Dawn crept in slow through the river mist, pale and weightless.
Edenrock stirred the way old dogs did—slow, stiff, reluctant. Windows cracked open to spill out the scent of boiled barley and lamp oil. Buckets thudded at the well. Two children argued about frogs beneath the alder tree, barefoot in the cold.
Nerin watched it all from the porch of the Widow Bell's cottage.
He hadn't slept.
The wound on his arm was shallow, but it burned with a strange pulse, like the skin there no longer recognized the rest of him.
He flexed his fingers.
Still his hand.
Still human.
But… altered.
You were touched, something inside him whispered.
He wrapped the arm tighter and stood as the widow stepped outside, carrying two bowls of porridge.
"Leyra sent word," she said. "The council wants to see you. Now."
Nerin grimaced. "I just cleaned the blood off my boots."
"I'd keep it on," she said. "Might remind them why they're still breathing."
---
The "council" of Edenrock was more form than force—a carpenter, a tanner, and three elders who traded in stories and tradition more than law. They met in the weathered hall that leaned slightly to one side, its floor warped by years of damp.
Leyra was already inside, arms crossed, face unreadable.
Elder Fenn, the tanner, spoke first.
"We've received complaints."
"About the masked attackers?" Nerin asked dryly.
"About you," another elder snapped. "You've been stirring fears. Digging into ruins. Teaching children symbols they shouldn't know."
"I didn't teach anyone—"
"That boy who sees murals in his sleep? He drew one of your maps."
Nerin tilted his head. "Then maybe listen to him."
Silence.
A long one.
Leyra broke it. "We need him. He's seen more than the rest of us. And fought one of them."
"And what happens when they come again?" Fenn asked. "More of them, not just one? What's your plan then, outsider?"
Nerin didn't answer immediately. He walked slowly to the firepit in the center of the room, looked down at the ashes.
"Have you ever heard of recursion binding?" he asked.
The room frowned back at him.
"It's a theoretical form of Essence patterning," he continued, crouching. "Used to trap memories in a repeating loop. The masks—they're not just conduits. They're mirrors. Repeating the same death-thoughts over and over until they wear into the world like grooves."
He traced a spiral in the ash with one finger.
"Edenrock isn't a target. It's a source."
A beat.
Then Leyra exhaled. "So the attacks are echoes?"
"No," Nerin said quietly. "They're reinforcements. The more we ignore them, the more real they become."
"And you," Fenn asked coldly, "what are you then? A scholar? A ghostbreaker?"
Nerin stood. "A scribe. I record what's left after everyone else dies."
Then he walked out.
---
Back at the cottage, the teenage boy, Larn, sat on the porch whittling a wooden thistle. He barely looked up as Nerin approached.
"You're being watched," Larn said, not pausing his work.
"I usually am."
"No, I mean now. There's a man on the roof of the apothecary. Been there since dawn. Pretending to fix slates."
Nerin's gaze flicked sideways. Sure enough, a shadow moved just wrong on the rooftop across the square.
"Sharp eyes," Nerin said.
The boy shrugged. "You taught me how to notice."
That gave Nerin pause.
He crouched beside Larn. "Do you remember your dream again?"
"The one with the red trees?"
"No, the one with the song."
Larn frowned, hesitated. Then hummed, softly.
A four-note melody.
Off-key. Crooked in its rhythm.
But Nerin recognized it.
He'd heard it once, etched into the rim of a shattered mask.
His blood ran cold.
---
That night, Nerin returned to the shed.
He brought salt, chalk, and a canvas cloth soaked in silverroot extract. He drew glyphs in careful loops. Not summoning glyphs—but containment. The kind meant for unstable Essence relics.
He placed the broken porcelain mask at the center.
Then he waited.
The blade at his side pulsed.
Not sharply.
Softly.
As if recognizing its sibling.
The mask began to vibrate.
Nerin held his breath.
A flicker.
A memory.
—A girl with a lantern walking into a dark pool.
—A man with empty eyes whispering names into clay jars.
—A tree blooming upside-down from a dead river.
The visions weren't his.
But they used him to be seen.
His hands moved without thought—he began sketching them in the margins of his notebook.
Not just sketches. Diagrams.
Schematics.
He blinked hard. Looked down.
He hadn't written in his native script.
The symbols were from the ruins.
Somewhere between glyph and notation, like music etched into a language.
"What are you doing to me?" he whispered.
The mask didn't answer.
But the blade at his hip warmed slightly.
And for the first time, Nerin didn't feel alone in the shed.
---
A knock at the door.
He turned, hand going to the hilt.
It was Leyra.
She stepped inside, silent as wind.
"I saw the lights," she said. "Thought you'd be here."
Nerin nodded. "I think I'm learning how they think. The masks. The memories."
"And?"
"They're not sentient, but they're not mindless either. They're... fossils. Trapped layers of emotion and pain, pressed into form."
Leyra sat beside him. Her face was pale.
"They're getting closer," she said.
"I know."
"We'll need more than theories."
Nerin looked at his own notes, then at his bandaged arm.
"I think we already have more," he said softly. "We just haven't decided whether to use it."