The bells of Draemhold tolled thrice before dawn. The sound was heavy, dragging through the mist like a chain, and though the city had long forgotten its original meaning, the tolls continued every morning as if the stones themselves remembered.
Nelly stood at the overlook where the fog rolled over the rooftops, his figure swallowed in gray. His hair was messy as always, never yielding to combs, and his eyes carried a weight that didn't match his youth. The streets behind him were quiet, but inside his chest was a silence heavier than the bells. He didn't belong to anyone. He never had.
By the time the city stirred awake, Draemhold bloomed into noise and color. The damp stone carried the shouts of merchants, the creak of carts, the rhythm of footsteps. Bread scent spilled out of every corner, fresh enough to soften the morning chill. Nelly slipped into the tide of people, one face among many, satchel slung over his shoulder and ink-stained fingers clutching parchment. To most eyes he was just another errand boy running for the archives. That was the life he had been given: books for comfort, dust for memory, silence for family.
But not all of him was forgotten.
"Nelly," Nathan's voice rang over the market crowd. Bright, warm, like sunlight breaking through mist. Nelly turned, already finding that familiar smile cutting through the chaos. Nathan walked as if the streets bent for him, his cloak pristine, steps confident, eyes alive with warmth. If Nelly was made of shadows, Nathan was made of light.
"Late again," Nathan said, smirking.
"Not all of us wake up in a feather bed," Nelly muttered, pulling his satchel higher.
"Excuses. You'd miss the sunrise even if it rose in your room." Nathan laughed, but slowed his pace to match him. He always did. Their friendship was the kind that didn't need explanation: tested in boyhood scuffles, sharpened in silence, anchored by unspoken trust.
They passed street performers juggling flames and dancing to drums. Children clapped, shadows leaping wildly against walls. Nelly's gaze lingered, unwillingly, on one shadow. It moved a moment slower than the man casting it. His breath caught.
"You see it again?" Nathan asked under his breath.
Nelly forced a shrug. "Nothing."
But it wasn't nothing.
That night, the city slept, but Nelly didn't. Dreams took him to a place where there was no dark, no light—only emptiness. A void so endless it pressed against his mind until thought itself began to crack. From it came a pulse, vast and slow, the heartbeat of something older than the world.
And then a whisper.
…you will open the way.
He woke tangled in sweat and sheets, the moonlight spilling thin across his floor. It stretched unnaturally, bending toward him as if reaching. His throat felt tight, words trembling out in the dark. "It's nothing. Just dreams. Just tiredness."
But the shadows did not leave. They lingered in the corners, waiting.
The next day passed as though nothing had changed. The archives smelled of paper and dust, shelves towering like silent judges. His master, Ellisar, scolded him for misplacing scrolls, droning on about order and discipline. Nelly bowed, obeyed, went about the duties given to him. Yet his mind remained elsewhere.
The shadows had begun to follow him.
Why him? Why always him?
He didn't yet know the answer was older than Draemhold, older than the city's cobbled streets or its ringing bells. The answer had been buried beneath the world itself.
And soon, it would rise.