The scar woke him before the dawn. Not with pain—pain was honest—but with heat, like something whispering in embers under his skin. He tore off his shirt and stared into the mirror. In the weak light of his rented flat, the mark seemed to shimmer, rearranging itself. Norse. No, Aztec. A scrap of hieroglyph. None of it. All of it. The reflection could not agree on what it wanted to be, and neither could he.
"Not today," he muttered, smearing salve across it, as though ointment could quiet gods.
The kettle screamed, shrill as a banshee. He poured boiling water over cheap tea leaves and drank without tasting. The flat stank of mildew and burnt paper. His neighbors whispered about the odd man with the gloves, the one who prowled libraries at hours better left to foxes. They knew nothing of the museum fire that had gutted his old life. To them, he was just another ruin breathing quietly upstairs.
When he finally opened the curtains, the morning sky had the wrong color. Too red at the edges, as if someone had painted dawn with ash instead of light. He stood there too long, watching the sun crawl, until his scar seared and dragged him away.
By afternoon, he was in Xuemei's shop. The place was more barricade than bookstore—shelves leaning, manuscripts stacked in unruly towers, lamps burning with the faint scent of whale oil though she swore it was kerosene. Xuemei herself sat behind the counter, spectacles on the bridge of her nose, hair pinned with ruthless precision. She wielded sarcasm the way some carried knives.
"You look worse," she said without looking up from her ledger.
"That's because I am worse." He laid a codex on the desk. Its cover was scorched, its binding brittle. "From Prague. Pre-fire copy. Mentions a fire god by name. Xiuhtecuhtli."
Xuemei lifted her eyes and narrowed them. "You're burning your life to trace ghosts, Seeker. You want fire? Light a candle. Safer, cheaper, and it won't follow you home."
The codex shifted. For the briefest moment, the ink rippled like heat haze. He blinked, and it was ordinary again. Xuemei either hadn't noticed or chose not to.
He leaned closer. "Something is stirring. The scar—"
"Don't," she snapped. "Don't bring your curse into my shop."
The lamps flickered. Shadows swelled, thick as smoke. His scar throbbed hot. A sound hummed through the store—half-laughter, half-growl, though no throat carried it.
When he turned, no one stood there. Only the window, where his reflection grinned back with teeth that were not his. A coyote's teeth.
"You again," he whispered.
Xuemei frowned. "Who?"
The reflection tilted its head, eyes bright with mischief. "Closer than you should be. Watch the fires, boy. They watch back." Then it vanished, leaving only his own gaunt face, pale and sweating.
Xuemei slammed her ledger shut. "Out. Before you curse my shelves."
He staggered into the street. Incense from a nearby shrine tangled with the stink of exhaust. His scar pulsed in rhythm with the city, a second heartbeat he could not silence.
A crow wheeled overhead and cawed—a sound sharp enough to rattle the marrow. He remembered the stories, Odin's ravens, eyes and ears of a god who never missed a secret.
The crowd jostled around him. A man selling roasted chestnuts muttered prayers in three languages. A child clutched her mother's hand, eyes wide, whispering that the shadows were moving. And somewhere beyond the noise and motion, he saw him: a figure holding a lantern. Not a street vendor's lamp, but an old iron thing, glowing faintly green, as though lit with captured dusk.
The Seeker blinked, and the figure was gone. Yet the afterimage of that lantern stayed with him, seared into sight.
He turned a corner too quickly, colliding with a girl clutching devotional candles. They scattered across the pavement, flames sputtering against the wind before dying out. She hissed a curse at him, then crossed herself three different ways, hedging her bets.
By the time he reached the river, twilight had drowned the city in bruised colors. The water carried reflections of neon and temple light, but when he looked closer, he saw something stranger: faces. Hundreds of them, sliding across the surface—Norse bearded warriors, Egyptian scribes, Aztec priests with knives dripping red. None lingered when he blinked.
He pressed his palm against his scar, half-expecting it to burn through his hand. "You're not real," he told the river. "You're fragments. Stories. Nothing more."
The water did not answer, but a gust of wind lifted prayer papers from a nearby shrine, and one sheet slapped against his chest. In faint, hurried calligraphy: Better a shrouded flame than a world in ashes.
He froze. He had read that phrase before. Not in myth, not in scripture, but in the margins of confiscated manuscripts. Lantern Keepers.
The page tore free and sailed into the river, vanishing like the rest.
The Seeker turned back toward his flat, knowing sleep would not come. The gods had begun leaking through the seams, and the Keepers were watching.
And in the distance, on a rooftop just high enough to be unseen by most, a lantern burned, steady and patient, waiting for him to look up.