The boy's name was Arin, but the world had long since misplaced the sound of it.
He crouched at the obsidian rim of the Inksea, its black waves gnawing at the shore like a starving thing. Words slithered beneath the surface—half-formed prologues, abandoned verses, the final gasps of stories left to drown. They brushed his fingertips like eels, whispering promises in languages he couldn't parse. The Rot had already begun its work in him. He felt it in the ink pooling beneath his nails, in the cough that left his tongue stained black, in the way his mother's face blurred in his memory like smudged script.
A cold wind hissed across the shore, carrying the stench of mildew and rusted iron. Somewhere in the fog, a book snapped shut.
"You're late."
The voice belonged to a woman shaped like a requiem. Her skin was the color of vellum left too long in damp, her eyes voids where ink had pooled and curdled. Lira, they called her—the Ragged Librarian. Her cloak, stitched from the frayed edges of forgotten epics, hissed as it dragged across the shore, dissolving into motes of dust where the waves licked too close. She carried a book bound in what might have been flesh, its spine weeping black sludge.
Arin didn't flinch. He'd seen her kind before—Librarians who traded their humanity for stories that ate them from the inside. Lira's fingers were brittle as aged parchment, her lips cracked into glyphs no one could read. She knelt beside him, the Rot's sweet stench clinging to her breath.
"The Lament of Hollow Kings," she said, thumbing a bloated page. The paper split like rotted fruit, revealing maggot-riddled text. "Third Edition. A tragedy of betrayal. It hungers."
He said nothing. The Codex's warnings were etched into his bones: Legacies are curses. Stories are coffins.
Lira pressed the book to his chest. Cold seared his skin, the weight of it staggering. "Drink its ink, and the Rot slows. Refuse…" She gestured to the sea, where shadows writhed like drowned punctuation.
A laugh cut through the silence—sharp, fraying at the edges.
Jerek materialized from the fog, his form shimmering like poorly set type. His edges blurred, as if the world had grown bored of erasing him. He wore dissolution like a second skin: fingertips smudged, teeth crumbling like old glyphs. A Forged Edition dangled from his hand, its cover bleeding gilt letters into the sand. The Jester's Last Laugh.
"Don't let her martyr you, boy," Jerek said, tossing the book at Arin's feet. The pages fluttered open, revealing text that squirmed like larvae. "Legacies are chains. Be the knife that cuts them."
Lira's snarl rent the air. "He's a Plotcurrent. A draft even the Codex's gutters reject."
Jerek grinned. "And you're a footnote, Librarian. At least I chose my fading."
Arin's lungs tightened. He'd seen what the Legacies did to the bonded. Garrett the Elegy, who sang dead wars to life only to choke on their ashes. The Thrice-Edited, their body a battleground of conflicting tales, screaming in three dead tongues. Yet the alternative was worse—to dissolve into the Inksea, another nameless ripple.
Lira seized his wrist, her grip like brittle paper. "Choose."
The Rot had come for his village on a moonless night.
Arin remembered the taste of smoke, the way the air had thickened with the metallic tang of ink. His mother had shoved him into the root cellar, her voice fraying as she whispered, "Don't breathe. Don't move." The Rot seeped through the cracks in the floorboards, tendrils of black vapor coiling around his ankles. By dawn, the village was gone. Not dead—erased. The houses stood empty, their walls streaked with ink, their doors hanging open like unbound books.
His mother's face had been the first thing the Rot took.
Arin plunged his hand into the Inksea.
The water screamed.
Words surged through him—not letters, but teeth. They gnawed his marrow, carved stanzas into his bones. When he wrenched free, his arm glistened black, tendrils of ink coiling beneath his skin like serpents.
The Nameless Legacy.
Pain blossomed behind his eyes. A memory unraveled—his mother's voice, the lullaby she'd hummed as the Rot took her. Gone. Erased.
Lira pressed a rusted quill into his hand. "Begin."
Jerek lunged, his form dissolving into static. "Fool! You'll drown us all!"
The Forged Edition erupted in his grip, pages fanning out like wings. Text spiraled into the air, forming a blade of gilt-edged lies. He swung at Lira, the edge singing with hollow laughter.
The Ragged Librarian didn't flinch. She flicked a finger, and The Lament of Hollow Kings snapped open. Shadows erupted—skeletal knights in tattered tabards, their swords rusted to song. They clashed with Jerek's blade, the air shivering with discordant verse.
Arin staggered back, the quill burning in his fist. The shore trembled, the Inksea boiling as his Legacy stirred.
"Write!" Lira hissed, parrying Jerek's strike with a verse torn from the Codex. "Before the Rot claims what's left!"
Arin dipped the quill into the Inksea. The black water clung to the nib, writhing. He pressed it to his forearm, the only canvas he had.
The first stroke was fire.
Once, there was a boy who drowned in stories.
He learned to breathe ink.
It did not save him.
But it made the drowning…
…beautiful.
The sea stilled.
Then the shadows began to laugh.
Jerek froze, his blade inches from Lira's throat. The Ragged Librarian stared past him, her inkwell eyes widening.
Arin's arm burned. The words he'd carved pulsed like a second heartbeat, the Inksea's whispers coalescing into a voice that was not his own.
"Hello, little Reader."
The Thrice-Edited emerged from the fog, their body a grotesque collage of narratives. One arm ended in a knight's gauntlet, the other in a lover's trembling hand. Their face shifted—hero, villain, martyr—each feature borrowed from a different tale.
"You've opened a door," they said, voices overlapping. "The Codex sees you now."
Lira backed away, her book snapping shut. "Run."
But the Inksea was rising, waves clawing at Arin's ankles. The words on his arm moved, slithering into his veins.
"Too late," the Thrice-Edited crooned. "The story hungers."
Somewhere in the Codex's heart, a page turned.
Arin screamed.
And the world began to burn.