The next morning came like a trespasser, unwelcome and bold. Pale light broke across the rusted tin rooftops of Low Marrow, bleeding into alleys where night clung like wet smoke. Finn hadn't moved from his crawlspace. The scroll still sat in his lap, its thread carefully recoiled but never tied. He hadn't dared seal it again. Something about binding it felt final, like closing a door he couldn't open twice.
He had read the next line. Then another. He didn't remember choosing to. The scroll wanted to be read. That much was clear. But what it showed him wasn't just events. It gave him glimpses. Impressions. A streetlamp that would shatter beneath a bird's weight. A cart that would lose a wheel before reaching the bridge. A name whispered by someone who hadn't arrived yet.
And through it all, something new had entered his mind. A presence that did not speak in words exactly, but waited behind them. It watched when he read. It listened when he blinked too long.
He rose at last, stiff from the cold stone floor, and tucked the scroll inside the lining of his coat.
Outside, the day was half-formed. Mist crawled across the lower streets. A merchant shouted about radish dumplings in vinegar spice. Bells rang faintly from the high districts. Finn moved through it like a blade through silk. He didn't speak to anyone. But they noticed him.
A girl on a stairwell paused mid-braid and stared after him. A drunk barked something, then forgot what he'd said halfway through. A courier boy turned and fled without realizing why.
The scroll pulsed with every step.
It wasn't long before he made his way to the Rookery. A collapsed temple turned marketplace turned thieves' council. Rook, his friend from the old days, would be there. If anyone could tell him how to disappear now that he was being noticed, it would be Rook.
But when he stepped through the gate, the scroll whispered for the first time.
Not an idea. Not an instinct.
A voice.
And it said: Don't trust the one with blood on his teeth.
Finn stopped walking.
He scanned the courtyard, heart suddenly tight. There were only a dozen people here. None of them were bleeding. But he knew better than to wait for the blood to be visible.
He turned and left without saying a word.
Behind him, someone called his name.
He didn't look back.
He didn't go far. Just far enough to be invisible again.
He crouched beneath an abandoned laundry rack and watched the street he'd just left. No one followed. No one even seemed to notice he was gone.
The scroll was warm against his ribs.
He whispered, "What are you?"
No answer.
Not at first.
Then, so soft he barely recognized it as thought: I am what waits between lines.
He sat back slowly. He could feel the press of the scroll through his coat, feel its breath like the pulse of heat from a candle.
It hadn't been a hallucination. Not madness. Something had spoken.
He was still deciding what to think when a shadow blocked the alley.
Rook.
Taller now. Broader than he remembered. Same sharp grin, like he carved it with a knife every morning. His coat was lined with copper buttons, each a stolen badge.
"Finn? I thought that was you. Heard a whisper you were alive."
"Depends who you ask," Finn said, standing slowly.
Rook stepped closer, arms wide. "You're thin as a lie. Still fast?"
"Still breathing."
Rook grinned wider. "That's worth something in this city. Come on. We'll get a drink. I've got a hideaway now. Good fire. Bad company."
Finn didn't move. He looked at Rook's mouth.
No blood.
Not yet.
But the scroll pulsed again, urgent now.
"Maybe later," Finn said.
Rook's grin faltered. Just a hair.
"You sure?"
"I've got something to finish."
Rook nodded slowly. "You always did. Just don't let it finish you."
He turned and walked off, coat catching the wind.
Finn stayed in the alley until the cold sank in.
Then he opened the scroll again.
The next line had already written itself.
You were right not to follow.
He closed it.
The whisper returned.
Soon, it said.
And Finn believed it.
He didn't go home right away. Instead, he wandered the eastern edge of Low Marrow, where the city met the drainage fields and the air always smelled faintly of copper and soot. This was the part of the city no one mapped. The part that even the gods had left alone.
He sat on the lip of a cracked fountain and watched water drip slowly through the mouth of a broken angel. A child's shoes floated in the basin. No child in sight.
The scroll was silent.
But Finn wasn't waiting for it. He was testing it.
He whispered a name, not his own. A name he hadn't said in years. Nothing happened. Then he whispered it again.
This time, the fountain cracked.
Just a line. Just a breath of stone. But it cracked all the same.
Finn stood and walked away, pulse sharp in his ears.
He reached the old scribe's walk by dusk. The towers of the Scriptorium cast long shadows across the lower streets. He moved between them like memory, trailing no sound.
He didn't know what the scroll wanted. But he knew what he wanted now.
Answers.
If the scroll could see, it could speak. If it could speak, it could be asked.
And so he found a quiet place behind the ink-burnt temple steps, unrolled the scroll once more, and whispered, "Tell me something I shouldn't know."
The ink did not move at first.
Then it bled.
Three words appeared, slow and deliberate:
You will kill.
Finn stared.
"Who?" he asked.
The scroll remained silent.
But Finn knew the question was not wrong.
Just early.
He rolled it up and held it close.
When he walked away, the shadows followed.