The hard rain dropping in the Gutters didn't wash away the blood on the floor, Making it spread thinner.
Ashen Vale leaned back against the brick wall, breathing in the stench of rust, blood, smoke, and rotting meat. His shoulder was cut open, blood running down. The pouch of stolen relics ripped open. Unable to move his right arm he looked up, Dren and others laughing like hyenas, thinking Ashen was already dead.
"should have known better", Ashen mutters, clutching a cracked sigil coin. "You always knew they'd sell you out"
He stumbled upon a broken archway of the vault. This wasn't part of the plan. The Drip Market smugglers said this place was empty---Just some empty ruins before the ink-storm.
They were wrong.
Inside the walls were ink-black and pulsating
Pulsating strangely.
Strange symbols moved along the stone like oil on water, shifting shapes that tried to form words in a language no one had spoken in centuries. The air was thick and heavy like someone or something was watching him.
"...Hello?" he called out.
The ink on the floor began to react-- crawling out towards him.
His legs gave out, and he fell to his knees. Blood spilled from his wound onto the ground... and the ink drank it.
A whisper bloomed in his ears
"Kneel, Child of the Blank. Let me crown you with a purpose."
"... Man what the fuck" Ashen gasped. The vault shook. Ink flared across the ceiling.
A sigil-- a floating crown made of tangled script--- descended in burning lines toward his back.
Pain. Fire. Searing Ink. Screaming.
and then... silence
He woke up with something crawling beneath his skin.
And a voice that wasn't his own.
"We are bound. You will rule, or be ruled."