The wind always tasted of iron on the outskirts of Cradle's End.
Not from fresh blood, but from the bones buried beneath the cracked earth old remnants of a world that had forgotten itself. Quinn Valen pressed a hand against the ruined wall of his shelter, feeling the bricks shift beneath his touch. Even the stones were tired here. Everything leaned, crumbled, and waited to fall.
Beyond the jagged window frame, the human camp stirred in slow agony.
Smoke rose from narrow chimneys, mixing with ash clouds that never cleared. Thin figures shuffled between stalls that sold more lies than food. Rotten cloth flapped in the breeze, stitched together from old uniforms and stolen rags. Quinn counted thirteen guards at the broken gate, none of them sober enough to stand straight.
No one came to Cradle's End by choice.
It was where the lost gathered, the discarded remnants of forgotten wars and forgotten people. A place ruled by no Codex laws, where the system ignored those too weak to be useful. Refugees, orphans, exiles they called it home because no other place would claim them.
Quinn pulled his coat tighter, stepping out into the street.
The hunger gnawed at his ribs, but he knew the routine: four hours before the water vendor closed, two before the scavengers swept the eastern fields. Time enough to trade what little he had left.
His boots crunched over the gravel and dried bones as he moved toward the market line. A few familiar faces nodded grimly old scavengers who had survived long enough to stop hoping for anything better. None knew his name. They only knew him as the flame-haired drifter who didn't speak much and didn't pick fights he couldn't win.
Quinn liked it that way.
Attention at Cradle's End meant trouble.
His destination lay just beyond the market, a crumbling shack two blocks down, where an old man named Rax traded in forgotten pages. Maps, stories, scraps of history. Junk to most. But not to Quinn.
Because in the forgotten corners of those tattered pages, he'd found a different kind of survival. One that didn't rely on scraps or stolen bread.
Knowledge.
And today, there was a page waiting for him. A price too steep for most.
But Quinn had been saving for months.
Not for food.
Not for medicine.
For this.
The wooden door sagged on its hinges when Quinn pushed it open. Dust floated thick in the stale air, curling through rays of fractured sunlight leaking between the boards. Inside, the shelves bent beneath the weight of forgotten relics, rusted metal fragments, books missing more pages than they had, and jars of yellowed bones no one could identify.
Rax sat hunched behind a crooked desk, wrapped in four layers of ragged coats despite the heat. His good eye twitched toward Quinn while the other remained glassy and blind.
"You're late," Rax rasped, his voice like splintered wood.
Quinn stepped forward, unfastening a small cloth pouch from his belt. "I have it."
Rax's thin fingers drummed on the table. "Hope you're ready to be disappointed, boy. Not every scrap leads to buried castles and shining swords. Most lead nowhere."
Quinn said nothing. He knew Rax's routines, his attempts to scare buyers off in case someone else came with a better offer. But the old man had no one else. Cradle's End wasn't a place people sought out for knowledge.
He untied the pouch, revealing four strips of iron currency and two sealed ration slips, his entire savings for the month.
Rax's greedy fingers swept them into a pocket before pulling a warped metal box from under the desk. The lid groaned as it opened.
Inside rested a thin bundle of ancient paper, pressed flat between brittle leather covers. No Codex markings. No royal seals. Just scorched edges and faded ink.
"This came from the deep ruins north of the breach," Rax said. "Nearly cost the scavenger his leg, bringing it back. They said the walls had teeth. Said the shadows moved on their own."
Quinn's fingers hovered over the leather. His chest tightened, a pressure that wasn't hunger but something heavier, something old. He swallowed.
"What language?"
Rax shrugged. "Didn't recognize it. Some scribbles are in trade-tongue, most aren't. Could be curse nonsense or could be a dead man's diary. Doesn't matter. It's yours now."
Quinn's hand closed around the bundle.
The moment his skin touched the leather, something pulsed.
Not in the book.
In him.
A flicker distant, buried. Like a match striking against a soaked wall, stubborn and weak.
But there.
Quinn pulled the bundle close, tucking it beneath his coat.
