"You're a bastard. How can you say you don't know your name?"
The soldier was shouting. Small sprays of saliva hit Renji's cheek, but he didn't blink. He couldn't. He was hanging by his wrists from a rusted hook in the stone wall, his shoulders screaming as the tendons stretched too far. The hoodie he'd just stolen was bunched up under his armpits, chafing the gray skin. He felt a drop of sweat crawl down his ribs. It was annoying.
"Mr. Soldier," Renji wheezed. His voice was thin, dry. "Could you put me down? I haven't actually done anything."
The soldier's left eyelid twitched and lowered. He looked at Renji like he was a broken gear in a machine that usually worked fine. Nobody questioned the Jade Sinew. Not like this. Not with a face that looked like it was bored of being tortured. The soldier stepped in close. He turned Renji's head with a rough, calloused hand to force eye contact.
Renji just stared back. His leg was pulsing—a steady, hot throb from where the arrow had chewed through the muscle—but his eyes remained flat. There was no glassiness of fear. No frantic darting.
The soldier flinched. It was a small movement, a slight shift in his weight. He tried to reclaim the space, leaning in until his nose almost brushed Renji's. He looked like he was about to kiss him, or bite him. Renji's eyes widened, a brief flicker of genuine confusion hitting him. What is this guy doing? The soldier let out a low, guttural groan, then opened his mouth and roared. It was a practiced, vibrating sound intended to mimic a predator, a loud, wet noise that echoed off the damp stone walls. Renji just waited for him to finish. He yawned. The lack of sleep was hitting him harder than the interrogation. He stretched his arms as much as the shackles allowed, the iron biting into his skin.
"I'm just me," Renji said. "So. Down?"
The soldier recoiled. The aggression drained out of him, replaced by a jittery, uncertain energy. He fumbled with the release mechanism on the wall. The hook gave way with a sharp, metallic snap. Renji dropped. He didn't land on his feet; his injured leg buckled immediately, and he slammed into the dirt floor, his shoulder hitting the stone.
He stood up anyway. It took three tries. He brushed the filth from the black fabric of the hoodie, his fingers lingering on a small, loose thread near the hem. The pain in his thigh was a constant, sharp reminder of the arrow, making his breath hitch.
"I'm going now," Renji said. He turned to leave, but his balance was off. He took one step, his weight shifted wrong, and he went down again, his chin hitting the floor.
The soldier rushed over, his hands hovering as if he wanted to help but was afraid to touch. "I... I can treat that. Look, I'm sorry, young man. Let me see the wound."
Renji held up a hand. "Don't touch me."
He forced himself upright, his face pale and slick with cold sweat. He limped toward the exit, his gait uneven and ugly. He looked like a wounded dog trying to keep its dignity while its back leg dragged in the mud.
Back in the clothing stall, the owner groaned. She woke up on the floor, the smell of dust and old wool in her nose. She stood up, her glasses lopsided on her face. Then she saw him. The gray-skinned man in her best merchandise, limping away.
"You!" she screamed. She grabbed a heavy wooden ladle from a nearby bucket of wash-water and shook it at him.
Renji didn't wait. He didn't explain. He saw the ladle and the anger in her eyes and he bolted. He ignored the fire in his thigh, forcing the leg to pump, his boots slapping the pavement in a frantic, stumbling run.
The soldier stood in the street, his mouth hanging open. "I thought... I thought he was crippled." He watched the path Renji had taken, then looked at the woman.
The owner stopped. She looked at the empty rack where the hoodie had been. It was the most expensive piece in the district—heavy silk and reinforced cord.
She started to calculate the loss in her head, the numbers spinning until her chest felt tight. Her heart pounded, a frantic drum in her ears, and then, with a quiet sigh, she fainted for the second time that morning. The soldier had to catch her before she hit the rocks.
Renji kept moving until the adrenaline began to sour in his gut. He was deep in the city now. It was beautiful, but he didn't care about the architecture. He cared about the shade. He stopped in front of a massive building, its entrance wide and flanked by pillars that felt cold to the touch. People were moving in and out—students with satchels, old men with scrolls, all carrying that same gray, ashen skin.
"A library," Renji whispered. He leaned against a pillar, letting the cool stone soak into his back.
This was the center. If there were books, there were maps. There were records of the lineages, the ways to train this brittle, gray body, and the path to the gates that led to the Abyss Lord's doorstep. He pushed himself off the pillar, his leg screaming in protest, and followed the crowd inside.
