Kana stood on the edge of the dock, boots planted firmly despite the rocking of the ship behind her. The vessel was a bulky, ugly thing—one of her father's older merchant ships, patched with mismatched planks and sealed with charms in half a dozen old languages. Its hull was carved with sea runes meant to ward off hungry spirits and storm-lords, though most of them were faded and chipped from years of wear.
Ren stood a few feet away, hands shoved into the pockets of his patched coat, squinting against the wind that carried the salt stink of the harbor. He wasn't a fan of goodbyes. They felt too much like endings.
"You sure you're not going to sink in that thing?" he asked, nodding toward the ship. "It looks like it's held together with fish guts and sailor prayers."
Kana rolled her eyes. "Sailor prayers are more reliable than half the people in this city."
"That's not saying much."
She grinned. "Still more reliable than you."
Ren placed a hand on his chest, mock-offended. "I'm the picture of reliability."
"You're a picture, alright. Just not one anyone hangs on the wall."
They stood like that a moment longer, smirking, letting the words cover over what neither of them wanted to say.
Then she reached into her satchel and pulled out a folded scrap of parchment. "Here."
He took it. The edges were lined in silver ink—one of her little enchantments. A glyph shimmered faintly in the center, like something alive trapped under paper.
"If you burn it, I'll know," she said. "Wherever I am."
Ren nodded, careful not to look too serious. "Planning to sail off the edge of the world again?"
She shrugged. "Only if the maps lie. Again."
Her father was shouting something from the ship's deck—probably about cargo manifests or stolen spices—but Kana didn't glance away.
"Two months," she said softly. "Three if the trade routes are muddy."
Ren tilted his head. "That long without me? However will you cope?"
"By not getting arrested in the meantime."
"No promises."
She stepped forward and gave him a quick hug—brief, but firm—and pulled back just as fast, like lingering would make it harder. It would.
"I'll bring you something strange," she said. "Maybe a cursed dagger. Or an enchanted fish."
"Surprise me."
She paused at the gangplank, hand resting on the railing, then looked back one last time.
"Stay out of trouble."
Ren flashed a crooked smile. "Trouble's the only thing that stays with me."
Kana laughed—short and fond—and disappeared up the ramp.
He watched until the sails swallowed her silhouette.
And then, when the ship was little more than a smear of color against the grey horizon, he looked down at the charm in his hand and pocketed it without a word.
She always left. That was just how it was. A girl with a map in her blood. He'd grown used to the emptiness she left behind.
The city creaked and groaned around him like an old beast waking.
And just like that, Myrrowind was his again.
Ren wore a face the streets knew: Lio, the limp-legged mute who sold knockoff charms near the edge of Lantern Row. He limped convincingly, dragging his heel with each step, hood low over his eyes. His fingers—quick, clever—flashed the same stolen trinkets he'd been peddling for years.
"Oi, Lio," barked Old Raffen, the toothless candle-maker, from his shack. "Got one o' them luck wards left? The kind that hum?"
Ren gave a crooked smile and nodded, pulling a small carved bone disk from his satchel. It had no magic. But it was old, and that was often enough. He tapped it twice, pretending to activate some imagined enchantment.
Raffen grinned and tossed him a pair of coppers. "Don't die today, boy."
A few alleys later, Ren dropped the limp and shifted. By the time he reached the upper fish market, he was Marn—an apprentice dock clerk with ink-stained sleeves and a nervous twitch. He greeted a man at the ledger post and slipped behind a barrel.
"Marn!" called a gruff voice. "You're late with the reports again."
Ren turned and offered an awkward grin. The man who approached was fat, sunburned, and reeked of salt and beer. He was Dorgen, a shift foreman Ren had watched for weeks.
"Sorry, sir. I tripped," Ren replied, pitching his voice an octave higher, mimicking the cadence he'd heard Marn use months ago.
Dorgen shook his head. "Clumsy bastard. Got the scrips?"
Ren fumbled with his satchel and handed over folded papers he'd prepared the night before—blank, but sealed with the wax he'd stolen from a cargo registry two nights ago.
Dorgen didn't check. He never did.
"Get goin', and stop starin' at the fancy boats. You'll never see the inside of one."
Ren bowed and walked away, a small smirk hidden behind his sleeve.
Ren drifted deeper into the city like smoke through cracks, moving from face to face, skin to skin. By the time he left the fish market, Lio and Marn were already discarded like old costumes. He tucked their mannerisms into the folds of his memory, ready to wear again when needed. The mask wasn't on his face—not yet. But every lie he lived felt like a rehearsal for it.
