The Threadless think they own the shadows.
But they forgot—*I was born in them.*
I leave the cellar without a word.
No orders.
No plans.
Just motion—fast, quiet, precise.
Lira catches up before I reach the stairs. "We don't know where they've taken her."
"I do."
"How?"
I tap the ring.
Its surface is dull now, but warm—alive with something that feels like memory.
"She helped me remember who I was," I say. "Now the ring will help me remember where she is."
Stonefold's streets stretch wide tonight, all slick stone and whispered wind. But I don't walk them.
I *feel* them.
The ring pulses once, twice. Like it's tasting the air through me.
Every turn of my boots feels guided, like the threads of the world have quietly bent inward—funneling me somewhere.
I don't question it.
Because the ring has never spoken.
But it *knows.*
The trail leads me past the ink quarter, down into the broken gut of the city—the old aqueducts, where the water once ran clean and the forgotten now rot.
They didn't kill her.
Not yet.
That would've been loud.
This is something else.
A rusted gate hangs open. The stink of damp stone and rusted chains cuts the air.
And beneath it all, a voice.
Not a scream.
Not a sob.
A whisper.
"*You don't have to do this...*"
Wren.
I move like a blade through fog.
The guard doesn't see me until his knees break beneath him. The second falls before he finishes the word "who—"
Then I'm in the chamber.
Three men. A chair. A girl bound to it.
She looks up.
Blood on her lip. Fire in her eyes.
Not broken.
*Still fighting.*
"You're late," Wren croaks.
I don't answer.
The mask slides over my face. The ring flares with light—silver veins crawling up my forearm, pulsing with old power.
And then, I stop being *Ash.*
I become what they fear.
The fight is fast.
The first man rushes. The ring pulses once—and I *see* it. His angle. His intent. A flash of weakness in his ribs.
I strike there.
He drops, gasping for air that won't come.
The second draws a blade. I raise my hand.
The air ripples. The ring glows.
*He sees something behind me—something he can't explain—and screams before he even falls.*
The last one begs.
I let Wren answer.
Her spit lands in his eye before my fist does.
When the silence comes, it feels... *clean.*
I untie her wrists gently.
"Why?" she asks. "Why would they come after me?"
I look at her—not as a symbol. Not as leverage. As *Wren.*
Because she asked questions.
Because she didn't stay quiet.
Because she got close to me.
I don't tell her all of that.
But the ring does something I've never felt before—
A warmth that spreads up my arm, through my chest, into my head.
And suddenly, I *know* what I need to do.
Not just protect Wren.
Not just survive.
Rebuild.
Lead.
Not in the Threadless' image.
In *mine.*
Outside, Lira waits in the alley, blade half-drawn.
"She alive?" she asks.
I nod.
"She safe?"
"She is now."
She searches my face.
"What now?"
I slide off the mask.
"I want names," I say. "The ones who gave the order."
"And then?"
I don't answer.
Because the ring *does.*
It pulses once—and I feel the threads tightening around me, not like ropes, but like reins.
I won't just pull at the Threadless anymore.
I will *steer* them.
*The boy who was nothing is gone.*
*The mask is no longer borrowed.*
*The ring no longer silent.*
They picked the wrong girl to threaten.
And the wrong shadow to betray.