CHAPTER 1: TRASH & INK

  They called her Trash before they even tested her ink.

  Aira knew this because the nun's grip on her shoulder had the same pressure as the one she'd used on the last three children, the ones who'd shuffled out of the testing chamber with their heads down and their futures sealed. The orphanage was a gutted scriptorium, high-vaulted ceilings that had once echoed with holy chants now thick with the sniffling of discarded children. Faded frescoes of saints wielding pens like swords peeled from damp walls, their eyes scratched out by generations of the faithless.

  She was eight years old. Her mother had died six days ago.

  Head Monk Evin sat at a scribe's lectern, his face a network of deep lines that looked like badly drawn glyphs. His robes were ink-stained at the cuffs. His fingers were long and skeletal, each knuckle pronounced like a bead on a rosary. Before him sat a brass dish filled with quicksilver and a single copper dram of Church ink, sanctified and precious. The ink sat in its dram like a small, dark eye.

  He didn't look at her. Just gestured to the mark on the floor where she should stand. "The aptitude test is simple, child." His voice was empty of warmth, but not actively cruel. Just... administrative. "Your mother was unregistered. Her fate is testament to the dangers of unsanctioned script. The Church offers you redemption." He gestured to the ink. "Breathe upon it. If the ink responds, you have the gift. If it does not..."

  He didn't finish. He didn't need to.

  Aira stepped to the mark. The brass dish gleamed in the candlelight. She could see her reflection in the quicksilver, distorted and small.

  She thought of her mother's face. The way it had looked in the candlelight the night before the fever took her, still beautiful despite the illness, despite the black veins crawling up from the failed healing glyph on her chest. Her mother had smiled at her. You're stronger than you know, little spark. Stronger than they'll ever see. Aira leaned forward, her small chest heaving, and exhaled over the copper dram.

  The ink did nothing.

  The quicksilver remained placid. A dull mirror reflecting a small, frightened face. Monk Evin’s pen was already moving. Scratch-scratch-scratch. Like a rat in the walls.

  Aira stepped back, her future already sealed in the ledger.

  Then, the surface rippled.

  Just once. A concentric ring delicate as a dying breath.

  The nun, already turning to leave, missed it.

  Monk Evin was already writing. He didn't see it either. Aira opened her mouth to say what? It moved. The quicksilver moved. But the words died in her throat. Something about the monk's face, the way his pen moved with such absolute certainty, told her it wouldn't matter. He'd already decided.

  "No measurable resonance." His pen scratched across the ledger with surgical precision. "Aira. Daughter of Rina, the unlicensed."

  LEVEL ZERO

  Below it, smaller and crueler:

  Sub-category: TRASH.

  "You may go," Monk Evin said, already reaching for the next ledger entry.

  The nun's hand on her shoulder. That same pressure. Guiding her out. The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.

  They gave her a rough-spun tunic that was too large and a wooden bowl with a crack down the middle. The dormitory that smelled of unwashed bodies and cold stone; twenty children watched her arrive. Some stared at nothing. Others whispered. A few watched with open hostility.

  "You're Zero," one of them said.

  A boy, maybe ten, with fists like knots of wood. His name was Lorkas. His tunic was less ragged than the others. He had shoes. That told Aira everything about the pecking order here.

  "That means you're ours."

  No one moved to help her. A few looked away.

  At supper, the nuns ladled gray porridge into bowls without looking at faces. Aira found a corner and sat with her back to the wall. She raised the first spoonful to her lips—

  A hand snatched the bowl away.

  Lorkas grinned down at her. "Clumsy," he said, loud enough for the others to hear. Then he turned the bowl upside down.

  The porridge hit the floor. "Oops," he said. The others laughed. The nuns stood at the far end of the refectory, deliberately not seeing.

  Aira stared at the spilled food. Her hands shook. Not from fear. From rage.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  But she was eight years old and Lorkas was twice her size. So she said nothing.

  That night, she lay on her pallet and stared at the ceiling.

  Trash. Level Zero. Nothing.

  Her mother had been alive six days ago. Aira had begged the monk for help, screaming at his feet while her mother's breathing turned shallow. The faithful do not question the ink's will.

  They'd taken her mother away and brought her here.

  But her mother had whispered secrets in the dark, before the coughing took her. Late at night, when the fever made her lucid and strange, she'd traced glyphs on Aira's palm with trembling fingers.

  "This one is for strength, my little spark. See how the lines curve? Like water flowing downhill. You can't stop it. That's what strength is, inevitable. Unstoppable."

  "This one is for clarity. For seeing through lies."

  "This one is for endurance. For when the world tries to break you and you refuse to shatter."

  Her mother's hands had been cold even then. But her touch had been gentle. Reverent.

