Wren moved through the Masquerade of the Forgotten like a blade through silk—unseen, effortless, hungry.
The ballroom was a grotesque parody of elegance: chandeliers dripping wax onto guests who wore not just masks, but second faces stitched from stolen names. The air thrummed with the sickly-sweet rot of decaying identities. A baroness laughed with a voice that wasn't hers, the syllables of some dead actress clinging to her throat like cobwebs. A diplomat swayed, his posture borrowed from a murdered duelist, his original gait lost to some back-alley name-fence years ago.
Wren's fingers twitched toward the black salt hidden in their sleeve. The crystals whispered against each other—ground bones of the forgotten, the only currency that mattered in this game.
'Easy prey.'
Their target stood near the champagne fountain—Lady Isolde de Vries, her neck draped in literal golden letters (her husband's pet name for her, "My Silver Fox", sold off last winter to pay his gambling debts). Now, she was down to her last two names: Isolde and De Vries. The rest had been peeled away layer by layer—first her childhood nickname, then her wedding vows, then the title she'd earned when she saved the Duke's son from drowning.
And Wren intended to take another.
They adjusted their mask of hollowed bone (the cartilage of a failed opera singer, bought cheap from a backstreet surgeon) and slipped closer. The mask itched where it fused with their cheekbones—a temporary graft, good for one night's work.
Rule one of name theft: Touch is optional.
Rule two: The richer the victim, the louder they scream.
Wren flicked a crumb of black salt onto Lady Isolde's glove. The moment she lifted her hand to inspect the dark smudge, they murmured:
"Who are you?"
A fatal question in Echo City.
Lady Isolde's lips parted—
—and Wren caught the name as it left her tongue.
"Isol—"
The word condensed in the air like breath on glass, the -de still clinging to her teeth. Wren snatched it, feeling the weight of the name thrash in their grip. It was warmer than they expected. More alive. The letters squirmed against their palm, desperate to return to their owner.
Then—
Disaster.
Lady Isolde's eyes snapped into focus. Not dazed, not forgetful—furious.
"You," she hissed.
Wren froze. Targets weren't supposed to remember the theft.
The woman's hand clamped around Wren's wrist, her grip fever-hot. "You're the one who took my brother's name." Her voice cracked like thin ice. "He forgot his daughter because of you."
Wren's stomach dropped. They'd stolen hundreds of names—but only one had belonged to a father.
The man in the rain, they realized. The way he'd screamed when his child became a stranger.
Memory surged unbidden:
—a little girl crying in the street, her tiny hands shaking a man who stared blankly at her—
—"Papa? Papa, it's me!"—
—the moment the last syllable of "Papa" left his mind, like a candle snuffed—
Lady Isolde's free hand dipped into her bodice. Moonlight glinted on steel.
Wren ran.
——
The alley reeked of erased lives—discarded name-tags, the oily residue of shattered epithets, the sour tang of people who'd sold their signatures too many times. Wren slumped against the wall, clutching their stolen prize. Their chest burned where the bone mask had fused to their skin, the opera singer's last aria humming in their veins.
"Isol—"
Just a fragment. Useless. They'd have to sell it to a fence before dawn, or the letters would fade to nothing.
Wren pressed a finger to the bleeding graft on their cheek. The mask hissed as it unstitched itself, falling to the cobblestones with a wet slap. Beneath it, their real face—or what passed for it these days—stung in the night air.
*Click.*
A pistol hammer cocked behind them.
"Name-thief," growled a voice like rusted chains.
Wren didn't turn. They knew the Scriptorium's enforcers by sound alone—the creak of their ink-stiffened coats, the rattle of the silver name-chains around their wrists.
"You're mistaken," Wren lied, palming a shard of black salt. "I'm just a—"
"Wanderer?" The enforcer's boot crushed Wren's fingers. "We don't arrest ghosts."
The gun pressed against Wren's spine.
"We burn them."
Wren moved.
Black salt scattered. The enforcer inhaled—and forgot his own gun.
Three seconds of confusion was all Wren needed. They drove their elbow into his throat, snatched the pistol, and fled into the night. The enforcer's shouts chased them:
"Rememberer squad! Hunt the Nameless!"
Wren's blood turned to ice.
Rememberers. The Scriptorium's elite. The only people in Echo City who never forgot. Their minds were vaults, their memories etched in acid. They could track a name-thief across months, across disguises, across a hundred stolen faces.
And now they were hunting Wren.
———
The safehouse was a crypt. Literally.
Wren pried up the false tombstone ("Here Lies Honesty"—a joke no one found funny anymore) and slithered into the underground network of name-fences. The air smelled of ink and rotting vellum, the stench of too many identities crammed into one place.
"You're late," croaked the fence, a creature more paper than flesh. Their skin rustled when they moved, layers of forged documents grafted directly onto their body.
Wren tossed the name-fragment onto the counter. "Isolde. Noble lineage. Partial, but clean."
The fence sniffed it, their nose—if it was a nose—wrinkling. "Third-rate. I'll give you two silvers."
"It's worth ten!"
"Not when the Scriptorium's offering gold for your skull." The fence grinned, needle-teeth glinting. "Oh yes. They remember you now, little ghost."
Before Wren could react, something cold pressed against their neck.
A mask of solidified moonlight.
"We've been watching you," whispered the cultist.
Wren went for their knife—
—and the world turned inside out.
---
Wren woke in a library of skin.
Parchment made from human hide stretched floor to ceiling, the titles on the spines not written but scarred into the flesh. The cultist stood by a window, the moon's light painting her silver. Up close, her mask wasn't metal—but actual moonlight, somehow sheared from the sky and shaped.
"The Scriptorium lies," she said. "Names aren't currency. They're shackles."
Wren's stolen pistol was gone. So was their mask. Their fingers crept to their cheek—the graft had healed. No. Not healed. Rewritten.
The cultist turned. "The moon remembers every name ever spoken," she said. "Even yours."
She pressed a vial of liquid shadow into Wren's hand. The substance inside twisted like a living thing, forming shapes that hurt to look at:
—a child's face
—a knife in the dark
—their own hands, covered in ink that wasn't ink—
"Steal the moon's name... and you steal its memory," the cultist murmured. "Free us all."
Wren stared at the vial. "Why me?"
The cultist's smile was a blade.
"Because you're the only thief who erased themselves on purpose."
Above them, through the stained glass, the moon blinked.