractured colors across the floor. The chapel smelled of wet stone, mold, and dust too old to stir. Rows of overturned pews stretched toward a long-faded altar. Candle stubs ringed it—some recent, others melted down to wax stains.
Someone had been here. But not in a while.
Kana dropped her satchel beside the dais and unrolled a torn map. "Vault's somewhere beneath the pulpit," she said, tapping a faded symbol. "Should be a chamber two floors down. Relics, maybe a warded cache. Think you can find the trigger?"
"Please," Ren said, already climbing the stairs behind the altar. "Who do you think taught you half this stuff?"
Kana smirked and walked toward the western archway, her torch flaring with a whisper of spellfire. "I'll check the nave. Meet back here in ten?"
He nodded, already halfway up the dais, fingers brushing old stone.
The moment she was gone, the quiet changed. It wasn't louder. Just… deeper. Like the chapel had been waiting for something to breathe again.
Ren's fingers skimmed the back of the altar. The stone felt different. Warm. Almost like flesh. He pressed, and something clicked.
A hidden panel shifted inward with a groan. Dust scattered into the air, thick and heavy.
Behind it, stairs descended into darkness.
"This wasn't on the map," he muttered.
Which meant no one had found it yet.
He hesitated—then grinned to himself. "Better than I thought."
He lit a stub of candle from his coat and stepped inside, vanishing into the gloom.
The passage narrowed the deeper it went, walls etched with faint carvings worn down by time. Symbols swam faintly in the dark—strange ones, half-faded. Old wardings, meant to repel memory or trap something within. Ren didn't know the language, but the sensation crawling up his spine told him they still held power.
When he reached the bottom, the air was damp. Heavy. He stopped before a black iron door veined with age. A sunburst had been carved across it, an eye sitting open in its center.
He didn't recognize it.
No sigils. No locks. No obvious danger.
Which, in Myrrowind, was its own kind of trap.
But Ren had picked worse doors.
He pushed.
The metal shrieked against its hinges. Dust rolled out in a slow wave.
Inside, the room was circular. Empty. Quiet.
Stone benches curved along the walls. The ceiling rose into a perfect dome, stained with soot. At the center of the chamber stood a pedestal—simple, unadorned.
And on it sat a mask.
Ren blinked.
"A mask?"
It was white. Bone-white. Smooth as porcelain. No mouth. Hollow, endless eyes. And a thin gold line ran down the center of the face, dividing it perfectly in two.
It didn't feel magical.
It felt… sentient.
He approached slowly. His candle flickered violently, then extinguished itself.
The room darkened—but the mask remained lit, like moonlight had chosen only it.
Ren stared at it, a cold sweat forming on the back of his neck. Something inside him pulled toward it. As if it knew him.
He hesitated, then reached out—
And touched it.
Pain.
Blinding, electric pain that surged through every nerve like wildfire.
He tried to scream, but no sound escaped. Only stillness. Only memory.
He stood in a crumbling throne room drenched in flame.
A woman, regal and bloodied, reached for him. Her armor was scorched. Her golden eyes wide with terror. She mouthed his name—but he couldn't hear it.
A blade speared her from behind.
She fell.
Fire licked the marble walls. Banners curled and blackened.
A man in a crown stood alone, roaring in silence. A dagger struck him in the throat.
Blood. Fire. Betrayal.
And then—nothing.
Ren awoke sprawled on cold stone, gasping for breath.
The mask was gone.
Or—no. It wasn't. It lay on the floor beside him, inert. As if it had simply fallen there.
His hands trembled as he sat up. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
He staggered toward a cracked mirror in the corner of the chamber.
And stopped.
The face staring back was not his.
The cheekbones were sharper. The eyes—gold. The hair slicked back in a way he never wore it. The jawline regal, unfamiliar.
Then, slowly… it shifted. Melted. Faded.
His real face returned, like ink washing off a canvas.
Ren stumbled backward, breath catching.
"What the hell is going on?"
His fingers curled around the mask. It was warm now. Like skin.
He stuffed it into his satchel and left the chamber in a daze.
Kana waited by the altar, torch in hand, brow furrowed.
Ren climbed out of the hidden stairwell, keeping his expression neutral.
"Well?" she asked. "Find anything?"
He shook his head. "Just rubble. Sealed door. Might've been looted already."
Kana frowned. "Strange. The wards I saw—"
"Broken," he said quickly. "Nothing left."
A long silence passed. She studied him.
"You alright?"
"Yeah," he said, forcing a smile. "Just dust. Place was creepy."
She didn't look convinced—but didn't press either.
As they left the chapel, Ren's satchel bumped against his side.
The mask inside pulsed faintly. Not warm. Not cold.
Just waiting.