The parchment with that single question stayed hidden under my robe all day.
"We've met before, haven't we, Ink-Girl?"
I burned it in the kitchen stove before anyone could see, but the words stuck to my spine like ash. Someone in this palace knew me. Not just of me. Me.
But I didn't even know myself.
That night, I couldn't ignore it anymore.
I lit a stolen candle and crouched in the corner of the laundry room, where no one bothered to go after hours. I rolled up my sleeve and stared at the mark again. Just beneath the skin of my left wrist barely visible unless the light caught it right was a thin, twisting pattern. It wasn't a tattoo.
It was something else.
When I pressed it with my thumb, the skin warmed. Not burning more like it woke up. As if something inside me stirred and asked, "Are you ready?"
I'd seen that shape once before.
Years ago. Or maybe in a dream.
A carved symbol on a vial in a black market alchemy stall. I was ten, half-starved, and ran when the stallkeeper saw me staring. But the vial glowed. Like my wrist did now.
It wasn't a tattoo. It was a seal.
And seals need unlocking.
So I did what I always do I searched. I asked the right wrong people, whispered the right names, offered stolen honey sweets to older servants who never sleep. Eventually, I heard a rumor:
"There's a chamber beneath the palace. No guards. No light. Just stone, records, and ghosts. They say it's where the old court alchemists vanished. No one speaks of it."
"You mean a laboratory?"
"No. A grave with shelves."
And that's where I'm going next.
Because I need answers.
Before the ink beneath my skin writes something I can't take back.