The hall was too large. It made Renji's head swim. The ceiling sat high up in the shadows, supported by pillars of that same cold, white stone, and the floor was polished so bright it hurt his eyes to look down. People were everywhere. Thousands of them. They moved with a quiet, shuffling sound—the friction of cloth on stone and the low murmur of voices that didn't quite carry.
"What the hell," Renji muttered.
He followed the long paths between the shelves. The books weren't messy. They were lined up with a precision that made him feel even more out of place, each section marked with signs he could read but didn't quite trust. His leg was still bleeding. He could feel the wetness of it soaking into the inner thigh of the stolen trousers, a warm, sticky sensation that made him want to sit down and never get up.
"How am I supposed to find anything in this?" He stopped, his hand resting on the edge of a mahogany table. It felt solid. Real.
A woman in a stiff, gray uniform approached him. She had a smile that didn't reach her eyes, the kind of expression people wear when they've spent too many hours being helpful to strangers.
"Sir, can I help you find something?"
Renji reached up and scratched his matted, blue-white hair. He felt the grit under his fingernails. "Umm. Yeah. I'm new. To the city. I need history. About the ascendants. Records on the Vermilion Crest. Their... their systems."
The woman blinked. Her smile faltered, her head tilting to the side. "Ascendants? Systems?" She went quiet, her gaze drifting over his shoulder toward a window. She stayed like that for five seconds too long, her face going blank. Renji reached out and touched her arm, his fingers brushing the coarse fabric of her sleeve. She jumped slightly, her eyes snapping back to his.
"Seriously," she whispered, more to herself than him. "You aren't the first one to ask that today. It's a strange day." She pointed a thin, gray finger down the main aisle. "Go straight. Pass the second turning on the right. There is a shelf marked 'The Seventhfold Aetheris.' All the old lore is kept there."
Renji gave a stiff, awkward bow. It felt wrong in this body, his lower back protesting the movement. "Thanks."
He turned and limped away. He didn't look back, but he could feel her eyes on his spine. He imagined she was judging the way he walked, or the blood he was probably leaving on the floor.
"Why do they all look for myths?" the woman whispered. She shook her shoulders, a quick, jerky motion to shed the discomfort, and went back to sorting a stack of small scrolls.
The further Renji walked, the quieter it got. The crowd thinned out until the only sound was the heavy, uneven thud of his own boots. He reached the section she'd mentioned. It was a corner of the library that felt forgotten. Dust sat thick on the ledges, and the air smelled of dry paper and something metallic, like old coins. There wasn't a single soul in sight.
"Huh. Just me then," he muttered.
He walked into the stacks. The silence was heavy, pressing against his eardrums. He ran his hand along the spines of the books, the leather cold and cracked under his touch. He stopped suddenly. A thought hit him, sharp and irritating.
I talked to her. In their language. I talked to the soldier, too.
He stood there, staring at a shelf of untitled ledgers. He hadn't even realized he was doing it. The words had just come out, shaped by a tongue that felt like his own but wasn't. It was a mistake. A big one. If he was supposed to be a stranger, he shouldn't know the local dialect this well. He felt a brief, quiet pang of fear—not the epic kind, but the small, nagging worry of a man who realized he'd left the stove on at home.
He went back to the search. His fingers caught on a spine that was thicker than the others. It was a heavy, slab-like book, the cover coated in a layer of gray dust that obscured the title. He wiped it with his sleeve, coughing as the particles hit his lungs.
How Aetheris Became the Seventh Fold.
"This is it."
He reached out and gripped the edge of the cover, pulling. It didn't move. He pulled harder, his shoulder muscles tensing, but there was a counter-weight. Something was holding the other side of the book from the opposite side of the shelf.
Renji leaned forward, squinting through the gap between the books. He expected to see a jammed hinge or a fallen plank.
Instead, he saw an eye.
It was a single, blood-red eye, wide and unblinking, set into a face that looked like it had been carved out of a rotting tree stump. The skin was a darker gray than the people outside, mapped with deep, jagged wrinkles that looked like scars. It was a wicked, ugly face. The man was pulling back, his gnarled fingers clamped onto the book's spine.
Renji's brow furrowed. He didn't let go. His fingers ached from the effort, the blood in his leg pulsing in time with the tension in his arms.
"Who... are... you?" Renji asked. The words were blunt, lacking any of the "noble" weight he usually tried to carry. He just sounded tired and annoyed.
The old man didn't answer. He just pulled harder, a low, wet growl vibrating in his throat, his red eye fixed on Renji's face with a look of pure, concentrated spite.