The fire crackled in low rhythm, orange tongues licking dry wood. Its warmth held the cold at bay, but just barely. Shadows stretched long between the trees—quiet, patient things. Not malevolent. Not welcoming.
Just… watching.
Mizan sat alone.
His cloak lay beneath him rather than wrapped around. Not because he didn't need the warmth—but because he didn't want it tonight. Not from something stitched with Imperial threads. Not from comfort he hadn't earned. Not from anything he hadn't chosen.
Above him, the stars blinked like cautious eyes.
He didn't look up often. Not in cities. Not even in camps. The sky always made him feel… noticed.
Not by people.
Not even by gods.
But by the world itself. The wind. The ground. The stone beneath his boots. Like something older than time was waiting for him to look back and admit he was pretending not to care.
He didn't like being seen.
The others—soldiers, scouts, flameborn acolytes—called him focused. Distant. Disciplined.
He let them.
Let them think silence meant certainty. That restraint was peace. That clever boys with quiet hands and too many notebooks didn't bleed in the same places as warriors.
But the truth sat deeper. Buried.
He didn't trust what he couldn't name.
And most of his life—including his own blood, his past, and the reason he kept waking up with names he didn't remember—remained just that.
Unknown.
He turned the meat skewer again. It sizzled—thin cuts from a lean kill. He'd traded for it earlier. He didn't remember with who. A farmer, maybe. Or a scavenger passing through.
It didn't matter. Food filled the stomach. It never touched the part of him that stayed hungry.
The part that wanted to name what had been stolen.
⸻
He rolled up his sleeve.
The glyph shimmered faintly in the firelight, etched deep along the inside of his forearm. Not a tattoo. Not ink. Not scar.
Just truth, buried too young.
The mark had been there his whole life, but it had changed in recent weeks—deepened in color, sharpened in shape. As if it had remembered what it was.
The Empire called it a birthmark. A relic of wild lineage. Nothing important. "Orphan marks," they were called—evidence of Threads misaligned in the womb. Supposedly meaningless.
But Mizan had never been good at pretending things meant nothing just because someone said so.
It had never felt meaningless.
Not once.
The mark pulsed when he passed certain places. Graves. Shrines. Ruins half-swallowed by root and regret. Once, a ruined chapel. Another time, a sealed archive in the Hollow.
The glyph never burned. It simply… responded.
As if it knew what he wasn't ready to.
⸻
He closed his eyes and hummed.
Soft. Quiet. A tune from the orphan-halls. From before memory had shape. A chant they sang when the lights failed, when the matrons were too tired to pretend warmth.
"One for the first, when stars were born.
Two for the time the moon was torn.
Three for the flame that did not die.
Four for the child who learned to lie…"
He stopped.
He always stopped there.
No one ever sang beyond that. The other children would fall into silence, or shift into nervous laughter. Even the cruelest boys never mocked that line.
They just… trailed off.
He had never asked why. Partly because he knew no one would answer. Mostly because he feared what he'd say if they did.
Tonight, the fire danced closer, warmer.
And before he could stop himself, the next line came.
"Five for the one who wears no name…"
His breath caught.
He hadn't made that up.
But he didn't remember hearing it either.
The line had emerged from somewhere else—not thought, not memory.
It had surfaced, like something pulled from beneath.
He looked down.
The glyph on his arm shimmered.
Not magic. Not Threadflare.
Just… recognition.
As if it had been waiting for that verse.
⸻
The forest around him hushed.
Too quiet.
He turned his head slowly.
No movement. No sound.
Just the strange attention of the world folding inward—like the moment before a word is spoken, or a truth admitted.
Mizan stood.
Not in fear.
Just to ground himself. To feel the cold earth beneath his boots. To remind himself that thinking too hard had never made anything safer. Or easier.
Then he sat again.
And waited.
A breeze moved between the trees. Then a whisper followed. Not words. Just the shape of breath.
Familiar and wrong all at once.
Something watched him.
Not beast. Not human. Not Thread.
Something else.
He spoke—not aloud, but within:
"What do you want from me?"
And the answer came, unspoken:
"To remember why you forgot."
His eyes narrowed.
Of course. Always riddles. Never records.
"Who are you?"
The fire flickered. The shadows bent unnaturally.
"A mark left behind. A name struck from the stone. You are one of us, little Glyphborn."
⸻
That word.
Glyphborn.
He hadn't heard it since…
No. He'd never heard it.
But it meant something.
His heart pounded. His fingers twitched. His other hand hovered above the hilt of his blade—not in readiness, but in reflex.
He wasn't about to draw.
But something in him wanted to remember what it felt like to hold steel.
Just in case remembering wasn't enough.
The fire dimmed.
Slightly.
Enough for the woods to speak again.
Another whisper. Closer now. In the leaves. In the ash.
"They buried your past. Stole your sigil. You carry a truth they wanted erased."
He swallowed.
His mouth felt dry.
"Why?" he whispered. "Why erase it?"
A pause. Then—
"Because the world was once written in glyphs. And those who read them remembered too much."
The wind stirred.
The stars blinked.
The glyph on his arm pulsed again.
He stood.
And this time, he didn't sit again.
⸻
He moved closer to the edge of the firelight.
Tall for his age, but not broad—his frame all angles and tension, like someone who had grown too fast and never quite learned how to settle inside his own skin. His scholar's robes hung loose, stitched with faint rune patterns that shimmered in certain light—not decorative, but functional, protective.
Ink smudged the sleeves and fingertips. Not fresh. Old stains, layered over time.
Like the mark on his arm.
His face held nothing noble. Nothing soft.
Sharp cheeks. Watchful eyes. Blue—too blue.
As if they'd been inked in, rather than born.
And when the light caught them just right, thin silver glyphs shimmered in his irises—symbols that shifted, unreadable, refusing to stay still.
He didn't look dangerous.
He looked unfinished.
But the world had begun to notice him anyway.
⸻
He reached for his journal—half runes, half sketches, lines and loops and fractured meanings he'd been recording since he could hold charcoal. Most didn't make sense.
But they came.
In dreams. In whispers. In quiet moments like this.
And when he flipped to the next blank page, his hand didn't hesitate.
It moved.
Not randomly.
Not by his will.
As if something older guided it.
He drew a circle. Then a symbol. Then a phrase:
"Root of fire. Truth of stone. The liar sees first."
He blinked.
Where had that come from?
He didn't know.
But the mark on his arm tingled. The ink glowed faintly.
And somewhere deep inside, a thread pulled taut.
⸻
He stared into the forest beyond the fire.
Not afraid.
Not curious.
Just aware.
He would find it.
Whatever it was.
The origin. The meaning. The lost name behind the mark and the lines and the glyphs that kept coming in his dreams.
Not because of prophecy.
Not because of rebellion.
But because he had always been a child who learned to lie—
And now he needed to remember what he'd lied about.