"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…"
Another year, another song trying to cheer me up. Their voices echoed through the cold hall, hollow and half-hearted, as if even they didn't believe the words.
I'm Darian — the cursed boy, the one born with his fate carved into stone.
On my sixteenth birthday, I stood again before the monolith. The great Stone of Lines towered over me, black and ancient, its surface etched with grooves that glowed faintly in the torchlight. Twenty-five shallow marks had once been carved there, one for every year I had been given. Tonight, only ten remained.
The crowd pressed forward to witness it. They always did. Mothers shushed their children, priests clutched their staves, and men who had drunk too much tried to mask their fear with laughter. But their eyes betrayed them. They were all here for the same reason — to watch another year stolen from me.
The air was thick with smoke from the braziers, spiced with the scent of burning herbs. The chanting of the Stonekeepers — the priests sworn to guard fate — filled the chamber, each note low and solemn, like the toll of a funeral bell.
"Sixteen years lived," they intoned, "nine years remain."
The words rolled through the hall, final and merciless.
A ripple of silence fell. All eyes turned to the stone.
I clenched my fists at my sides, pretending I didn't care. Pretending I wasn't waiting for it too.
Then it came.
The sixteenth line burned. Slowly, like an ember catching flame, the groove glowed red, then black, then vanished in a curl of smoke that twisted upward and disappeared into the high, vaulted ceiling.
Gasps scattered through the crowd. Some whispered prayers. Others looked away.
I forced a crooked smile. "Well, there it goes," I muttered. My voice was louder than I meant, and it carried across the chamber. A few people flinched.
The Stonekeepers scowled at me, their silver masks catching the torchlight. They hated when I spoke during the ritual. I was supposed to stand silent, solemn, resigned to my fate. But resignation was a luxury I refused them.
My life was not a show. Or maybe it was, and I was the unwilling performer in their theater of doom.
The High Keeper stepped forward, his staff striking the marble with a dull thunk. "Darian," he said, voice sharp, "accept what the gods have written. Each line is sacred. Each vanishing a reminder of your place in the design."
"My place," I repeated, bitterness dripping from the words. "Nine years left in your grand design. What should I do, Keeper? Thank the gods for counting down my life like scratches on a prison wall?"
A murmur swept through the crowd. The High Keeper's lips thinned.
"Defiance will not change the stone," he said. "It has spoken since your birth, and it will speak until your end."
I shrugged. "Then maybe I'll find something that can shut it up."
The silence that followed was heavy. Even the torches seemed to dim.
The High Keeper lifted his staff as if to rebuke me again, but I had already turned away.
Outside, the night was sharp and cold. The square below the temple steps was lit by lanterns, but the people scattered as I walked among them, their eyes avoiding mine. Mothers pulled their children closer. Men muttered under their breath. To them, I was a shadow of death walking through their village, a reminder that not all lives stretched into old age.
I could feel their fear pressing against me like the weight of the sky.
I tugged my cloak tighter, shoved my hands into the pockets, and kept walking.
Birthdays. They were supposed to be celebrations. But for me, they were funerals-in-waiting. Every year, the same thing: a crowd, a vanished line, and another reminder that my time was running out.
I hated it.
Not the stone, not the lines — I hated the way everyone else looked at me. As if I were already dead.
I reached the edge of the square, where the cobblestones gave way to dirt paths winding through the outskirts of the village. The chatter of the crowd faded behind me, replaced by the quiet rustle of night insects and the whisper of wind through the grass.
Here, at least, the world didn't stare at me. Here, I could breathe.
I looked up. The stars were sharp tonight, scattered across the velvet-black sky like shards of glass. My breath fogged in the air as I exhaled, watching it vanish like the line from the stone.
Nine left.
The thought looped in my mind, unshakable. Nine years. Nine birthdays. Nine vanishing lines.
And then nothing.
I dropped onto a flat rock by the roadside, pulling my knees up, staring at the stars until my eyes blurred.
What was the point?
I had no reason to live. No purpose, no grand design, nothing but a clock that ticked louder with each passing year.
Yet, somewhere deep in my chest, something stirred. A flicker of memory.
My mother's voice, whispering a story when I was a boy too young to understand: There is a relic, Darian. A relic older than the stones themselves. The Inkstone. It holds the power to write and rewrite the words of fate.
At the time, it had sounded like a fairy tale. But now… now I wondered.
If such a thing truly existed, could it change mine? Could it carve me a new life, one not cut short at twenty-five?
I shook my head, trying to smother the thought. The Stonekeepers would call it heresy. The villagers would laugh. Even I didn't believe it fully.
And yet… I wanted to.
I leaned back, staring up at the endless sky, and whispered to no one: "Nine years left. Let's see if fate likes being challenged."
The sound of footsteps snapped me from my thoughts.
I turned sharply. A boy about my age stood at the edge of the path, lantern in hand. His face was pale, eyes wide.
"You shouldn't be out here," he said, shifting nervously.
I raised an eyebrow. "Why not? Afraid my curse will rub off on you?"
He flinched. "That's not what I meant. I— I just…" His words faltered. Then he shook his head and hurried past, the lantern light bobbing as he vanished into the dark.
I watched him go, a bitter laugh escaping my throat. Even my presence was poison.
Fine. Let them fear me. Let them whisper.
I was Darian. The boy with twenty-five lines. The boy counting down to death.
And one day, if the stories were true, the boy who would find the Inkstone.