Zaire Faithkeeper had copied ten thousand pages, and not one of them was his own. He sat at his narrow desk in the scribe's dormitory, quill moving fast across a merchant's ledger. The oath he swore as a boy pulled at his hand like a leash. He could write any word for another man. His own stories died in his throat before the ink could touch the page. He wanted only one thing: to write a tale that would make a reader brave. The oath forbade it. His owl watched from the bedpost, its pale feathers streaked with old ink. Beside it slept a small creature shaped like a dog, though scales ran down its tail and a thin ridge of horns crowned its head. Zaire had raised the little drake from an egg found in the barn straw. Both animals were his. His words were not. He set down the ledger and pulled a blank sheet from the drawer. His hand froze above it. The oath burned in his wrist, sharp as a pinch. He gasped and dropped the quill. Every scribe knew the rule. Break the oath, and the guild strips your name and your right to write at all. Zaire studied the oath he had signed. It bound him to serve his master faithfully. He had read it a hundred times. Tonight he read the last line again, slowly. The oath ended when the master released the scribe, or when the master could no longer be served. His master had died three winters past. No one had told Zaire to stop. He had simply kept copying, because copying was all he knew. The guild had assigned him new work, new masters, one after another. But the oath named only the first man. That man was gone. Zaire's hands shook. The little drake woke and pressed its warm side against his leg. The owl stretched one inked wing. He understood now. No living master held his oath. The leash had rotted years ago, and he had gone on obeying a ghost. He lifted the quill. He touched it to the blank sheet. No pinch came. No burning. Only ink, black and free, spreading under his hand. He wrote three words. "A boy dreamed." The letters stayed. They were his. He laughed, loud enough to startle the owl into a hop. But the guild did not know his oath was dead. In the morning they would bring him another ledger, another master's name, and expect the loyal scribe they owned. If he wrote his own story, they would call it theft. Zaire looked at the three words on the page and knew he could not unwrite them. He had freed his hand. Now he had to face the men who thought they still held it.