OBSCURA

led her

ways hidden behind an ornate mask of black porcelain, delicate as glass but stronger than steel. The mask never shifted, never fogged in the w

ed, vanishing through doorways that weren't there the day b

watc

lls of St. Urien tolled twelve, she could be seen on the highest rooftops, starin

ey whispered. But t

ed in blood on church walls, when the constables dared not set foot into

stice. Or vengeance. Or

nknown to them a

ame that drifted down from a language forgotten before t

always wo

snow beneath lanternlight. When she believed in people, in love, in red

sentinel without a past. A myth

r eyes-one grey as ash, one gold as flame-watched the alley below, where two constables

ocket was a

YOU.

yes. It was the th

tten truths. A man who had helped her decode a fragment of the Nemyriad tex

. And someone h

unte

ong shadows. She moved through the warrens of Thornewall's sleeping districts until she reached the Graveroot Gate, se

world was different.

alls wept. The catacombs

damp and heavy with mildew, the stones beneath her boots slick with age. Skulls peered out from

en foolish and brave and had died trying to save someone who didn

nd found it ransacked. Shelves toppled, books burned, p

. Framed i

red into her reflectio

glass, her re

di

Slowly. Curiously.

aggere

rror c

edge, black mis

ed into her ea

was neve

ades unsheathed, bu

d the mist curling from it l

asted like dust. The mist hissed, recoiled, and slither

ifteen years ago in the ruins of Qua

through the pages left unburnt. Scrawled notes in Elias's frantic

a

dri

ard that name

connection

e been a myth, even to her. A figure whispered about in the t

d smiled at her

eance. This was older. Deeper. Something was u

e, but a faint sou

ing. A

e tunne

mp and pressed herself

re app

ndages, it dragged a staff carved from femurs

air. A wet, g

h..." it

idn't

it croaked. "But you

but the figure burst apart i

usi

a me

g hunted. Wa

ame had o

l. Rain lashed the rooftops, thunder growled low. She stood beneath the eaves of

lection, her maske

ment-only a blink

he

without

hers. Mout

yi

rd until her glove t

d begun. And she would find him. Rip th

h of the mask wa

t

lse would we

ag