"Good luck," Rax said dryly. "Most around here die for a piece of bread." You're the fool dying for fairy tales."
Quinn's eyes narrowed.
"Then I'll die knowing something they never will."
Quinn didn't go back to his shelter.
Not yet.
Instead, he climbed the skeletal remains of an old guard tower overlooking the southern ridge. The metal groaned beneath his boots, ready to give way after decades of rot, but he reached the top without incident. From here, the whole of Cradle's End stretched before him, gray rooftops collapsing into one another, crooked chimneys coughing smoke into a pale sky, the outer walls leaning like old men too proud to fall.
This was home.
This was prison.
And maybe it was something more.
He sat cross-legged in the shade of the broken lookout, shielding himself from prying eyes. Carefully, he peeled back the cracked leather binding, revealing the first page.
Most of the ink was too faded to decipher. Strange symbols danced across the margins: slanted lines, curling hooks, circles broken in odd patterns. But buried within them were streaks of something familiar. Scattered lines written in a script his father had taught him in secret: the Old Tongue.
His chest tightened.
No one spoke it anymore. No one cared to remember it in camps like Cradle's End.
But his father had remembered. Whispered phrases after dark, forbidden syllables no Codex overseer was meant to hear.
Quinn traced one of the clearer lines with his fingertips, mouthing the words.
"The thread will fracture where the Codex cannot see, ash will cling to forgotten blood, flame will mark the rightful heir."
His throat went dry.
This wasn't a scavenger's diary.
It was a record.
A warning.
Or a prophecy.
His hand shook as he turned another page. More broken lines. More fragmented glyphs. But each line, each word, clawed at something inside him, a part of his blood that hadn't stirred in years. The part that never fit in the camps, never accepted the scraps, never believed this life was all he was meant for.
And as he read deeper, the flickering warmth in his chest grew stronger.
The Codex didn't know his name.
The guards didn't fear his shadow.
But there was something else, something buried beneath ash and lies.
A thread older than the system.
A name older than the walls.
And a fire waiting to be reclaimed.
Quinn closed the book slowly, fingers curling tight around the leather.
He would go back. He would hide it. He would read every line until it made sense.
And then, one way or another, he would leave Cradle's End behind.
Night fell like a blade over Cradle's End.
The fires burned low in the market, smoke drifting through crooked alleyways. Quinn moved quickly beneath the veil of darkness, avoiding the patrols of drunk guards and the sharp eyes of rival scavengers. He slipped back into his shelter unnoticed, bolting the warped door behind him.
Inside, the air was damp and cold. Cracks split the ceiling, wind pressing through in hollow whistles. Quinn didn't care.
He shoved aside his makeshift bedding, pried loose the floorboards beneath, and tucked the ancient journal into the hollow space below. A cloth wrap followed, shielding it from prying fingers and careless feet.
Only then did he exhale.
The room around him felt smaller than usual, the walls pressing inward, the ceiling dipping closer. He could still feel the pull of the book, the strange hum it had awakened inside his chest.
He sat back against the wall, knees drawn up, staring at the boarded window.
Tomorrow will be the same as every other day.
Scavenge. Trade. Survive.
But tonight, something had shifted. A crack had formed in the cage Cradle's End had built around him. A splinter running through years of silence and survival. His father's words echoed at the back of his mind.
You are more than they'll ever allow you to be.
Quinn's jaw clenched. He wasn't foolish enough to believe in fairy tales. The Codex ruled the world, determined worth, measured blood, and assigned status. People like him didn't rise. They endured.
And yet
He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the faint, lingering warmth beneath his ribs.
Sometimes the Codex didn't see everything.
Sometimes it missed things buried too deep to measure.
He would wait.
He would study.
And when the time came when the Codex finally looked his way, it would see more than a forgotten scavenger.
It would see the blood it tried to erase.
It would see the fire it failed to extinguish.
And it would regret not ending him sooner.
Quinn's eyes narrowed as the wind rattled the walls.
This city had stolen enough from him.
Soon, it would be his turn.