Who am I?"
"I am... Yan Ku!"
His mind was spinning. Severe pain came from all over his body, especially from his right hand. Yan Ku couldn't stop the chaotic thoughts flooding his head and let out a pained groan.
Three days. I was out for three days.
He slowly opened his eyes. The cracked grey ceiling above him was familiar — the ceiling of a room that wasn't his. His vision gradually cleared, and an old man's face appeared before him, watching him from a wooden chair in the corner with the calm expression of someone who had been waiting a long time.
The old man was drinking tea.
"You're finally awake," the man said simply, without putting down his cup.
Yan Ku tried to sit up. A sharp pain shot through his left shoulder and forced him back down. He gritted his teeth.
Dislocated. Maybe fractured. And my ribs — at least two.
Four years of investigation work had taught him to read injuries quickly. His own were no exception.
"How long?" he asked.
"Three days."
Three days. He let that settle. The last thing he remembered was the alley — the narrow one two streets from his office, the rain, the sound of footsteps behind him. Then nothing. Four hours of nothing, and then waking up on the ground with this mark on his hand that hadn't been there before.
That had been three months ago.
And now three more days missing.
He looked at his right hand.
The mark was still there — faint lines beneath the skin, barely visible unless you knew exactly where to look. But something about it felt different now. Heavier. Like a word written in a language he almost understood.
What are you?
"You've been staring at that hand since you woke up the first time too," the old man said. "You just don't remember."
Yan Ku looked at him. "The first time?"
"You came in and out twice before today. Never fully conscious." The old man finally set down his cup. "The second time you tried to stand up and walk out. I had to push you back down."
"You're stronger than you look."
"You were weaker than you should be." The old man studied him. "Someone worked you over thoroughly. Not a street robbery — too precise. Whoever did it knew exactly how much damage to cause without killing you."
They wanted me alive.
The thought was cold and clear.
They wanted me alive, and they left this mark on my hand, and three months later my family is dead.
He said it out loud before he'd decided to. "My family. There was a fire."
The old man's expression didn't change. That told Yan Ku everything.
"When?" he asked.
"The same night they brought you here."
Silence.
Yan Ku stared at the ceiling. The cracked grey ceiling of a room that wasn't his, in a city where he no longer had anywhere to go back to.
Don't, he told himself. Not yet. Think first. Feel later.
He had learned that somewhere. He couldn't remember where anymore.
"Who brought me here?" he asked.
"I did," the old man said. "Found you in the alley behind Dust Street. You weren't dead yet, so I brought you in." He paused. "Seemed wasteful to leave you."
"Generous."
"Practical." The old man poured himself more tea. "A man with a mark like that on his hand isn't someone you leave in an alley."
Yan Ku turned his head slowly to look at him. "You can see it."
"I can read it." The old man met his eyes. "Or rather — I tried to. For three days." Something shifted in his expression. Just slightly. "I couldn't."
The room felt quieter than it had a moment ago.
"In forty years of carving work," the old man continued, his voice careful now, "I have read every known inscription style. Ancient forms. Lost dialects. Corrupted marks from failed carvings." He looked at Yan Ku's hand. "What is on your hand is none of those things."
"Then what is it?"
"A language," the old man said, "that has no business existing."
Yan Ku sat up slowly this time, ignoring the pain with the focused patience of someone who had decided pain was no longer relevant.
He looked around the room properly for the first time. Small. Clean in a minimal way. Shelves of worn books along one wall, a worktable covered in papers, a single window with the shutters half-closed. The kind of room belonging to someone who lived alone by choice, not by circumstance.
"Your name," Yan Ku said.
"Wei." The old man didn't offer more than that.
"Wei." Yan Ku filed it. "You said you worked in carving. What level?"
"Retired now. Third Inscription, Middle Sky certified." Wei watched him stand up with an expression that suggested he found the effort either impressive or foolish. "You shouldn't be standing."
"I've been lying down for three days." Yan Ku tested his weight on both legs. Painful, but functional. "I have things to do."
"Such as?"
Yan Ku looked at him.
"Finding out," he said quietly, "who was in the Middle Sky carriage parked outside my family's home the night it burned."
Wei was silent for a moment.
Then, for the first time, something that might have been respect moved across the old man's face.
"Sit down," Wei said. "Drink something first. You'll think better."
Yan Ku considered this. Then he sat.
Fine, he thought. Think first.
Then move.
Outside, through the half-closed shutters, Duskwall went about its morning. Grey streets, grey sky, the distant glow of the Middle Sky cities above the clouds, unreachable and indifferent as always.
Yan Ku looked at his hand one more time.
The mark sat there quietly under his skin, saying nothing.
I don't know what you are yet, he thought. But you cost my family their lives.
So you're going to be worth it.
One way or another.
[chapter 1 end]