Stone steps rose through the deep.
They were ancient beyond counting, carved before kingdoms learned to stack their crowns and call it history. Each stair was smoothed by centuries of water pressing down, patient and relentless, yet the stone endured. It remembered weight. It remembered purpose.
The ocean lay heavy above them, dark and endless, a ceiling of pressure and cold that crushed lesser things into nothing. No light reached here. No sound traveled cleanly. Only the slow, vast pulse of water holding the world in its grip.
A man ascended.
His bare feet touched the stone without hesitation, and with that first step, something shifted. The water did not retreat—not yet—but it trembled, as if disturbed by a presence it had not felt in an age long forgotten. Pale hair drifted around his face, silver stripped of shine by the depths, moving with the slow grace of something that had never needed air.
Ink slept beneath his skin.
From his throat, down his chest, across ribs and hips, winding along muscle and bone to the soles of his feet, the Veinscript lay dormant—ancient lines etched beneath flesh, darker than blood, older than language. It did not glow. It did not stir. It waited.
Behind him came a woman.
She followed a step behind, not out of deference, but alignment. Her movements were unhurried, precise, untouched by the weight of the sea pressing in on all sides. One pale hand brushed the stone wall as she climbed, and where her fingers passed, the water drew back the smallest measure, as though reluctant to linger.
Her eyes were closed.
She did not need them yet.
With every step upward, the pressure eased—not because the sea loosened its hold, but because it was being asked to remember something it had once obeyed. The ascent continued in silence broken only by the distant, low groan of stone shifting under ancient strain.
Above them, far beyond the last step, the ocean hesitated.
At the final stair, the man stopped.
He placed his hand against the stone—not in prayer, not in command. The gesture carried no demand. It was acknowledgment. Recognition between things that had once shared an understanding.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the sea parted.
Not violently.Not with fury or thunder.
It opened the way a curtain does when the hall has gone quiet and the audience has learned, instinctively, to hold its breath.
Walls of water rose on either side of the stair, vast and trembling, suspended as though held by invisible hands. The ocean did not flee. It yielded. Ripples of reflected moonlight danced across the water's surface, casting pale distortions of two figures ascending from the deep as though climbing out of a dream the world had tried to forget.
They stepped into night.
Water streamed from their bodies, from silver hair and ivory skin, from garments clinging heavy with the weight of centuries. Droplets struck stone and earth alike, echoing too loudly in the sudden absence of the sea's roar. The air touched them—cold, sharp, alive—and with it came sensation long denied.
Smell.
Smoke. Salt. Iron. Fear.
Somewhere inland, bells began to ring.
Not one. Not two.
Several, discordant and panicked, tolling without rhythm or guidance, as though the metal itself sensed something had crossed a threshold it was never meant to guard.
The woman opened her eyes first.
Red bloomed.
Not glowing. Not aflame.Fresh blood under open skin—bright, honest, alive.
Her gaze swept the shoreline, then lifted toward the distant hills where torchlight flickered like nervous stars. Smoke curled upward in thin, uncertain trails. A town lay there, huddled and awake, bracing itself against imagined evils it had named but never truly understood.
"They're afraid," she said softly.
Her voice did not carry far, yet the air seemed to lean closer, as if unwilling to miss it.
The man turned his head.
His eyes opened slowly.
At first, they were dark—wine-deep, shadowed, unreadable. Then something stirred beneath the surface, and red rose to meet the world. Not wrath. Not hunger.
Awareness.
"Yes," he replied. "They always are."
They stood together as the water receded from their feet, slipping back into the parted sea as though ashamed to touch them further. The Veinscript beneath their skin shifted faintly, lines adjusting, responding to air and gravity and the quiet thrum of a world that had continued without them.
Then came the moment the world would learn to recognize.
They turned toward one another.
No touch.No words.
Just proximity.
Close enough to feel the cold radiating from skin long unkissed by the sun. Close enough for the marks at their throats to pulse once, slow and deliberate. His gaze settled on her with an intensity that did not seek reassurance. It confirmed.
Hers met his without flinching.
Time did not stop.
It slowed because attention demanded it.
Silver strands clung to her cheek, heavy with water. Blood-red eyes reflected the same living color burning in his own. The Veinscript at her collarbone shifted, tightening its pattern, answering the silent authority in his stare.
Still here.Still bound.Still choosing.
Her lips curved—not wide, not soft.
Satisfied.
She broke the silence first.
"That city," she murmured, eyes flicking back toward the distant lights. "They'll call me a witch."
"They'll be wrong," he said.
She tilted her head, studying him. "Will they burn me anyway?"
"Yes."
There was no cruelty in the answer. No hesitation.
She smiled wider this time, something sharp and dangerous glinting beneath it.
"Good."
The man reached for his weapon.
Steel whispered as it left its sheath—a long blade pale as old bone, simple in shape, ancient in presence. It did not gleam. It waited. He turned it once in his hand, feeling the familiar weight settle into his palm, then drew the edge across his skin.
Blood welled.
The pain was clean.
The blade drank.
Red veins bloomed through the steel, crawling outward like living script as the metal darkened, deepened, light trapped beneath its surface like a heart forced awake. The Veinscript beneath his skin responded in kind, lines tightening, awakening.
Behind him, the woman drew her own weapons.
Twin blades kissed her flesh, drawing mirrored lines of blood along her palms. They awakened eagerly, humming low and intimate, as though pleased to be fed again. Her Veinscript flared faintly, tracing her throat, ribs, thighs.
In the distance, a scream rose.
Then another.
The man stepped forward, blood dripping from his hand, eyes fixed on the road leading inland—toward firelight, fear, and a world convinced it understood monsters.
"Let them light their fires," he said quietly."They'll learn what answers blood before prayer."
Beside him, the woman fell into step, her red eyes bright with promise.
Behind them, the sea closed.
It did not follow.