The black sand of the volcano bowl floor was warm against Ren’s palms. But his hands were not his own.
He looked down at his fingers. Then, splayed in the glowing stone dust, they weren’t the violet ink-stained hands of a nineteen-year-old scribe.
For half a second, his fingers were wrapped in the rusted, blood-caked iron gauntlets of Lord Ren, heavy with the weight of an uncut skull ring. Then the iron vanished, replaced by the pale, trembling hands of Vane Vale, manicured and reeking of bergamot oil, clutching a leather purse that had burned thirty years ago. Then the skin withered, covered in the purple rotting scars and running sores of Brother Ren’s passed plagues.
And then, his fingertips turned jet-black—frozen by the total zero of the void. He grabbed the broken dials of a brass star-compass.
Who are you? a voice roared inside his skull. It wasn’t one voice. It was a chorus of six men screaming in an empty room, their memories colliding with the violent striking force of two freight wagons meeting head-on.
Ren gasped for breath, his chest heaving, his teeth grinding so hard the enamel ached.
He remembered the smell of royal wine poured over the cut head of a rebel duke at Fort Karst. A memory that belonged to Lord Ren, who had ruled an empire of ash for twenty years.
