Containe greeted her with smoke. Blackened chimneys crowned the skyline, coughing heat into a sky already veiled in ash. Fires hissed from forge spouts. Iron rang like war drums. Shade walked alone, barefoot, her steps silent against the stone. Her boots had long since filled with blood. Sheâd discarded them somewhere along the road backâa trail she couldnât remember walking. Her feet bore the weight of cracked pavement and heat-scored stone. Still, she moved forward, her body obeying orders her mind had never given. The citizens of Containe made way for her without being told. They didnât know her face. But something in them knew to stay far enough away from her. They waited in a narrow alley, tucked between a smithâs wall and an abandoned water tower. The shadows were thick there. But her presence made them recoil. Four ruffians, marked by red sashes and worse intentions.
âHey,â said the leader, a broad-shouldered man with a slanted jaw and a too-bright grin.
âWhereâs your collar, little mutt? You look like you're off-leash.â
Shade said nothing. Her bare feet pressed against the cool stone. Blood had dried around her toes. The thrum in her ears grew louder.
A second ruffian, thinner and meaner, circled behind her. âMust be worth something. Pretty little beast girl like this? Probably fetch five gold in the right part of Containe.â
The third was quiet. Too quiet. A bald man with a rusted sword. Eyes like old nailsâblunt and cold. The fourth was a boy. Barely older than Leni. Maybeten, with too-large boots and a dagger he didnât know how to hold. His voice cracked when he tried to speak.
âI⦠I donât think sheâs got anything,â he muttered, stepping back.
Shade didnât speak. Her body moved before the boy could blink. The leaderâs shin cracked beneath her foot. He screamed. She twisted and drove a conjured void dagger beneath his jaw before he hit the ground. The second one raised his bladeâonly to have it swatted aside, his throat opened with a fluid slash. The third lunged. She pivoted, summoned a second dagger mid-motion, and drove it through his eye. And the boy ran. His boots slapped against stone. He didnât look back. Just sprinted, mouth open in a breathless scream.
Let him go.
Please.
Her hand lifted on its own. The void dagger materialized and sailed through the air in a perfect arc. It caught him between the shoulder blades. He staggered. Fell. Didnât rise.
I used to spare the weak, she thought from the prison behind her eyes.
I used to be afraid of hurting children.
Now I just watch myself kill them.
The alley was silent. Blood pooled between her toes. Her face betrayed nothing. Her body stepped forward again, barefoot and clean in movement, but stained in ways that water would never wash away. She didnât bother cleaning the blood from her feet. It painted a ghost trail behind herâbare soles slapping stone, drying in streaks of brown-black beneath the heat of the forges. The entrance to the undercity came in the form of a sunken grate beneath an abandoned warehouse. No one guarded it. But the air around it always felt⦠watched. She stepped down. The damp swallowed her. Down here, everything reeked: rust, mold, scorched minerals. The tunnels pulsed with the breath of old pipes, some carrying molten metal from the foundries. Others, she didnât dare wonder about. Her feet touched things that squished, cracked, or crawled. But she never flinched. She was used to walking blind. The corridors twisted around her like old scars. She didnât remember the turns, but her body did. And there, standing like a statue of veiled smoke, waited the Veiled One. Silent. Still. Until her voice stirred the stale air:
âStill breathing. Good.â
And then, quieter:
âYou never flinched when it hurt. I wonder⦠will you flinch now that you feel?â
A voice without warmth. But the edges were softer than they shouldâve been. Shade didnât answer. Couldnât. She walked past, barefoot on cold stone. And behind her, the Veiled One stood a little longer than needed, watching, unmoving, as the door sealed shut with a whisper that sounded far too much like a farewell. The halls stretched before her, stone and silent. Every corridor within Hollow Vows felt the same: lifeless, clean, unfeeling. But this oneâthe one that led to the Carving Roomâwas colder. Older. The air buzzed here, as if the very walls were trying to speak but lacked tongues. Shade followed the Veiled One in silence. Her bare feet left faint prints on the dark stone. Every step brought her closer to something she didnât understandâand for the first time since she returned to these walls, her mind resisted. Not her body. Her very self. The voice deep within, the one they had tried to erase.
No.
Not again.
Donât open that door.
But the door did open. Steel slid sideways, and the scent rolled out like a memory: blood and burning herbs, scorched leather, and a strange sweetness that had no place in a place like this. And they were already waiting. The Inquirers, those responsible for the worst experiments in the Hollow Vows. She had heard of them, of courseâwhispers from older weapons, myths told in choked silence. No one ever said what they were. Just that they were the ones who made the tools. Not the blades. The people. This was the first time she saw them. They did not wear armor. They wore shroudsâfilmy layers of dark silk that swirled around them like smoke underwater. Not to conceal their identities. But to hide their forms. And still, too much showed. Arms that bent the wrong way. Fingers are too long. Necks like stretched leather twisted with bone. One of them moved, and a cluster of blackened teeth showed behind where a throat should have been. They did not walk. They drifted, inches off the ground. But their presence was heavy. Ancient. Wrong.
