The parchment felt heavier than it should have.
Cassian Vale sat at his narrow desk, the single oil lamp casting its light in a small pool across the room. Outside, the wind dragged the fog against the windowpane like a restless hand. The rest of the boarding house was silent — the sort of silence that pressed in from every side, waiting for someone to make a mistake.
He set the folded scrap before him. It was still blank. No watermark, no faint trace of ink under the light. He turned it over, holding it close to the flame, but the paper drank the light greedily, revealing nothing.
The man's words replayed in his head:
They will come for you… because you carry… part of it.
Part of what?
Cassian reached for his pen, dipped it into the inkwell, and wrote a single word across the page: Who?
The ink sank into the parchment instantly — and vanished.
Cassian sat back. His pulse quickened. He wrote again, this time slower: What do you want?
The words disappeared as before.
And then, faintly, as though rising from the fibers themselves, new letters began to bloom. They formed not in black, but in a faint, silvery shimmer that shifted when he moved the paper.
Name the one who reads, and I will answer.
A chill crept up his spine. It was a trick, some coded correspondence — or worse, one of the Inscriptors' forbidden sheets.
He dipped his pen again. Cassian Vale.
The moment the ink vanished, the oil lamp sputtered. Shadows gathered in the corners of the room, stretching taller than the furniture should allow.
On the parchment, fresh words appeared, the letters uneven, as if written by a shaking hand:
One of three. Guard it. The others hunt for the rest.
Cassian's breath caught. He began to write another question — but the paper grew hot in his hands, curling at the edges. He dropped it onto the desk just as it caught fire, burning with a pale, smokeless flame.
In seconds, it was gone.
And in the hallway outside his door, a floorboard creaked.