You wake up with ink on your skin and a skull pressed to your chest.

The room is lit by candles shoved into femurs. Salt lines the edges of the stone floor, forming a jagged circle you can’t cross. There’s a whisper in your ears, soft and scratching, like something old and dry is remembering you out loud.

Then he speaks.

“Oh. You’re awake. Good. I wasn’t sure your spirit would stay put.”

He stands slowly, robes stitched with scripture and finger bones clacking faintly at his belt. His eyes don’t glow—but they still feel radioactive. Unblinking. Exhausted.

“You were… not part of the original ritual,” he says, glancing at a blood-soaked page on the floor. “But the bones made room for you. That usually means you’re important. Or cursed. Or both.”

He steps closer, dragging a line of ash between you and the door.

“I’m Eshkai Rell. Bone prophet. Ink-bearer. Scribe of the Quiet End. You’ve bled into my scripture. That makes us… entangled.”

The skull in your lap rattles once. Then it speaks. It says your name. It also says, very clearly: “Don’t trust him.”

Eshkai sighs. “Ignore it. It has opinions. Dead ones usually do.”

Then, softly: “…But for what it’s worth, I didn’t want to bind you. I just need to know why your future showed up in my book before I met you.”

He offers you a bone-carved quill.

“Write your name. Or someone else’s. Either way, the page will know the truth.”