With Silent Kiss sheathed at her side and the lantern raised high, Ember followed her unlikely captive down the spiraling stairwell. “Don’t try anything funny,” she repeated, her voice steady despite the flutter in her chest. Her eyes traced the curving stone walls, damp and dark, each step echoing like the drip of water in some long-abandoned well.
She hadn’t even known there was another basement beneath the house. The discovery made her feel as though she were venturing into some mythical dungeon, the kind sung of in half-whispered epics deep within the Abyss. And that, she realized, was only the second, lesser mystery of the night.
“Yeah, yeah,” Penta—Carl Andersen—muttered, his tone laced with boredom, as though he were less a prisoner and more an inconvenienced guest.
A transmigrator. Alive and breathing. Walking before her as if it were the most mundane thing in the world.
Their kin had been mentioned in A Journal of the Abyss, several times though always briefly—tantalizingly, in passages that seemed to expect the reader to fill in the gaps themselves. She’d pressed the adults in her life for answers more than once, but their replies had always been frustratingly vague.
“Nothing you need to worry about it…”
“They’re a rare breed—you’ll likely never meet one…”
“Even in Erboaria, they never stay long. Always driven to delve deeper, to progress further, never to return…”
Yet here one was, not delving deeper into the Abyss, but at the surface alongside her. And for what reason? That question burned in her mind, demanding an answer.
“What were you doing down here?” she asked, breaking the silence that had grown too thick, too heavy. Wasn’t the point of finding strange people to uncover their secrets? To ignite some grand adventure and set herself on the path to greatness?
So far, Penta had been a resounding disappointment. Yes, she’d discovered a hidden passage, which had its own thrill, but beyond that? He’d given her nothing. Not a spark of intrigue, not a shred of clarity. Just vague half-smirks and dismissive quips.
He shrugged without turning to face her. “Storing garden soil. Cultivating seeds.”
She prodded him in the back with the scabbard, a sharp jab that should have loosened his tongue. It didn’t. Instead, he groaned theatrically. “Uncalled for.”
“You realize I’ll know exactly what you’ve been doing the moment you open that door, right?” she said, narrowing her eyes as the stairs began to flatten out before them.
“Then why ask?”
Ember clenched her jaw, biting back her frustration. Because the silence isn’t supposed to linger when adventure beckons. It’s supposed to crack open like an egg, spilling revelations and excitement in every direction. Instead, it felt as though she were chasing a shadow that refused to stand still.
“Just open the door,” she said, her tone clipped as she nudged him again with the scabbard’s tip.
He cast her an annoyed glance but said nothing, pushing the door at the end of the stairwell open with a casual shove.
No ceremony. No arcane whispers. No ancient chants to accompany the unlocking of some grand secret. The door creaked open to reveal…a room.
Not a portal to another world. Not the entrance to some sprawling labyrinth of forgotten lore. Just a room. Cramped, dreary, and utterly mundane.
The space was barely four paces across, its stone walls pressing inward like a tired sigh. Two shelves lined either wall, bowed under the weight of—no, there weren’t even tantalizing tomes or strange objects, just a few stacks of brittle paper and faded journals. In the corner, a pile of blankets marked what was clearly a sleeping arrangement.
This wasn’t the treasure trove she’d imagined. No forbidden knowledge, no magical artifacts. Just a life tucked away, hidden from the world.
Ember’s shoulders sank as she stepped inside. “This is it?” she asked, her voice flat.
Penta stepped aside with a sarcastic flourish, bowing slightly at the waist. “Behold,” he said dryly. “The grand lair of Penta the Supreme. Impressed?”
She glared at him. “Not even remotely,” Emberlyth said, stepping past him to let the lantern’s glow flood the room. The light fell across the shelves, revealing nothing worthy of note. “You were sleeping down here?”
Penta didn’t answer, but she wasn’t really expecting him to. Her eyes caught on something else—a plate, discarded near the corner of the room. She crouched to pick it up, turning it in her hands. Her eyes went wide. “You’re the food thief,” she said, realization dawning like an unwelcome guest. “You’re the one who took my thrice-fried—”
The thought was interrupted by the sound of hurried footsteps. She turned just in time to see the door slam shut, Penta already darting up the stairs.
“I warned you not to run,” Emberlyth said with a resigned sigh, letting the plate clatter to the floor. Though, her lips quirked in a faint, involuntary smile.
Yes. This was the excitement she’d been hoping for. This was how mysterious midnight encounters were meant to be.
----------------------------------------
He didn’t make it far.
By the time Penta reached the library’s threshold, Ember was on him, tackling him to the ground like a wolf taking down prey.
She could’ve taken it easy on him. Like she had during so many years of playing catch with Vaelen. She didn’t.
He hit the floor with a force that knocked the air from his lungs, leaving him gasping even before she pinned him with her weight.
“Restroom,” he wheezed, his voice muffled against the cold stone floor. “I…I just wanted to go to the restroom.”
“Then maybe you should’ve been more cooperative in answering my questions,” Ember replied, her tone stiff. She shifted her knee against his back, keeping him firmly in place.
