The letter hadn't vanished. It hadn't faded or grown brittle. Even after three days of rain and steam, it remained dry and warm in Kael's pocket, as if rejecting the world around it.
He should've thrown it away.
But instead, he followed the name scribbled on the back:
Elias Varn, 9 Hollow End, District of Blades.
Hollow End wasn't a place people visited unless they had to. It was the graveyard of Astraven—filled with rusted gears, broken inventions, and exiles.
Kael found the towerhouse nestled between two abandoned factories, their chimneys weeping rust into the fog-choked air. The building was crooked, its stones mottled with lichen and soot, like it had grown tired of standing straight. A half-burnt wooden sign dangled on one hinge, the name scorched beyond recognition. The air smelled faintly of scorched oil and damp parchment. A gear-shaped knocker—green with age and crusted with grime—rested against a splintered oak door. Around him, the street was deathly still, the usual steam-hiss and tram-rattle of Astraven oddly absent. Somewhere in the distance, a broken music box played a warbled lullaby that ended in a slow, dragging click. Kael swallowed. Then he raised the knocker and let it fall, the clang echoing like a challenge into the silence.
He knocked. Once. Twice.
The door opened with a groan.
Inside: dust, rusted mechanisms, and the stale scent of iron.
A body sat slumped in a chair. A gaunt man in a long coat, gloved hands resting lifelessly on his knees, head tilted back.
Kael swallowed. "Too late?"
He stepped inside, gingerly placed the letter on the table near the body—
And then the corpse breathed.
It jerked. Sat upright. Opened its mouth.
But instead of words, Kael heard a voice in his head:
"You brought it. The key. The beginning."
Kael stumbled backward.
The man reached forward with one trembling hand, touched Kael's forehead.
The world turned inside out.
He found himself in a white void—a place beyond time, beyond substance. The ground beneath his feet was neither solid nor liquid, yet it held him as if welcoming a long-forgotten visitor. The air, if it could be called that, shimmered like molten pearl, and silence blanketed everything so thickly that even the beating of his heart felt like a foreign sound. There was no sky, no up or down—only infinite, blinding whiteness that throbbed gently, as if the very space was breathing. Colors flickered in his peripheral vision—ghosts of memories or unrealized thoughts. And then, as if summoned by the strange pulse of the realm, seven keys appeared, hovering in the air before him, each casting long, impossible shadows despite the omnipresent light. Floating. Time stood still. Before him, seven keys hovered in the air. Each bore a different symbol: an eye, a clock, a dagger, a flame, a feather, a coin, and a mask.
One moved toward him: the feather.
The moment it touched his chest, everything shattered.
He woke in the room again. The body was gone. The letter was ash.
But in his palm was a mark—a faint silver sigil, shaped like a winged eye.
From that moment, Kael saw things others couldn't.
People with halos of smoke. Doors that didn't belong. Whispers curling in alleyways.
And always, watching from rooftops—a raven with no eyes.
He had been chosen.
Not a hero. Not a savior.
A Wanderer.