Myrrowind stretched on forever—bloated, crooked, and hungry. No nobles lived here. No palaces. No knights. Just crooked brick tenements and alleyways that changed names each week. The city had once been part of a kingdom, long ago, before it bought its own freedom with coin and corruption. Now it belonged to itself—and to those smart or vicious enough to survive in its veins.
Ren passed through Thornhook Square next, ducking beneath a sagging laundry line. Thornhook was where the city sold its lies in bulk. Fortune-tellers sat in crooked booths offering blessings from dead gods. Alchemists sold boiled mud labeled as "dragon remedy." He became Cren here—a limping war veteran with a patch over one eye and a scar made with candle wax and a sewing needle.
"Cren!" called Maelya the potion-hawker, waving him over. "You've been dodging me!"
He forced a grimace. "Not dodging, Mae. Just limping slower."
She laughed and slapped his shoulder. "That leg still bad?"
He gestured vaguely. "Storms make it worse."
She pressed a vial into his hand. "Here. Just take it. For the leg."
Ren paused. That was new. He hadn't expected generosity.
He gave a nod, genuine this time. "Thanks, Mae."
As he walked away, the bottle warm in his coat, he realized something strange. In every lie, someone believed in him. Trusted him. Cared.
It made him feel like a ghost wearing borrowed kindness.
But none of those masks were real. They were tricks. Performances. And though he was good at them—brilliant, even—they were always hollow. He could mimic a voice, a walk, a gesture. He could forge names and memories. But he didn't become them.
Not until now.
Not until the mask.
The idea clawed at his thoughts all day. When the sun dipped behind the smoke-choked skyline, Ren finally retreated to a forgotten alley behind the Weaver's Row. He checked both ends, climbed up to a ledge where broken crates formed a half-sheltered alcove, and sat with his back to the wall.
The mask was wrapped tight beneath his coat, cradled like contraband. It hadn't moved. It never pulsed or shimmered like some magical relics. But it made the air heavy around it.
Carefully, he unwrapped it.
The same face greeted him—white as bone, smooth as still water, split with a gold line. The black eyeholes seemed to see through him. It wasn't threatening. Just waiting.
"Let's see what you are," Ren muttered.
He slipped it on.
It clung to his face like breath on glass.
No pain. No light.
But something different. Something… alert.
Ren's fingers brushed the rim of the mask. Then, without thinking, he reached to adjust his coat—
And his hand grazed the arm of a passing man below the ledge. A tall figure in mercenary gear. Leather plates, worn boots, sword at the hip. The man barely noticed and kept walking.
But Ren froze.
His head swam.
A sudden spike of heat crawled up his neck and behind his eyes. Lightheadedness took him. The world spun.
"Shit," he whispered, stumbling down from the ledge. He barely made it into a side alley before he collapsed to his knees.
Then the pain came.
Not sharp. Not stabbing.
It was rewriting.
His bones felt like they were liquifying, stretching. His skin rippled like boiling wax. His breath came in short gasps as his limbs shifted, jaw reshaped, fingers lengthened.
And when it was over—when the world stilled and the mask melted from his face—
He looked up into a shattered pane of glass hanging from a wall.
A stranger stared back.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Scarred across the brow. The face he'd touched. The mercenary.
But not just his face. Ren felt… different. His stance. His weight. His breath. Even the calluses on his hands were wrong—thicker, like they'd gripped steel for years.
And in his head—
Memories that weren't his.
A name: Drel Voss.
A blade technique: the Houndsplitter arc, taught in the East.
A woman's face, laughing over spilled mead—his mead.
Ren gasped and gripped the wall.
"What in the hells is this?" he whispered.
He walked. Unsteady at first. His body didn't feel like his. But his mind adapted quickly. Each step came easier. The limp Drel carried—Ren felt it. The way he scanned crowds, the way he checked exits. It all came naturally.
He passed a vendor.
"Drel! You're early tonight," the woman said, tipping a clay jug his way.
Ren blinked. "Yeah. Business ended quick."
She snorted. "That tongue of yours always did close a deal."
He smiled—her smile. Not his.
He kept moving.
Each face on the street now carried some weight of familiarity. He knew these people. Knew their debts. Their habits. Who owed him favors. He passed a butcher's stand and remembered the exact haggling argument Drel had last week. He cut through a tavern and heard his own name shouted—Drel!
This wasn't mimicry.
This was possession.
Ren strolled down the cobbled main artery of Crookman's Hollow, the pulse of Myrrowind thumping around him—brash and busy. But he wasn't Ren anymore.
He was Drel Voss.
And everyone believed it.
