Graffita Neova's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

Graffita climbed out of the passage into the gray outer light. The three freed figures scattered fast, eyes down, the way everyone in the shadow-city walked. Her skin was bare of ink for the first time in years. But Neomi's words stayed with her. A wall, blank three years, held clean on purpose. She wanted to know who kept it empty. So she followed the only trail left to her: the faint red line Lord Pyra had marked when she painted him to the passage floor. The trail led her up out of the dark to a plain stone wall in the open city. It was white and clean, scrubbed of every mark. At its base ran a spill of red and black ink, dried mid-drip, like someone had tried to paint here and been stopped. Graffita pressed her palm to the white stone. No dust. Someone tended it. "You won't paint that." She turned. A man stood watching her, gray suit striped in white, black hair pulled back tight. Black leaked from his eyes in thin dripping lines down his face. He did not blink. "I'm Chromus Sterling," he said. "I keep this wall." Graffita had heard the name. The mayor of the color city, the one whose districts turned gray one by one. When a district drained, she'd heard, the people in it stopped laughing. "Three years," she said. "Why keep it blank?" "The last artist filled it," Chromus said. He pointed at the dried red and black at the wall's foot. "Bright color. The whole district went gray by morning. The people stopped speaking." He wiped a black slit with one finger. "Color drains out of my city. I don't know why. So I stopped letting anyone add more." Graffita understood then. He thought bright paint caused the draining. He was half right. Bright color erased shadow-folk. But she knew what he did not: dark shades first, then a slow climb, held them steady. "Your artist started bright," she said. "That's why they vanished. I can paint so they don't." She lifted her bare wrist. "But I'm out of ink. I need one drop to show you." Chromus studied her marked skin, the old dark blot at her wrist. "You've painted these people before." "I've freed them," she said. He was quiet. Then he pressed his thumb to the black dripping at his cheek and held it out. A bead of pure black sat on his skin. "Show me," he said. "On the bottom. Dark first. If a district dies, so do you." Graffita took the black to the base of the wall. She laid one dull line across the dried spill. She waited. The gray light held. No one vanished. Chromus watched the line stay. "The wall is yours," he said. "Fill it. Slow." The blank wall was hers now. But it stood in a city bleeding gray, and the mayor would kill the mural if one district fell.