The Weight of Failure**
The bell tolled three times over Eldermere, its sound thick and sluggish, as if the air itself resisted the noise. Kael Arvantis stood at the arched window of his prison-tower, watching the black fog coil through the city's spires like a living thing. *Three bells. The Hour of the Hollowed.*
He flexed his left hand, the one missing the ring finger—the Order's punishment for his last translation error. The wound had healed, but the phantom itch remained. *A reminder*, they'd said. *Next time, it's the tongue.*
A knock. The door groaned open without waiting for his reply.
"Scholar Arvantis." The voice was a blade wrapped in silk. Grand Inquisitor Veyra stood in the threshold, her onyx robes swallowing the torchlight. Behind her, two masked thralls carried an iron chest, its surface etched with warnings in the Old Script. *Do not open. Do not speak to it. Do not believe its lies.*
Kael's throat went dry. He knew that chest.
"You're reinstated," Veyra said. Her smile was a scalpel's gleam. "By decree of the High Diviner, you will translate *The Ashen Codex*."
One of the thralls flinched. The other's grip on the chest tightened until his knuckles cracked.
Kael forced a bow. "I am… honored, Your Grace."
"No," Veyra said. "You're desperate. And we are out of options."
---
. The Codex Awakens**
The chest hissed when opened. A smell poured out—wet parchment, spoiled wine, and beneath it, something *alive*. Like the breath of a beast crouched in the dark.
The Codex lay inside, its binding black and veined, as if stitched from the skin of something that had screamed while flayed. The spine pulsed faintly, like a slow heartbeat.
*"Touch it,"* Veyra commanded.
Kael reached out. The moment his fingers grazed the cover, the book *moved*. The spine arched toward him like a cat begging to be stroked. One of the thralls gagged.
The first page was blank. Then—
Ink seeped up from the vellum, forming words in no language Kael had ever seen. Yet he *understood* them.
*"Kael,"* the page wrote. *"You look tired."*
His blood turned to ice. "It's… addressing me."
Veyra's gaze sharpened. "What does it say?"
Before he could answer, the ink swirled again:
*"Tell her nothing. She'll cut your tongue out anyway."*
A drop of black liquid oozed from the page and landed on Kael's wrist. It burned. The pain was gone in an instant, but where it touched, his skin was now stained with a single word:
*LIAR.*
---
That night, Kael dreamed of the Hollow City.
Not Eldermere as it was, but as it *could be*—a carcass of crumbling towers, the sky a lidless eye staring down. The streets writhed beneath his feet, cobblestones splitting open to reveal teeth. And the *people*…
They were still there. But wrong.
His mentor, Althea, stood at the mouth of an alley, her lips sewn shut with veins. She pointed at his chest. When he looked down, he saw a hole where his heart should be, and inside it—
*The Codex.*
It opened. A thousand pages fluttered like moth wings, and from the darkness between them, something *giggled*.
Kael woke with a gasp. His chamber was freezing. The Codex sat on his desk, though he'd locked it in the chest. Its pages were parted, and fresh ink gleamed wet under the moonlight:
*"You see it now, don't you? The cracks in the world. We'll show you the rest. But first…"*
The next line was a single word, written in what looked like blood:
*"Run."*
A knock came from his door. Not the thralls. Not Veyra.
This knock was *inside the walls*.
---
Kael pressed his ear to the door. The knocking stopped. Then—
*Scritch-scritch-scritch.*
Claws on stone.
He stumbled back as the Codex's pages erupted in a flurry of movement, ink splattering like arterial spray. Words formed, dissolved, reformed:
*"TOO LATE TOO LATE TOO LATE—"*
The door handle *twisted*. Not from the hallway. From the *inside*.
Kael grabbed the Codex. Its binding squirmed in his grip. The moment he touched it, the knocking stopped. Silence.
Then, from the hallway, Veyra's voice:
"Scholar Arvantis. Open this door."
But the Codex hissed in his arms, ink spreading like a stain:
*"That's not her."*
---