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What are you? she wanted to scream.
What did they make you give up to become this?
She had never remembered being scared. Not in Hollow Vows. Not in the Dark Room. Not even on the day of her first carving. But she was scared now. Not of pain. Of them. One of them tilted its head toward her, though it had no eyes. The cloth shimmered with breathless tension. The weight of something watching, even without sight. A voice buzzed from deep within its throatâa sound layered in multiple tones:
âThe weapon consumed the soul.â
Another stepped closer. Its shroud rippled unnaturally, revealing the suggestion of limbs wrapped in too many joints.
âThe hound was erased. Entirely. There was no residue.â
âShe altered mid-battle,â a third noted, floating above her right side. âHer dama flow fluctuated. The scars realigned. Curious.â
They circled her as if observing a specimen, voices rising in fevered reverence.
âWhat changed her?â
âWhat allowed the shell to eat the soul?â
âThe blade? The runes? Or the will?â
Shade lay unmoving on the table.
But her mind curled tighter with every word.
Donât look at me. Donât touch me. Donât speak.
You don't get to be amazed by what you did to me.
Please. Not again.
The first Inquirer extended a long hand â skin stretched over what might once have been bones. A finger touched her stomach, trailing the edge of one of her carved runes, still dark with old dama residue.
âThese runes are no longer inert. Theyâre pulsing. Growing.â
Another leaned over her face, breathing words that bent the air:
âShe may be mutating.â
âOr awakening.â
They didnât ask for permission. No one ever did here. Her body didnât flinch. But her soul was screaming. Knives came next. Not for pain. Not for punishment. For curiosity. They cut without urgency. They opened her skin along old lines, measuring muscle tension, the glow beneath her veins. One of them hissed in what might have been admiration.
âShe is aligning with something older than we know.â
âThen we must know more.â
More cuts.
More murmurs.
More fascination.
And as they peeled back her flesh like parchment, Shade's mind shattered against the inside of her own skull, whispering the only word left in her:
Stop.
The blades finally stopped moving. The Inquirers murmured to one another in tongues that werenât meant for ears. Their hands withdrew, slow and reverent, slick with blood that wasnât theirs. Tools were wiped clean. Runes were traced in the air above her with ink that shimmered like oil and vanished before it touched skin. Shadeâs body did not move. It had endured worse. It always endured. But something broke. A soft sound escaped her lips â not a sob, not a scream. Just a breath that trembled slightly at the end. And then â a tear. One. It slid from the corner of her left eye, curling along her temple and into her hair. No one wiped it away. No one spoke of it. But it fell. And it was the first tear since the day she had been carved the first time. Not that she would remember. Not that her body would have let her. But her soul did. Deep beneath the chains and the scars, the part of her that still remained, whatever fragment had not been cut away, felt it. The pain. The loss. And the cold truth that she hadnât flinched⦠but she had broken.
***
Time passed in haze and silence. Not unconsciousness. Not sleep. Just the stillness of being nothing. Her body had been laid bareâflesh parted, runes disturbed, something taken that she couldnât name. They hadnât spoken to her. Theyâd spoken about her, around her. As if she were a shrine. Or a vessel. Or both. Her body moved now, slowly mendingâwrapped in gauze soaked in faintly glowing salve, her skin itching with the cold crawl of dama-infused healing. The Hollow Vows didnât waste potions on comfort. Only function. If she couldnât move, she couldnât serve. But Shade⦠Shade did not move. Her mind lay beneath herself, quiet as a grave.
They opened me again.
They touched me without permission. They marveled at what they made of me.
I didnât scream, but I wanted to. I wanted to run.
My legs didnât listen. My arms obeyed. My eyes watched it all.
Iâm still here. But Iâm not mine.
Something hot welled in her throat. Not rage. Not grief. Humiliation. She didnât feel like a person. She felt like a door. A doorway to something they couldnât understand, and so they cut, and they bled, and they whisperedâ And she lay silent as they did it.
This isnât life, she thought. This is puppetry.
Iâm a marionette. Just better dressed.
There was a rustle of cloth. A shift in the air. Shadeâs fingers twitched. Footstepsâquiet, near soundlessâapproached and stopped beside her cot. She didnât open her eyes. She didnât need to. The Veiled One stood there. No words. No movement beyond breath. Just... standing. Watching. And though the figure was silent as stone, Shade felt itânot the scrutiny of a commander, not the assessment of a superior⦠But something smaller. Quieter. Something like checking to see if a lantern still flickered in the dark. She didnât speak. Neither did the Veiled One. But the silence between them was no longer empty. It pulsed. And for just a breath, Shade didnât feel entirely alone.