BY THIS RULE
THE FIRST CHAPTER
BLACKVEIN
The deeper you dig,
the more it wakes.
The miners went looking for gold.
Something in the dark was looking for them.
01 / WHAT THEY FOUND
They struck a vein.
It struck back.
For generations, the Gilded Depths gave up its gold quietly. Then the last shift broke through a seam of ivory stone. What flowed out was black, warm, and moving uphill.
By morning, the lift returned empty. Twelve lamps were still burning below. On the surface, twelve names had vanished from the company ledger.
The mine had learned to write.
Not every buried thing
is willing to stay buried.
The world has been
rewritten before.
A rule can be crossed out. It cannot be made to have never existed. Beneath the surface lie the discarded versions of things: a road that went elsewhere, a door that would not close, a name nobody remembers.
Pressed into the earth, their ink became a seam. The miners opened it. Now unfinished instructions are spilling into the workings, borrowing bodies, repeating old orders, trying to become real again.
And you are made of the same ink.
02 / A SCRAP THAT SURVIVED
You were
supposed to
be forgotten.
A torn page. An ink stain. The faint impression of a name.
That is all you have of the hand that folded you and whispered, “Keep this safe.” The name is gone. The instruction remains.
They call you the Looseleaf. At the mine entrance, your page fits a tear in the last shift’s roster. Whatever you were before, you are evidence now.
Take your words. Find your way down.
DISCOVER HOW WORDS BECOME WEAPONS
MARA WICK / THE LAMPKEEPER
“Twelve lamps went down.
I’m keeping them lit
until twelve come back.”
Mara remembers a brother the records say she never had. She cannot give you his name. She can give you a light—and tell you which way the last cage went.
03 / FOLLOW THE SEAM
Every layer hides
another version.
From the last warm lamp to the record sealed beneath the mine.
The Lamplit Workings
The cages still descend. The lamps are still filled. Someone has left a meal beside a cold furnace, as though the shift will be back any minute.
Look closer: every nameplate has been scraped clean.
04 / RECOVERED FROM THE WORKINGS
Someone left
a paper trail.
The ink can swallow a ledger. It cannot swallow every copy.
01 The last shift +
“Twelve lamps issued. Twelve meals wrapped. Twelve places in the cage.”
SHIFT ROSTER / A CORNER TORN AWAY02 A note in the lamp room +
“Mara—if they tell you I never went down, ask who brought my lunch back.”
UNSIGNED / THE PAPER SMELLS OF LAMP OIL03 The official account +
“Workings vacant at time of closure. No personnel unaccounted for. Record final.”
OFFICE OF REVISION / SEAL STILL WET
THE FINAL EDITOR
The record is final.
You are the exception.
At the bottom waits the one who signed the closure. The mine is empty. The workers never existed. There is nothing left to find.
That is the official story.
You have a different draft.
BY THIS RULE / BLACKVEIN
Bring something
back from the dark.
A word. A name. A reason to go deeper.
Blackvein is the first chapter of the world of By This Rule.
Explore the lore. Experiment with the rules.