We know nothing about you

Corin didn’t move when the room finally emptied.
Tia swallowed the knot in her throat and crossed the floor anyway.

“Hey.” Her voice was softer than she meant it to be. “C’mon. Upstairs.”

He flinched like the sound itself stung. His guild card was still clutched in his hand, the pressed lettering catching the lantern light. She slid her fingers gently around his wrist and tugged. For a moment she thought he’d pull away, but instead he let himself be led. His steps dragged, heavy as stone.

The hallway creaked under their weight. Upstairs, the door to their room stood ajar.

Rika was already there. She sat cross-legged on her bunk, arms folded tight, jaw working. Her gaze snapped up when they entered.

“Oh, look who finally came clean,” she said, voice sharp as glass.

Corin winced, shoulders hunching further.

“Rika–” Tia started.

“No.” She shook her head hard. “Don’t defend him, Tia. Do you know what this feels like? Sitting there, listening to some soldier rattle off names and titles like he was reading a list of trophies? He’s not some poor runaway farm boy. He’s a noble. A Draemont at that.”

Corin’s breath hitched. “I never– I didn’t want–”

“You didn’t want us to know,” Rika snapped. “You let us think you needed help, that you had nothing. And we gave it. Gladly. Because we thought you were one of us.”

The words hit like blows. Tia could feel Corin shrinking beside her.

“Rika.” Vesh’s voice came from the corner, calm but edged. He had been so still in the shadows Tia hadn’t noticed him. “Your anger speaks truth, but truth without mercy cuts too deep.”

Rika turned on him. “And what would you call this? Mercy? Lying to our faces while we risk our necks?”

“Enough,” Balthan rumbled from his bed. He didn’t rise, but his gaze was heavy. “The boy hid what he thought would divide us. Foolish, yes. But it does not erase what he’s done at our side.”

Corin finally lifted his head, eyes red. “And what have I done? Lied. Pretended. Made you all believe I was someone I wasn’t.” His voice cracked. “I don’t deserve–”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Tia cut in. Her words came faster than her thoughts, sharp with the weight in her chest. “You don’t. If you wanted to hide, fine, but don’t tell me we weren’t friends. Don’t you dare.”

The room went quiet. Even Rika blinked, caught off guard.

Tia’s hands were trembling. She forced them still. “Maybe you’re a noble. Maybe you’ve got some big family name that means something here. But you’re also the idiot who helped us fight off that wyrm, and the one who nearly set your eyebrows on fire trying to impress Rika with a sparkle spell.”

Corin’s face flushed, shame and something else flickering there.

Tia took a breath. Her throat was tight.

Silence pressed in again, thick as smoke out to suffocate you.

But Rika’s glare swung toward her instead. “You’re quick to defend him, Tia. But what about you?”

Tia blinked. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Rika snapped, voice trembling with frustration. “We know nothing about you. Nothing. Where you’re from, who you are, what you were doing before you landed in our laps. You’ve got this… this Blank Mark sewn into you and you treat it like some funny accident, but do you have any idea what it sounds like? Like another lie. Like you don’t trust us either.”

Tia’s stomach lurched.

“B-but I don’t even know myse–”

“You can’t say that to everything. You must know where you were born, your family just– urgh I–”

Rika shoved to her feet, fists balled. “I wanted this – us – to be real. Friends. A group. Not just people watching each other’s backs because it’s convenient. But how can I believe that when you keep everything locked up? When he–” she jabbed a finger toward Corin “–pretends to be a nobody and you won’t even tell us what you are at all?”

Tia’s mouth opened, then closed again. The words curdled in her throat.

Rika’s voice cracked with raw hurt. “Do you know what that feels like? To want to belong, to think you finally do – and then realize you’re the only one actually laying it all out? While the rest of you keep secrets like they’re gold?”

Her breath shuddered out. She dragged a hand through her hair with a frustrated groan. “You’re impossible. Both of you.”

She brushed past, muttering something under her breath as she left. The door clicked shut behind her.

Corin sank onto a chair nearby, burying his face in his hands.

Tia stood beside him. “She’ll cool off,” she said quietly. “Hopefully.”

He didn’t answer, but when she laid her hand over his shoulder, he didn’t pull away.

Her chest was heavy, heavier than before. Because Rika wasn’t wrong.

Corin stayed slumped in the chair, his guild card limp in his hands, head bowed so low Tia thought he might fold in on himself entirely. The silence pressed on, thick and uncomfortable.

Then Balthan stirred. He swung his legs off the bunk with the kind of sigh that sounded like gravel. His boots hit the floor with a dull thud.

