Rain had fallen the night before, but by morning the sky over Aetherholt was pale and dry, as if nothing had ever touched it. Mist curled between the crooked streets and rusted rooftop gutters, curling like smoke from a forgotten fire. At a distance, the city always looked abandoned. Too quiet. Too still.
Ezren Cael Thren sat at the back of a tram car, alone.
He didn't mind the silence. He liked that the old streetcars groaned more than they spoke. He liked the worn blue seats and how the fog-streaked windows refused to give him a clear view of where he was going. More than anything, he liked the smell old wood, rust, and that strange static scent that always followed when something was about to go wrong.
Lately, that smell had been everywhere.
He tapped the side of his jacket pocket. Still there. The notebook. His. But also… not.
He hadn't written in it. Not a single word. Yet sometimes just sometimes it felt heavier than it should. Like it was carrying something he wasn't supposed to see.
The tram screeched and hissed as it pulled to a stop. Ezren stood slowly, adjusting the strap on his shoulder. The notebook didn't shift. It was as if it were pinned in place, resisting motion.
"Next stop," mumbled the conductor. His voice was tired in a way that felt permanent.
Ezren stepped out.
The neighborhood of Dustwell was as charming as its name suggested. Stone-brick buildings leaned with age, their shutters closed like tired eyes. A thick newspaper lay unmoved in a puddle, headline smudged into illegibility. Somewhere behind the iron gates of the orphanage, bells chimed twice. Late morning.
Ezren tightened his coat and walked.
He passed a small bookstore tucked between two defunct cafés. The sign above it had been erased by time or wind. Only the faintest remnants of gold leaf clung to the wood. It didn't even have a display window just a green door, chipped at the corners, and a single glass eye that reflected nothing but shadow.
He stopped in front of it.
Not because he needed anything.
But because the door… was already open.
Slightly ajar, breathing fog.
Ezren pushed it open with two fingers. A dull chime rang from inside soft, like the echo of a memory instead of a sound.
The store was dark. Not abandoned, but unused. Dust floated in the air like trapped snow. Shelves towered over him on both sides, stacked not neatly, but desperately as if the books had been crammed in to stop them from saying anything.
There was no sign of a clerk.
He shouldn't have stayed.
He stepped inside.
Ezren didn't know what he was looking for. He let his fingers brush along the spines of books as he passed most had no titles, some had too many. A few were warm to the touch. He tried not to think about that.
He paused when he saw it: a book that looked like it had been written out of place.
Its leather was cracked and silver-stitched. Its spine bore a symbol an eye pierced by thread. No author. No title. Just a thin black ribbon sticking out from between its pages like a tongue.
He reached for it.
And the room shivered.
Every shelf in the store tilted slightly toward him. The dust stopped floating. The warmth drained from his fingertips.
He heard a voice. Not aloud. Not fully imagined.
"Don't open it unless you're ready to forget what you love."
Ezren blinked. He hadn't heard anyone enter. There was no clerk. No whisper.
And yet the voice felt familiar.
He left the book where it was.
Outside, the mist had faded. The sun had not returned.
Ezren stood by the tram tracks again, waiting for the next car. He held his jacket a little tighter than before.
He couldn't explain it not to himself, not to the wind, not even to the notebook in his pocket. But something in that shop had felt…familiar.
Not in the way a place feels familiar.
In the way a decision does. The kind you've already made.
That night, Ezren didn't sleep.
Not because he was afraid. But because he was remembering something he shouldn't.
A man standing in the rain.
A sentence that had followed him through years like a stain he could never scrub clean:
"You're going to die. You can't stop it. But you have to try."
And this time, when Ezren woke from the memory…
he wasn't sure if it had been a dream.
Because the notebook in his coat had written its first line:
"You walked into the story today."
And beneath it, in faint silver ink that hadn't been there before:
"Chapter One: Dust on the Spine."