Ashenfold looked like someone had tried to draw a city, gave up halfway, and left it in a breeze.
Buildings stretched like paper cranes. Shops breathed in and out like folded lungs. Even the signs changed when you weren't looking. One second they said "Soup," and the next it was "Poetry (Extra Spicy)."
Rin walked like she belonged. Her steps were sharp. Crisp. Like someone flipping pages too fast.
I tried not to trip.
The ground had seams. Literal folds where the world had once been flat. Like someone had taken a 2D sketch and tried to make it 3D. Badly.
"Are those actual creases?" I muttered.
"Obviously," Rin replied. "Don't fall into one."
Right. Great.
We hit the Folded Market.
Imagine a plaza full of talking books and whispering parchment. Now imagine they're trying to sell you things.
"Memory fragments! Three for a dream!"
"Poems for potatoes! Trade your tragedies!"
A lion—entirely made of paper—stood in the center. Huge. Regal. Guarding the chaos.
And then it moved.
Wait. No. Not moved—twitched.
"Uh…" I said.
FWWTHSSHH!
The lion collapsed.
One moment it was majestic. The next, it caved in on itself like someone had punched a paper lantern.
Its paw landed on a tea stall. Customers screamed. Tea leaves flew everywhere. A prayer slip smacked me in the face.
"Are you seeing this?!"
"Don't just stand there," Rin said. "Help!"
We rushed in—me, Rin, and a pair of scribes wearing ink-smudged robes. Together we unfolded legs, re-creased joints, whispered apologies to its spine.
"It's not dead, right?" I asked.
"It's paper," one of the scribes muttered. "It just lost form."
Another one traced glowing runes along its flank, whispering something that sounded like a lullaby written in ink.
A shiver ran through the lion. It straightened. It stood.
Not perfect. Not even. But alive again.
I turned to Rin. "Does that happen often?"
"Things collapse when they lose meaning," she said. "That's what ink is for. It reinforces belief."
I stared at the lion. Still trembling, but whole.
Not broken. Just... unfinished.
We passed a scribewife selling "memory tokens," a parchment child trying to swap haikus for soup, and a man screaming about stamps.
Ashenfold didn't have money. Not the kind I knew.
Instead, it had Ink.
Capital I. Different colors, different emotions:
Red for rage
Gold for memory
Blue for dreaming
Violet for secrecy
And a greenish one called "poetic bitterness" that smelled like tea and heartbreak
"You trade by writing," Rin explained. "Or bartering your real stories. Fiction's worthless here."
"Wait, fiction doesn't count?"
"Fiction is forgery," she said. "It doesn't burn."
Hawkers spoke in haiku. An old woman yelled in limericks. One guy near the entrance hollered:
"STAMPS! GET YOUR APPROVAL STAMPS! NO SCRIPT TRADES WITHOUT A SEAL!"
"Who's that guy?" I whispered.
"Master Caelo," Rin said. "Head of Officiality."
"Sounds fake."
"It is. But he made the title calligraphically perfect. Now it's legally binding."
Caelo wore a robe of cancellation slips. Stamps floated around him like lazy bees. When he talked, symbols flew from his mouth and stuck to things.
"You, wanderer," he said, squinting. "No name. No registered style. No literary permissions. Walking copyright chaos."
"He's with me," Rin said. "Temporary license."
"Provisional," Caelo sniffed. "Fine."
We passed:
A glass-eyed archivist reading memories from ash.
A scribewife named Naira who traded dreams for soup recipes.
A folded teen named Stitch who challenged strangers to word duels.
Everyone stared at me like I was a grammar error.
"You still haven't burned a name," Rin said, as we stopped by a koi pond.
"I have questions," I said.
She waited.
"If trade here is about writing your truth… how does making up a name work? Isn't that fiction too?"
Rin dipped her brush into the pond. Swirled ink across the water.
"Names aren't lies," she said. "They're promises."
"…Okay?"
"You don't write who you are. You write who you're becoming. If the world accepts it… it burns."
That didn't help.
I stared at my hands. Still smooth. Still not folded.
Was I even real here?
The Naming Bowl sat in a courtyard that smelled like burnt hope and wet charcoal.
"You write your name," Rin said. "Then you burn it. If it takes, it becomes your anchor. If it doesn't..."
"What happens?"
"You try again. Or you unravel."
"Wait—what?!"
She handed me a brush.
The parchment trembled.
I thought of all the names I'd been called: Stray.Hey, you.Nobody.
I took a breath and wrote:
Kairo.
It felt… right. Like a name with a spine.
I placed it in the bowl. Lit the corner with Emberflame.
The ink lifted. The parchment smoked. The flame whined.
And then—
Ffffssshhh… pfft.
A tiny paper bird fluttered out.
Coughed.
Exploded into glitter.
Rin burst out laughing.
"That's… rare," she managed.
"It didn't take?"
"Not yet," she said. "You weren't honest enough. Or maybe you're not ready. Some names only burn when you bleed for them."
So yeah. My name was a dud. The lion came back to life. And I might unravel at any time.
Welcome to Ashenfold.