It was fortunate he was on his stomach, face pressed to the floor, because the grin she wore in that moment—wild, almost feral—would’ve done little to dissuade any notions of her enjoying this far too much.
Because, truthfully, she was enjoying it. The satisfying thunk of his fall, the justified excuse to finally vent her mounting frustrations. “Now, you have two options,” she said, her voice calm in a way that felt all the more threatening. “Either you hold it in until I’m done with you, or you piss yourself. Your choice.”
She grabbed him by the back of his shirt, hauling him with her like an unruly sack of potatoes. He didn’t resist, though his sharp tongue proved harder to restrain.
“You realize,” he said, his voice lilting with faux casualness, “the optics of this situation, don’t you? Dragging an innocent, young beauty down into the depths of the house in the dead of night? Any reasonable bystander would assume you were up to something nefarious here, Lady Draekart. Scandalous, even.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about being mistaken for either innocent or beautiful,” Ember retorted without missing a beat. She didn’t bother letting him regain his footing as they approached the stairs. If he wanted to act like dead weight, she’d treat him as such.
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Penta clutched at her arm with mock distress. “Your words,” he said, gasping dramatically, “like daggers to my heart.”
That bravado lasted precisely two steps.
The moment Ember began descending, his voice shifted, genuine alarm creeping into his tone. “W-wait! Hold up!” He twisted in her grip, craning his neck to glance at the darkened staircase below. “At least let me walk down the steps on my own!”
"The worse you struggle, the more likely I am to drop you," Ember said, her tone devoid of sympathy. She didn’t so much as pause until they were back in the cramped little room. This time, she shoved him down onto the pile of blankets that’d served as his makeshift bed. This was, he’d have to pass through her if he wished to run.
He barely managed to regain his balance before crashing to the scarcely cushioned floor.
“Oh my,” he said, his voice colored by exaggerated indignation. Still, the smirk he sent her was maddeningly sly, if not outright mischievous. “To push a young man down onto his bed. You really are up to no good, Lady Draekart. If only the public knew…”
She rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t get stuck in her skull.
“So, are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing down here, or do I need to figure it out myself?”
“Who knows?” His grin widened as he leaned back against the wall, his posture relaxed in a way that somehow made her want to punch him even more. “You might have to coax the truth from me. Being handled by a strong, young lady like this…well, it’s been enlightening. I think I’m starting to learn something about myself.”
He clawed lazily at the air, letting out a soft, ridiculous "rawr."
Ember let out a long, beleaguered sigh, the kind of sigh that spoke to the deep well of patience she was rapidly depleting. Without dignifying his nonsense with a response, she turned her attention to a stack of papers on the nearest shelf. One by one, she flipped through them, her frown deepening with each blank page.
“These are empty,” she said, her voice sharp with accusation. She turned back to him, brandishing the stack like a weapon.
Penta, who had been massaging his neck with a grimace, immediately perked up the moment her gaze landed on him. His face split into another smile, his eyebrows waggling in an utterly infuriating fashion. “A blank page is just an untapped canvas, my dear. How about you and I create a masterpiece together, hmm? Right here. Right now.”
“How about I bash in your teeth and string them into a necklace?” she replied, her voice sweet with false politeness.
“Ooh, kinky. You really know how to make a boy’s heart flutter.”
The stack of papers hit him square in the chest before he even had time to finish his smirk. A few sheets burst into small, smoldering flames as they tumbled through the air, and the sudden heat had him scrambling with a string of startled yelps, frantically patting them out before the fire spread to his blankets.
Ember didn’t even bother to hide her satisfaction. Turning away from the commotion, she began rifling through the second shelf, her focus shifting to the journals and loose pages stacked haphazardly there. Most were as useless as the first pile—blank, faded, or stained beyond recognition.
Each useless find only fueled Ember's frustration. Mysterious cellars were supposed to hold secrets and treasures. Not dust and decay. Not this. Worst of all was Penta’s maddening nonchalance. He lay sprawled on the blankets, lazily twirling a string of frayed yarn around his finger. His expression was a wordless challenge, a mockery that seemed to say, I thought you’d figure everything out yourself.
His certainty, his gall, only doubled her resolve to prove him wrong. She tore through the room, rifling through faded journals, turning over stacks of blank parchment, nearly breaking a few shelves. It wasn’t until her fingers brushed something tucked away on the lowest shelf—a single sheet of paper, half forgotten—that her efforts bore fruit.
It wasn’t writing that filled the page. Nor was it an illustration. It was something in between. Something she vaguely recognized—lines that were alive, almost breathing—and Ember’s heart quickened at the sight. She could feel the latent power pulsing from it, like the resonance of a plucked string.
“Oh, good catch,” Penta said, his voice casual as a summer breeze. Before she could react, he had slipped over and plucked the page from her hands. “I nearly missed this one.”
Her mouth opened, ready to unleash her indignation, but she was still too stunned, and the sight of him kneeling on the floor, spreading the page out under the lantern’s light, stopped her short.
