Chapter Text
Nazeera always said that if you could only hear the wind over the dunes, you weren't listening hard enough.
"The Hum isn't a sound, Little Spider," she had whispered, her fingers tracing the fresh white-ink patterns she’d carved into my skin. The ink was still raised, a sharp stinging across my back and arms.
"It is the vibration of the world trying to kill you. When the air thickens, when the heartbeat of the man behind you quickens, that is the Hum. Listen with your skin, not your ears. A mercenary fights for gold. But you and I fight for the silence that follows."
Nazeera had been dead for five years. There was no one around to call me that anymore.
To the taverns of Fódlan, I was the Ashen Demon: an identity born from the dark and a lack of mercy.
My evening had been dull so far. I sat on a wooden crate in Remire Village, the cicadas matching a dull, familiar pressure in my chest. A phantom ache, dead and hollow, right where a pulse should have been.
I forced a slow breath, waiting for my contact. Yuri, the man who had pulled me out of the dirt, expected a report on local bandit movements. Contracts were the only thing keeping me going.
"You're late," I said, my voice carrying no emotion. I didn't bother looking up.
A man in peasant wool stopped a few paces away. The Desert’s Hum tingled along my spine. It was a new sensation I hadn't felt before: a low, chilling vibration that made the hair on my arms stand up. He didn't move like a peasant. His stride was too deliberate; his breathing too controlled, as if he were mimicking the act of breathing rather than actually needing the air.
"I am exactly where I need to be, Little Spider," he said.
My hand shifted to the hilt of my blade. No one in Fódlan knew that name.
"Who are you?"
"A messenger," He tilted his head, leaning in until his voice dropped to a whisper. "Your father sends his regards. He finds the darkness beneath the ground quite… stifling."
A sharp, stabbing pain spiked through my chest, blindingly hot. I kept my mask hard, still, my breath hitched. "Jeralt is dead. I saw the ambush."
"You saw a massacre," the man corrected. "You didn't stay to count the bodies before you were dragged away to your cage." He flicked a small object onto the dirt between us.
It was a wooden ring, scarred by fire and notched from whetstone. Jeralt’s ring. He used to wear it when the grief of looking at his wedding band became too much to bear.
"He is alive," the man continued, his eyes devoid of any warmth. "For now. But the dead can always become permanently silent. We have a use for a weapon of your caliber.”
I was under contract to Yuri. But he didn't have Jeralt.
"Spit it out," I said, forcing my hand to loosen from the hilt of my blade.
"Three high-born brats are playing soldiers in the woods nearby. We know of a bandit group that will stumble on them.” He purred, twisting a hand in the air like a puppeteer. "You will go. You will play the savior. And when the Knights of Seiros arrive to clean up the mess, you will let them drag you back to the goddess's roost. There is an old dog named Alois among them. He still whines for his missing Captain. Let his tears carry you through the gates of Garreg Mach.”
"Infiltration," I muttered. I hadn't done that in three years.
"Exactly." He smiled, showing his rotting, yellow teeth. "We will be watching, Little Spider. Fade into the church. Fail, or speak of this to your 'King' in the sewers, and Jeralt will stay a distant memory."
He turned, his body twisting into the shadows with unnatural speed. I didn't chase him. A creature with no heartbeat left no trail for the Hum to follow, and a reckless pursuit would only forfeit Jeralt's life.
Instead, I knelt and pressed Jeralt's ring into my palm. The wood was cold.
Yuri would notice my absence by morning. If he found out I was abandoning him for a ghost, he'd never let me forget it. But I'd do anything to see my father again.
I rose, my cloak settling over my arms, over the white ink of the Almyran deserts. I put my hood up to cover my braided hair. The Hum alerted me to the noises deep past the trees. Steel was approaching. The three brats were close. If I was going to play their game, I’d better not miss my cue.