  "They'll tell you ink is a gift from God, Aira. They'll tell you only the worthy can wield it. But that's a lie. Ink is just... potential. And potential belongs to anyone brave enough to claim it."

  The testing chamber. Monk Evin's office. She'd seen it through the doorway, the great oak desk, the locked cabinet. But there'd been a vial left out. Half-used. Carelessly abandoned.

  Heretical, a voice whispered. Unblessed. Unsanctioned.

  She didn't care.

  The corridor was dark and empty. Aira's bare feet made no sound on the cold stone.

  Monk Evin's door was locked, but the window frame was rotten. She wedged her fingers into the gap and pulled. Wood splintered. The latch gave.

  There. On the desk. The vial of ink, deep and black. Beside it, a bone needle still stained from the day's work.

  Her hands shook as she took them both.

  I'm not helpless.

  The linen closet was her only refuge. Aira knelt on the floor and uncorked the vial.

  The scent was metallic, potent. It filled her nose and made her head swim. This was not practice on parchment. This was skin. Her skin.

  She hesitated. Once she did this, there was no going back. Unsanctioned ink left traces the monks could detect. She'd be marked as a heretic. A criminal.

  But what did she have to lose? She was already Trash. Already nothing.

  Her mother's voice: The curve of the strength glyph, my little spark. Start at the shoulder, flow down like water. Three strokes: power, direction, will. Don't stop halfway. A broken glyph is worse than no glyph at all.

  Aira dipped the needle and pressed it to her forearm.

  The needle bit, threading ink beneath her skin. Pain, ice and fire, sharper than anything she'd ever felt. Tears blurred her vision, but she didn't stop. She poured every ounce of grief into the needle. Every scrap of rage. Every hollow second of hunger and humiliation.

  First stroke. Her hand shook so badly the line wavered, but she forced it steady. Like water flowing downhill. Inevitable.

  The ink burned. Not just on the surface, deep, as if her arm were being branded from the inside out. She could feel it seeping into her, becoming part of her, rewriting something fundamental in her flesh.

  Second stroke. Across, then curving down. Her vision swam. The pain was white-hot, screaming, demanding she stop.

  She didn't stop.

  Third stroke. Up and through, completing the glyph. The needle slipped, skittering across her skin, and for a horrible moment she thought she'd broken it. But the shape was complete. Clumsy. Unstable. A child's flawed imitation of her mother's grace.

  But it was hers.

  The glyph began to shimmer.

  Faint at first, a light blue. Then brighter. The lines she'd carved into her skin pulsed with light, and warmth spread up her arm like spilled oil catching fire. Power flooded her muscles. Not gentle. Not controlled. Wild, chaotic, a lightning storm trapped in a glass bottle. It threatened to shatter her from the inside out, to burn through her bones and leave nothing but ash. She gasped, clutching her arm, and the power surged higher.

  For the first time since her mother died, Aira did not feel helpless.

  She felt dangerous.

  Aira found Lorkas in the dormitory, whispering with his gang in the corner. He saw her and grinned. "Back for more, Zero?"

  She walked toward him.

  He swung.

  She caught his wrist mid-strike and stopped it cold. The glyph on her arm flared, burning like a brand.

  Confusion in his eyes. Then fear.

  She hit him.

  It wasn't skilled. It wasn't clean. Just raw power in a single, devastating release. Her fist connected with his jaw with a crack that echoed through the dormitory.

  Lorkas dropped like a sack of stones.

  Silence. Absolute, terrified silence.

  Then one of the gang scrambled backward, finger shaking, pointing at the glowing symbol on her arm. "Heretic!" he screamed. "She's got unsanctioned ink! You'll burn!"

  The word shattered her fury.

  The Headmaster. The monks. The Pyre.

  The power in her arm guttered and died. She looked at Lorkas, unconscious, blood trickling from his mouth, and felt nothing. Not guilt. Not satisfaction. Just emptiness.

  Footsteps in the corridor. Heavy. Adult. Coming fast.

  She ran.

  The courtyard was empty, the moons pale slivers behind racing clouds. Her lungs burned as she sprinted for the rusted sewer grate she'd spotted during recess, half-hidden by thorny weeds.

  Behind her, voices. The alarm bell.

  The grate was heavy, sealed by rust and grime. She pulled. It didn't budge.

  The glyph on her arm flickered, once, twice—and flared.

  She wrenched the grate aside with a metallic shriek and dropped into the darkness.

  Freezing water soaked through her tunic. The stench of filth hit her like a wall.

  Above, torchlight at the grate's edge. "Down there! The heretic went into the sewers!"

  The grate screeched.

  Aira ran, splashing through the dark.