“You’re not the first boy to run from a name,” he said, voice low. “And you won’t be the last.”

Corin’s head snapped up, eyes wet, raw. “You don’t understand.”

Balthan’s brows rose. “Don’t I?” His tone carried the faintest edge of challenge. “You think a name is all you are. I’ve seen soldiers with bloodlines longer than your arm fall like wheat in a storm, their names worth nothing when the blade came down. You carry it, aye. But it doesn’t carry you.”

Corin blinked at him, stung, then shook his head. “But I lied. I let you think I was nobody. I let you believe I needed saving.”

Vesh moved then, uncoiling from his bunk with quiet grace. He crouched beside Corin, resting one scaled hand lightly on the armrest. His eyes were steady, calm as a tidepool.

“You did need saving,” Vesh said gently. “Not from hunger, perhaps. Not from the road. But from loneliness. From the weight of expectation.”

Corin’s lip trembled, and he looked away.

Vesh’s tail flicked once, slow. “I suspected already. Balthan as well. We did not speak it aloud because we wished for you to choose. To trust us in your time. That you did not does not erase the choices you made after. You still stood with us. Fought with us. Bled with us. That truth cannot be hidden.”

Balthan grunted. “We judge by deeds. Not names.”

The words seemed to hang there, heavy and solid, as though Balthan had nailed them into the floorboards.

Corin’s shoulders shook, just once. He scrubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, breath coming ragged. “Rika doesn’t see it that way.”

“No,” Vesh admitted softly. “She is wounded. Wounds make us lash. Give her time.”

Tia shifted uneasily, arms folded tight. She wanted to echo their certainty, to believe in it. But Rika’s words still rang in her ears like a splinter that wouldn’t come out:
We know nothing about you.

Her stomach churned.

She glanced at Corin, hunched and trembling between the two older men who tried in their own ways to hold him upright. For all his noble name, all his secret background, he looked like nothing more than a boy who desperately wanted to belong.

The lantern light flickered across his face, catching on the damp trails at the corners of his eyes.

And for the first time, Tia wondered if maybe they weren’t so different after all.

Not long after, it was time for dinner. It was that kind of trotting down the stairs that made your legs give in slightly. An inevitable awkwardness when seeing someone after a fight.

The Dozing Serpent was warmer than the street outside, but the heat didn’t reach the table. Their bowls steamed faintly, thick lentil stew with scraps of onion and salted pork, bread heels stacked in the middle. It should’ve smelled good, but to Tia it was all just… dull. Grainy on her tongue, too much salt, not enough life.

No one spoke. Not really.

Rika sat apart, her chair dragged just enough from the bench to mark distance. She hunched over her bowl, spoon moving slow, methodical. Her tail lay limp behind her chair, barely twitching. She didn’t look up, not once. Not at Corin, not at anyone.

Corin’s head stayed down too, shoulders caved inward, hands turning his spoon without lifting it. The stew cooled in front of him untouched. He finally forced a bite, chewing without taste, eyes fixed on the wood grain of the table.

Tia picked at the bread, tearing off edges so small they crumbled between her fingers. She wanted to say something, anything to crack the weight in the air – a joke, a jab, even nonsense. But the silence pressed, swallowing all the words before they reached her tongue.

Balthan cleared his throat once, grumbling something about the meat being “passable.” Vesh added a low chuckle, as though that could soften the edges. But even their voices sounded muted, swallowed by the quiet between spoon and bowl.

Tia risked a glance at Rika. The mage’s jaw moved, chewing slow, eyes fixed somewhere past them all, like the far wall held more interest than the people she’d traveled beside for weeks. She didn’t fidget, didn’t gesture, didn’t argue. She was still. Too still.

The stew stuck thick in Tia’s throat. She gulped hard, forcing herself to eat. But every bite felt heavier than the last.

When the bowls were empty, Maressa cleared them without a word. Rika stood first, the scrape of her chair jarring. She didn’t say goodnight, didn’t look back. Just walked upstairs, fluffy tail dragging.

They followed after. The bed frames creaked under shifting weight as everyone settled in. Tia climbed into hers, the blanket scratchy against her arms. She rolled over – and blinked when she saw Rika hadn’t gone to her usual bed beside Corin’s. Instead, she had shifted, curling stiffly on the farthest cot, back turned to them all.

The room darkened as the lantern burned low. Breathing steadied, one by one.

But Tia lay awake, staring at the rafters. The silence was still there, suffocating.

Her chest ached with it.

Rika’s words echoed sharp in her memory, sharper than she wanted them to be.
We know nothing about you.

Her fingers curled into the blanket.