"Drel! You filthy bastard, back from the pits already?" a wiry man called from a shaded corner, flipping a dagger between fingers.
Ren—no, Drel—smirked. "Had to get out before the pay dried up."
The wiry man laughed. "That's what you said last month. Still owe me that pint from the Screaming Kettle."
"I'll double it next time."
He walked on. Every step was casual confidence. No limp, no stammer. This body knew how to move—shoulders broad, feet firm, chin high. The sword at his side swayed with weight he didn't usually carry. But the gait came naturally. Instinctively.
A woman brushed past him and did a double take. "Drel? Weren't you just in Bastrel's Alley?"
"Fast traveler," he quipped, not breaking stride.
She squinted, confused, then shrugged and turned away.
Ren's mind spun with clarity—and thrill.
They don't even question me. I've fooled them all. His mouth curled into a grin. I'm not pretending anymore… I am him. Voice, stride, memory—it's all perfect.
He turned the corner and found himself in front of a smoky tavern: The Shackle's End.
A deep, automatic memory rolled over him—Drel had spent dozens of nights here. Ren remembered where he liked to sit, which chair wobbled, which barmaid he flirted with.
He pushed the door open and was immediately greeted.
"Drel! You survived!" barked a heavyset man from behind the bar. "Thought the Red Fang contract might've done you in."
Ren grinned like a wolf. "Didn't even get scratched."
"Still drinking blackroot mead, or did you finally grow taste buds?"
"Pour two. I'm celebrating."
He took the seat at the far right corner—the one Drel always chose. The cushion was torn. The table etched with a blade tip. He knew it would be. He had done it.
Or rather, Drel had. But now, those memories were his.
The barmaid—a soft-eyed woman with greying hair—placed the mugs down and leaned close. "You find that girl you were looking for? The one from the cove?"
Ren hesitated.
A memory bloomed. Rain. Blood. A promise made on a rotting dock.
He responded without thought: "Didn't find her. Might never."
The barmaid's hand lingered briefly on his arm. "She'll show. The sea brings back what it loves."
Ren nodded once.
But inside, panic fluttered.
That wasn't me. I didn't know her. Why did I say that?
He downed the mead and stood abruptly, pushing past the other patrons.
Get out. Just walk. Don't think.
Outside, the dusk had turned Myrrowind gold and grey. Shadows stretched long between buildings. The streets buzzed.
He ducked into an alley near Pickman's Row, where ironmongers haggled over rusted blades. And then he saw it—
Him.
The real Drel.
Wide-shouldered. Sword-swinging. Alive.
Walking with a confident gait and a fresh gash across his jaw.
Ren froze.
Shit.
The mercenary passed only a few feet away, greeting a woman near a vendor.
But the woman paled.
"I—wait… Drel? I just spoke to you in the Hollow…"
Drel frowned. "No you didn't."
"Are you drunk? You were just there!"
"I've been on the east wall all day," Drel said, clearly agitated.
Another voice joined. "He was just at the tavern! He bought drinks!"
"What are you on about?" Drel growled.
The confusion spread like smoke. People started murmuring.
Ren slipped deeper into the shadows, heart pounding.
Too close. Too fast.
He bolted.
Down the alley. Past crates. Over a fence.
His pulse thundered. The face—Drel's face—was still his. But it was fraying. Memory fragments stabbed at him like splinters.
A battle in the Eastern Reaches. A pact made with a dying friend. The feel of a girl's lips in a city he'd never visited.
They were his now.
But they weren't.
Ren stumbled into a back alley, coughing, chest heaving.
He collapsed behind a stack of broken barrels, clawing at his face.
He couldn't remember his real voice.
Which one is me?
His hands trembled.
Then, with a cry of pain and rage, he tore the mask from his skin.
It came away like wet wax, cold and hot at once. His skin steamed. His body buckled.
And then—
Stillness.
The alley was quiet again. The mask in his hands looked inert. Innocent.
He was Ren once more. Thin. Wiry. Anonymous.
He sat there, gasping, sweat soaking through his shirt.
And then—
He started laughing.
Not madly. Not wildly.
But with exhilaration.
His whole body buzzed. His mind trembled with what he'd seen, felt, known.
The mask wasn't just disguise. It was immersion.
It was rebirth.
And he had only scratched the surface.
He leaned against the wall, eyes wide with wonder.
"I can be anyone," he whispered. "Even the people who shouldn't exist twice."
The mask pulsed faintly in his hand.
Not warm. Not cold.
Just waiting.
With a small smirk, all Ren could think and say,
"This is.... Exciting..."