Evening draped Myrrowind in a shroud of burnt gold and chimney smoke.
Ren sat cross-legged on the edge of the Drownstone Fountain, his dark coat loose at the collar, black hair brushed back just enough to suggest effort. A cracked lute balanced on his knee, strings only half-tuned. His voice, however—his voice was silver.
He sang like someone who didn't care if the world listened, which was why it always did.
Coins clinked lazily into a battered cup at his feet. A pair of washer-women clapped along. A boy leaned from a balcony, whistling to the rhythm. Even the city's smoke seemed to hold its breath.
Ren wasn't needing a mask.
He was a maskless lie.
The face Ren wore most often. The version of himself people expected—poor, clever, forgettable. A street boy with a sharp tongue and a voice worth a copper. He belonged in the gutters. In the crowd. In the noise.
That was his trick. No name needed.
But tonight, something was off.
Not in the street.
In the air.
It had a weight to it. A wrongness, like the hush before a funeral bell.
He saw it too late.
A gloved hand wrapped around his wrist.
The music broke. Strings twanged. Ren froze mid-note.
He looked up.
The mask staring down at him was carved like a serpent, coiled and watching. The Hollow Court.
They had found him.
Every voice in the street fell silent.
Except Ren's.
He smiled.
Not wide. Just enough to say I knew you'd come.
Then he screamed.
A shrill, guttural cry that came not from his throat, but from something deeper—raw and desperate and perfectly, precisely human.
The gloved hand recoiled.
The serpent-masked figure stepped back as if burned, and in that half-second of hesitation—
Ren vanished.
He didn't run. Not yet.
He melted. Slipped into the gaps. Over a stall, under a cart, between the shoulders of two startled vendors. A twist of movement so practiced it seemed like instinct.
By the time a second masked figure turned the corner, Ren was gone.
In a narrow alley behind the spicery, Ren grinned, panting. He pressed against the brick wall, pulse wild with glee.
"It worked," he muttered. "It actually—"
He reached into his coat, fingers trembling, and pulled the mask free.
The Mask of Forgotten Blood.
Still warm from where it had rested against his ribs.
He held it close, then lifted it to his face and pressed it over his skin.
His breath hitched.
He thought of the serpent-masked figure. The one who had touched him. He focused on the memory—height, weight, the grip on his wrist. He'd done it before. Countless times. The transformation would come.
He whispered the name he didn't know. Just that shape.
Nothing.
He blinked.
Tried again.
And pain bloomed.
Like white fire beneath his skin.
His face seized. His mouth locked open in a silent scream. It wasn't just burning—it was carving.
His knees hit the stone. He ripped the mask from his face, gasping. Blood dripped from his nose. His reflection—half-formed in a puddle—was wrong. Features shifting, stuttering like a broken illusion.
He'd failed.
For the first time, he'd failed to transform.
"What—" he choked, "why now?"
Then a sound behind him.
A voice that hummed like knives.
"There."
Ren spun.
Another Hollow Court member stood at the mouth of the alley—mask like a cracked mirror, reflecting every shadow but casting none.
They had seen him.
They had seen him with the mask.
The figure raised a long, rune-etched rod and slammed it to the ground. A soundless ripple exploded outward.
Far across the city, others would feel it.
Others would come.
Ren's blood ran cold.
"Shit."
He turned and ran.
Not like a street urchin.
Like a hunted thing.
He tore through the alleys of Myrrowind, feet pounding over moss-slick stones and forgotten graves. Past shuttered doors and ink-stained taverns, beneath hanging laundry and collapsed bridges. This was his city. His bones were built from its filth.
They might follow his face, but they would never follow his paths.
A gap between chimneys. A plank hidden in shadow. A crumbling aqueduct wall no outsider would trust to hold weight.
Ren trusted it.
He knew every broken vein of this place.
He ducked beneath a rusted grate into a dry sewer, scaled a ladder of rotted wood, popped out in the market garden behind the abandoned candlemaker's. His breath came ragged now, but his steps didn't slow.
The Hollow Court wanted to play in his city?
Then let them choke on its secrets.
At last, Ren reached an overhang near the edge of the Gutterlight District—a shattered rooftop with a view of the plaza below.
He crouched, catching his breath. The mask was in his hand again. Still warm.
And down below—
They arrived.
Six masked figures. No words. No sound.
They moved through the street like ghosts wearing robes.
Merchants stopped. A child wept. A dog whimpered and hid.
The Court didn't ask questions. They felt their way forward, following lies like bloodhounds on memory.
Ren crouched above them.
He should have run farther. Should have disappeared.
But he didn't.
He watched them.
And then… he smiled.
The mask didn't laugh this time.
He did.
In the vault beneath the ruined chapel, the Seer jolted upright. Her hands hovered over the black basin. Her breath hitched.
"He tried again."
The mirror's waters rippled, light bleeding through cracks like candlelight behind bone.
The image returned—Ren, crouched in a narrow alley, blood drying at the corner of his mouth. The mask pressed against his face, resisting.
Then…
Change.
Not full, not stable.
But the transformation began.
Cheekbones narrowed. Eyes deepened. The long silhouette of the serpent-masked Court member took shape over Ren's own—like a specter crawling over skin.
The Seer recoiled. "He nearly did it."
"He took a Hollow face?" the jagged-mask hissed.