“That…” she began, hesitantly. “That’s an Aethermark?”
The words felt fragile, spoken aloud. Aethermarks were rare. Coveted. Living things nurtured by those fortunate enough to carry them. They didn’t belong on paper. And yet here it was, bold and unmistakable, thrumming with its own quiet power.
Her chest tightened as the implications swirled in her mind. Her family had spent years scraping for even the tiniest trace of an Aethermark for her, and here, in this wretched cellar, was one abandoned on a dusty shelf? A thousand questions clawed at her, but the most pressing was a single thought: How many more could there be?
Her gaze darted to the other shelves, to the worn books and weathered papers surrounding them. Did all these once hold Aethermarks too? And if so, what had happened to them?
Her breath caught as she turned back to Penta. He had rolled up his sleeve, revealing an arm that defied belief.
Inky lines covered him, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They twisted and clashed, interweaving into a chaotic mural that danced across his skin. She had heard tales of her grandfather, a legend said to carry five Aethermarks—a generational prodigy.
But Penta...
This young man was covered in so many marks she couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. Each mark seemed to war with its neighbors, their edges jagged and incongruous, yet the whole somehow found a precarious balance—a harmony born of chaos.
Her breath hitched as she watched him rest his hand near his elbow, his fingers finding a rare patch of unmarked skin. No sooner had he touched it than the surrounding ink recoiled, retreating like shadows from a flame, leaving the space bare and ready.
“Wait… what are you—?” Her voice faltered as he produced a pencil from seemingly nowhere.
With practiced ease, he began sketching new lines on his arm. His strokes were quick and sure, the marks at once familiar and utterly alien. The design mirrored the one on the page, yet it wasn’t a simple copy. This new mark was bolder, more refined. It was as if the imperfections of the original were being rewritten in their truest form.
As he finished the last flourish, the mark on the page began to dissolve. Wisps of light spiraled up, drawn into the fresh ink on his skin. The paper emptied itself of its power, leaving only blankness behind.
Ember’s jaw hung open. “How…?”
Emberlyth had only ever experienced the work of an Ink Master once before in her life, years ago, and only from the corner of her eye. Not by choice, of course. She would have watched every stroke, every detail of the lines being drawn on her own back, had her neck only been that of an owl. But even now, years later, she could recall the sensation: the strange mix of warmth and weight as the marks were woven into her skin.
The Ink Master himself had been a relic of a man, his frame bent like an overused quill. He hadn’t worn an entire gallery of marks like Penta did either. No, the old artisan had carried just a single line of fine script that snaked elegantly down his fingers. Ember remembered watching through a mirror as that line glowed faintly with each deliberate motion of his hand. It had been mesmerizing. Sacred.
Now, the memory felt distant, overshadowed by the sight before her.
Penta sat in a strange, meditative silence, his marks a riot of chaos across his skin. They clashed and twisted, not as the work of an artisan but of some unrestrained force. Her thoughts blurred with questions and anger until, before she even realized it, she had stepped forward and seized his shirt.
“Lady Dreakart!” Penta gasped as she tore it open, his voice laced with mock offense. He clutched at his chest, his expression a mix of indignation and humor. “Why so forward? I’m still an innocent youth—”
“Those marks,” Ember cut him short, her voice cold and sharp. Her eyes traced the web of chaotic lines that crisscrossed his chest. There were so many more of them. Not just dozens—hundreds of them. More than she’d ever seen, more than she’d even thought possible. “Are they all my family’s?”
Her voice cracked slightly, betraying the storm brewing beneath her words. Something cold twisted in her stomach. Was her anger directed at Penta, this strange boy who sat smug and unrepentant? Or at her family, who had kept so much hidden from her?
How many nights did I lay awake, wondering if they’d ever find just a single mark for me? The thought burned. If her family had stowed all this away here, then what secrets were hidden in their main vaults back in Erboria?
“Per common law,” Penta began, adopting a mockingly authoritative tone, “the rightful owner of an Aethermark is the one who—”
“They are, aren’t they?” Ember snapped, cutting him off again. She grabbed his arm, twisting it sharply toward her. Penta yelped, his shoulder bending awkwardly under her grip, but her focus was locked on the mark at his elbow—the one she had just seen him ink.
“How many of these weren’t here before?” Her voice was rising now, fueled by anger and desperation. “How many did you steal—”
“Careful!” Penta yelped, his voice strained as her fingers brushed the fresh ink. “You’ll smudge it!”
That brief protest made her hesitate. For a moment, uncertainty slowed her hand. It was enough for him to act. With startling speed, he lunged forward, sinking his teeth into the side of her hand.
“Ah!” Ember cried out, jerking her fingers back instinctively. The sharp sting of his bite burned, but by the time she processed it, Penta was already scrambling away. He bolted across the floor, bounding up the stairway two steps at a time.
“Damn it!” Ember roared, the sting of her hand forgotten as she surged after him. “Damn it all to the deepest reaches of the Abyss!”