The Threadless don't recruit with promises.
They recruit with tests.
And tonight is my first.
Lira leads me through Stonefold's veins—alleys too narrow for carts, rooftops slick with mist, passages hidden behind crumbling walls. She moves like she's part shadow, part knife.
We stop in front of a half-collapsed clocktower.
"Inside," she says, jerking her chin at the broken doors.
"What's inside?" I ask.
Her lips twitch. Almost a smile. "*Proof.*"
I step through the doors.
The tower's hollow. Gears hang from the ceiling like iron skeletons. Wind whistles through the cracks. In the center of the floor—a table. And on it: three items.
A black dagger.
A folded parchment sealed in red wax.
And a single silver coin, polished to a mirror shine.
A voice booms from the darkness above—
Not Lira's. Deeper. Older.
"You have one choice to make. Choose the blade—become our weapon. Choose the parchment—become our spy. Choose the coin—become our merchant."
The words echo, like the walls themselves are alive.
I don't hesitate.
I reach for the parchment.
The seal breaks the moment my fingers touch it, crumbling like ash.
Inside—a name.
An address.
And one sentence, written in a slashing hand:
> *"Burn the lie they built."*
No instructions. No warnings. Just a command.
When I turn, Lira is gone.
I'm alone.
---
The address leads me to the merchant quarter—a place where power wears velvet gloves over iron fists.
I trail along the outer edges of the crowd, cloaked by the city's breathing: the clatter of wheels, the hiss of rain, the curses of drunk men stumbling out of inns.
The building stands three stories tall, wedged between a gemcutter's shop and an apothecary.
Plain on the outside. Protected on the inside.
I see it immediately: guards who don't look like guards, just too clean, too still. Scribes carrying ledgers heavier than their own bodies. And high, narrow windows barred from within.
A fortress, hidden in plain sight.
Inside those walls is the lie.
The fire in me demands I burn it all.
But the fire is stupid.
A burned building is a loud answer.
A missing truth is a question that spreads like plague.
I stay low.
I stay small.
A scribe coughs into his sleeve. Another scratches his quill against parchment, lost in thought.
No one sees me slip past the oil lamps, the ledger piles, the guards half-asleep in their chairs.
The safe hums with power.
The iron feels cold even through my gloves.
There's a key hanging on a hook behind the overseer's desk—careless. Arrogant.
They never thought anyone could reach them here.
I take it.
The lock groans, but I hush it with a whisper of cloth.
Inside: stacks of sealed contracts. Waxed and ribboned. Names etched in cruel ink.
Debt.
Ownership.
Chains pretending to be promises.
I sort through them with shaking fingers until I find the ones that matter most—names I've heard whispered in the gutters. Families who disappeared. Merchants who "vanished" after missing a payment.
The heart of their lie.
I slip the contracts into my coat.
Close the safe.
Return the key.
No sound but the scratching of quills.
No scent but the stale ink and dying candles.
I am a shadow with a stolen heartbeat.
---
Outside, the mist wraps around me like a second skin.
I don't run.
I walk.
Slow. Calm. Forgettable.
By the time the sun cracks over Stonefold's broken teeth, I'm back in the hidden veins of the city—parchments pressed against my ribs, a new weight in my steps.
I don't know what the Threadless will do with these lies I stole.
Expose them?
Blackmail the lords who signed them?
Burn a few kings in the court of public shame?
It doesn't matter.
**I did what they asked.
I made my choice.
I wove my first thread into the darkness.**
And the city will never be the same again.