"He wore it," she breathed, voice barely audible. "Even if just for a moment."
The leader of the Court stood motionless, but his voice dropped into something unreadable.
"Then the mask is no longer just awakening. It is evolving."
The woman with the crescent-mask leaned close to the basin. "If he can assume our forms…"
"Then not even the Court is safe," said the mirror-masked one.
The Seer's fingers trembled. "I—I saw his face. His true face. The mask pulled back for a moment. Just long enough."
A new ripple passed through the basin.
And there he was.
Ren.
No disguise.
Black hair tousled from wind and flight. Pale skin, sharp angles, a small scar on the bridge of his nose. Young—seventeen, maybe eighteen. Dirty boots. Threadbare coat. Eyes like dusk smudged over fire.
A face carved by struggle.
And confidence.
Unshakable, infuriating confidence.
The Seer reached toward the image, fingers skimming the basin.
"His name still eludes me," she whispered. "But the mask knows him. And now… so do we."
"Where is he?" the leader asked.
The basin responded.
The vision tilted—rooftops, sunset haze, a tangle of chimneys and broken tile.
Then the sound of a laugh.
Not cruel.
Not fearful.
Joyful.
Alive.
"There," the Seer said. "The edge of Gutterlight. Northeast overlook."
"Lets go."
The Court moved as one.
Ren sat with his legs dangling over the ledge. Below him, life continued, oblivious. The lanterns were being lit. Vendors hollered half-heartedly. Someone cursed at a goat.
He could feel them behind him now. Six figures. Watching.
But he didn't turn.
"Lovely view, isn't it?" he said.
Silence.
Then:
"Hand it over," said the many-eyed mask. The voice was deep. Final.
Ren smiled, still facing the city. "Strange tone to take with someone who just made you flinch like children."
"You don't know what you're carrying."
"Sure I do," he said, standing slowly. He turned, mask still in hand. "A ticket. A door. A curse. A gift."
His voice dropped lower.
"A life I chose for myself."
The Serpent-mask stepped forward. "You're not the first to try."
"But I might be the last."
Ren's grin widened. His arms opened slightly—not threatening, just theatrical. "You think this is about power? Or escape?"
He stepped closer to the ledge, eyes alight.
"This is about freedom."
Stillness.
Ren's gaze flicked across them—each mask, each weapon hidden in silk and silence.
"Do you know what it's like to wake up with nothing but lies to your name?" he said. "To steal bread with a smile. To sing for coins while your stomach chews itself hollow. To wear someone else's boots, sleep in their doorway, then vanish before they wake?"
His fingers curled around the mask.
"This thing? It gave me the chance to stop crawling. Not just to escape."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"But to rewrite."
The crescent-mask shifted. "You'll drown in your own illusions."
Ren shrugged. "Maybe. But for once, they're my illusions."
The Seer stepped forward, her voice strained.
"You can't hold onto all of them. The mask isn't a toy. It eats. It forgets. It replaces."
Ren looked at her—really looked.
Her eyes were too old for her face. He almost pitied her.
Almost.
"But I'm better at pretending than the rest of you," he said. "I've been doing it since before I had teeth."
"Ren," the leader said, voice cold as dusk, "You're walking toward a void."
He stepped back, grinning.
"Then it's a good thing I was born in one."
Above them, Ren had already sensed the shift.
He lifted the Mask in one hand, and spoke—not to the city, not to the world.
To the ones below.
He spun the mask in his palm, fingers light as thread. "It is a lie, ive lived a lie my whole life so what is wrong with continuing a lie?"
Ren's eyes glittered. "Lie. Deceit. Facade. Is my life."
They tensed.
Below, merchants had stopped pretending not to watch. Children stared from balconies. The wind refused to blow.
"This masked made those, my freedom."
"And you know the best part?" Ren lifted the mask, the carved edge glowing faintly.
He placed it gently on his face.
And then it began.
His body rippled.
First: Drel Voss, the mercenary. Scarred face, wide jaw. His voice echoed rough and low: "Come any closer and I'll show you how I earned my name."
Then: Jorven, the merchant. Gold-toothed smile and an oily laugh. "Best silks in the Quarter! Curse-free, mostly!"
Next: Sorin, the bard. Bright-eyed. "A kiss for a coin? No? Then a song for your sorrow."
A flicker—his limbs trembled.
Then Bram, the lantern-boy. Limp and all. "Evening, sir."
His voice shifted with each shape.
Memory bled into movement.
His face changed. Mouth to eyes to jaw. All caught in motion—like mirrors being smashed and reassembled.
The Seer gasped.
"It's not just disguise," she murmured. "He's possessed by them. They're alive in him."
And then—
He took the mask off.
His real face.
Sweat-slicked. Pale. Eyes wide as stars cracking, black as the night sky.
He looked down at them all below.
And then he smiled. The kind of smile no mask could fake.
"No more lies."
And he stepped back.
"No more pretending."
And he stepped back.
The serpent mask member shouted "Your too close to the edge!"
With a smirk
"I've lived on the edge my whole life."
he spreads his arms wide and stepped back.
off the edge.
Wind rushed up to meet him as he fell backward—mask in one hand, free and fearless.
As the air screamed past his ears, he said looking up at the faces of the hollow court,
"Thus the game begins."