The wood beneath my bare feet was splintered, cold, and smelled of centuries of
unwashed fear.
I stood on the auction stage, the iron collar heavy and suffocating around my
neck. The air was thick with the scent of cheap ale, stale tobacco, and the
predatory musk of a hundred Alphas who had come to buy a piece of the
"unwanted." The shadows of the rafters were long and jagged, looking like the
ribs of a gargantuan beast that had swallowed me whole.
It was Chapter 1.
But as I looked down at my hands, I saw the truth. My wrists were small and
scarred, the silver-lined shackles biting into my skin, but beneath the ivory
surface of my palms, the Ink-Stain was pulsing with a rhythmic, crimson heat.
The tattoos of the names—the ten thousand souls I had saved—were still there,
faint and silver-grey, like ghosts waiting for a command.
I wasn't the girl who had stood here 149 episodes ago. I was the Sieve of the
Ages, and I was standing in the middle of a lie.
