The hard rain dropping in the Gutters didn't wash away the blood on the floor, it spread thinner.
Ashen Vale leaned back against the brick wall, breathing in the stench of rust, blood,smoke and rotting meat. His shoulder cut open, blood running down. The pouch of stolen relics ripped open. Unable to move his right arm he looked up, Dren and others laughing like hyenas, thinking Ashen was already dead.
"should of known better", Ashen mutters, clutching a cracked sigil coin in his hand. "You always knew they'd selled you out"
He stumbled upon a broken archway of the vault. This wasn't part of the plan. The Drip Market smugglers said this place was empty---Just some empty ruins before the ink-storm.
They were wrong.
Inside the walls were ink-black and pulsating
Literally pulsating a bit strange.
Strange symbols moved along the stone like oil on water--shifting shapes that tried to form words in a language that no one has ever spoken in centuries. The air was thick. Heavy. like someone or something was watching him.
"...Hello?" he called out.
The ink on floor began to react-- crawling out towards him.
His legs gave out, and he fell to his knees. Blood spilled from his wound onto the ground... and the ink drank it.
A whisper bloomed to his ears
"Kneel, Child of the Blank. Let me crown you with a purpose."
"... Man what the fuck" Ashen gasped. The vault shook. ink flared across the celling.
A sigil-- a floating crown made of tangled script--- descended in burning lines toward his back.
Pain. Fire. Searing Ink. Screaming.
and then... silence
He woke up with something crawling beneath his skin.
And a voice that wasn't his own.
"We are bound. You will rule, or be ruled."