The border town of Kirei always smelled of smoke. Not a warm smoke of hearths or a kitchen, but the thin, acrid kind that drifted in from the Silent Plains whenever the wind had shifted. It clung to rooftops, nestled into hair and clothes, and turned the air itself into an eerie gray haze.
Harun had grown up with it. He had learned to breathe shallow, talk with a cloth continuously pressed to his mouth, and to accept that ash would stain all his belongings no matter how diligently he cleaned. Still, there were days when the weight of the world pressed far too heavily, when the smoke whispered into your ears, almost making full words in his head.
Today was one of those days.
Children played in the street ahead, kicking a ragged ball between them. Their laughter and joy cut short through the haze. One child stopped, eyes flicking directly over to Harun as he passed, and whispered in a melodic voice:
"If you lie, the Mask will see.
If you run, the Mask will follow.
If you kneel, the Mask will bind.
If you whisper, the Mask will speak."
The others giggled nervously and scattered into their respective homes. The rhyme lingering in the air, as heavy as the fog, ringing through Harun's head repeatedly.
Harun's chest grew tighter, of course, he had heard this before, it was chalked on every alleyway's wall, murmured in markets, and scrawled throughout the Bureau's redacted reports. Was it an ancient legend, a folk song or a direct warning to all visitors? No one truly knew.
He adjusted the strap on his satchel. Quickening his pace towards the eastern gate. The Bureau demanded its patrol team logs, even the medical team was pressed for all information it could gather, so Harun could not afford to be late. In this small precinct, delays meant suspicion. Suspicion meant dossiers. And dossiers had a way of disappearing without a trace.
As he walked, the ash shifted with the wind, curling in low drifts brushing against his boots. For a split second he could have sworn the shape of the ash looked like hands clawing upwards. He shook the thought away, muttering inwardly, I must have breathed in too much smoke today… or am I losing my sanity. As he tightened the grip of his satchel strap, picking up more pace.
"The Border ash just makes men see things," he muttered under his breath, repeating the Bureau's line. "Nothing more."
But the rhyme continued to echo, steady and clear, as if it wasn't in his head, it was being whispered to him solely.
The Bureau's watchhouse bell was tolled once. However, it was muffled by the haze. Patrol shift. Harun adjusted the strap of his satchel tighter and lengthened his strides. Even conscripted medics were expected to walk the circuits of soldiers. Three streets east, past the markets, back to the gate. A ritual of presence almost, nothing more.
The streets are silent, empty now. Doors shuttered. Windows sealed with cloth. Ash had a way of creeping inside, staining wood, charring food, and Blackening lungs. Harun had treated enough coughing fits and gray streaked sputum to know even if the Bureau didn't classify it as a sickness, it killed everyone just the same.
He passed a mural scrawled with chalk along the wall – crude lines of a face, hollow eyes, a jagged curve of a mouth. Someone had tried to draw a mask. Below it, half-smeared but legible, the rhyme again:
If you kneel, the Mask will bind
Harun stopped without meaning too, his fingers twitching towards the chalk almost losing control over his own body. Pulling his fingers away inches from the mural. Touching it would me explaining himself to the Bureau patrol if they caught him.
He forcefully stepped onwards.
The market square was nearly silent. A few stalls still stood, canvas blackened by ash, Dried fish, stale bread, bundles of seemingly charred cloth. No color. No laughter. Just an old man packing up his wares, and the ineligible sound of children from the alleyway.
"Counterpair," a voice hissed
Harun froze immediately. The word was sharp, forbidden. It carried weight like a blade pressed into someone's throat.
He turned quickly.
There a woman stood, half veiled by smoke. Not Bureau. Not a villager. Her eyes caught the dimmed light strangely. One glinted a bright blue, while the other was dull and clouded black. She carried something wrapped in cloth, long and narrow, resting her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.
Harun's pulse spiked massively. His mouth felt dry.
"Who- "
She tilted her head like a confused puppy, and for a moment, he thought she was listening to something else, something beyond the wind.
"You'll hear it soon," she said softly. "The mask has been watching you; it has already chosen you, way before you even knew it existed."
Ash drifted between them like snow falling. Harun's grip tightened around his satchel. He wanted to dismiss her, to laugh, to just walk away. But his feet stayed planted.
The woman smiled with cracked lips. "The truth doesn't wait for permission"
She lowered the cloth-wrapped bundle to the ground and unrolled it in a single motion
A face shaped object stared up at him. Carved, hollow and white as a bone.
The Mask.
The carved face glared up from the cloth, pale and hollow.
Harun's breath caught in his throat. He had seen fragments before, broken shards, locked away by the Bureau for future repair efforts, every time with half a dozen guards standing by ready to burn the vault down if the slightest echoes started.
But this wasn't a fragment, this was the entire relic.
It was waiting.
He stumbled back, tripping over his feet onto the ash-stained ground. The woman upon seeing this only tilted her head, her smile widening even further.
"Take it," she murmured. "Or it will take you."
Harun shook his head. His heart beating so violently his head started to spin. "You're insane. I-If the Bureau finds out." He rattles out cowardly.
"The Bureau already knows" She interrupted. Her voice remaining calm as ever, certain in what she is saying. "They've always known, why do you think you were selected to be an apothecary. You were written for this role ever since you were born."
Ash drifted around them in a silent square, and for a moment it felt like the ash was moving away from the mask, circling it, but never daring to touch it. His chest tightening and throat burning.
"No" he muttered with authority under his breath. "I've just breathed in too much smoke today; you are from the Bureau to test me. I know I'm not crazy enough to believe this."
But then the Mask whispered.
Not in the woman's voice. Not even in the voice he had been hearing in the wind.
But his own voice.
"Behind the Eight is not you."
Harun staggered. Vision blurred, and the world pressed to close, as if the air around him was trying to crush him. He continued to clutch at his satchel more violently, the leather imprinting into his palm, but the sound didn't fade. The words clung, curling through his skull like smoke through his lungs.
The woman knelt, lifting the mask as though offering a blessing to a God. "Every bearer denies it. At first."
Harun's mind screamed to run. To shout for a patrol passing by. To do anything but reach his hands out and grab this thing. He knows the outcomes of people not suited for the powers of the relics.
And yet his fingers twitched.
The Mask was warm. Too warm, as if the mask had been set by a campfire for hours on a cold Winters night.
The bell tolled again from the watchhouse. Twice this time, a sharper warning that time was running out, and to get in doors. Patrols were shifting. Soon soldiers from the Bureau would march into the Townsquare, they would ask no questions before drawing their weapons.
The woman leaned close enough that the ash trembled between them. "Truth doesn't ask for permission. Truth only asks what you'll pay to keep it hidden."
And before Harun could speak, before he could even stumble back to his feet, she pressed the Mask into his chest, vanishing into the ash like a ghost.
Ash fell; the square was empty.
Only the Mask remained, warm up against his ribs.
Harun's hand shook as he pulled his cloak tighter over it. The Rhyme ringing again in his ears, every word sharpened now, as though spoken by the Mask itself directly into his head:
"If you lie, the Mask will see.
If you run, the Mask will follow.
If you kneel, the Mask will bind.
If you whisper, the Mask will speak."
The ash in the wind felt heavier than ever. Watching.