The sky was the wrong colour.
Not the pale blue of dawn, nor the burnt orange of Caelum's sunset skies. It glimmered—golden, subdued, as if the world was holding its breath. The town was silent, motionless. No voices, no wind. Just stillness.
Alex stood in the town square, barefoot on warm cobblestones. He didn't recall walking there. He didn't recall sleeping.
And then he saw him.
Elias was at the brink of the overlook on the other side of the town, where sky and cliffs came together. His cloak blew in the breeze, although there wasn't one. He didn't budge when Alex called his name.
"Elias?"
The old man half-turned, providing a slight smile. But there was something amiss with that smile—too weary, too definitive.
Alex approached, the silence becoming heavier with every step. "Is something happening? Is it the festival?"
Elias did not reply immediately. He just stared out across the valley as if committing it to memory.
Then, quietly: "The days of peace are over, Alex. You won't be a boy anymore."
Alex scowled. "Why are you speaking in that way? What is it?"
"I can't stay," Elias replied.
"What?"
"I must leave. There are roads I can walk that no one else can."
Alex's breath suspended. He shook his head. "That isn't funny.
Elias finally looked at him, and the exhaustion in those eyes tightened Alex's chest. "You're not alone," Elias said. "The crow will take you when the time is right."
The void crow swooped down, perching on a gnarled post close by. Its eyes shone like twin embers.
"You need to find the Fractured Light," Elias said. "Even in darkness, some things still recall the way."
Alex stepped forward. "No. No, wait. You're not going anywhere. You said you'd be there when I received my mark."
Elias did not move.
Alex's lips parted, but the words hung in his throat. Something heavy was weighing on his chest. He could not breathe properly.
"I—I don't get it…"
"You will."
"Why can't I accompany you?"
"Because you need to remain," Elias breathed. "For now."
The world grew dim. The golden light seeped from the sky, and shadows crept in around the edges of everything. The square, the cliffs, Elias himself—disappearing to smoke.
"Wait!" Alex grasped out for him, but his legs would not budge. "Don't go! Don't—!"
"One day," Elias told him, voice far away, "we may find each other again. But not as we are."
He moved into the darkness.
And Alex awoke—gasping, heart racing, eyes agape.
The dream hung over him like dew. He lay there, looked up at the ceiling, and then rolled onto his side.
Elias's bed was vacant.
The crow sat at the window, mute.
Smoke drifted across from the distance.
Morning light shone in Caelum's Hollow.
The last day of the Hunter's Dawn was here, and the town pulsed with excitement.
Children played in the cobblestone streets with cheeks painted, carrying makeshift swords fashioned by their parents. Gold and red banners streamed from rooftops. On the hilltop, the Shrine of Azarion's bells rang out clear, resounding across the valley.
Laughter.
Cheering.
A group of freshly Marked children stood near the festival square, showing off their glowing sigils. One boy with a crescent mark on his wrist shouted, "I'm gonna be a Seeker like my mom!"
An old woman handed out sweetbread, her own faded mark glinting in the sun.
Alex drifted through it all like a specter. The dream still lingered in his head—Elias's voice, gentle and heavy, saying goodbye. It didn't make sense. None of it did.
"Elias?" he shouted.
Nothing.
He combed the alleys. The square. The road to the outskirts. Nothing. Just the festival.
He gazed up at the sky.
And it tore apart.
A shaft of black rent the heavens apart like a scimitar in silk. Silence. Nothing but nothing. Like the world lost the use of its lungs.
Then came shadows.
Down from the sky came forms—wrenched, spindled, of smoke and famine. They hit the ground like comets, uprose as Shadow Void Beasts, insect-like and amorphous, their hate-burning eyes.
Shouts shattered the rejoicing.
One of the Marked adults sprinted forward, calling forth a shield of light from his palm. He yelled, "To arms! Defend the children!"
A beast charged.
The guardian's light faltered.
And then—blood. The adult was tossed aside like a shattered doll, his mark torn from his chest.
Children ran in all directions. Parents cried out for them. Some were too slow.
Alex remained immobile.
His body wouldn't cooperate. His legs wouldn't obey. Fear that he'd never experienced before burrowed in his bones.
The screams ended in a deafening silence as Alex stumbled across the devastated streets.
The festival square—the banners, the laughter, the sweetbread—all was reduced to ashes.
He couldn't recall running. Only blood on his hands. The sting of smoke on his throat. His legs operating on autopilot.
And then he saw it—
The Sunspire outpost.
Something that had stood as Caelum's shining beacon of order and safeguarding—its bristling spire marked by lightsteel, its walls abuzz with sorcery—lay now as nothing more than a ruin. Buried up to its hips in debris. Scorched.
Alex walked further, his steps crunching over broken glass and smoldered paper.
In here, the floor was wet.
Bodies. Marked bodies. Their limbs contorted. Their marks burned away.
Ritualistic.
A man's chest was sliced open, the symbol stripped like paper. His hand remained wrapped around a pendant of Azarion.
Alex vomited.
He spun—then froze.
A figure stood on the roof, wrapped in a hooded black cloak, its edge rustling in the ash-filled wind.
Their face was obscured by a bone-white mask. The mask had no mouth—only a scarred line etched across where a smile would be.
In its hand, a dark staff, gnarled as if something that had sprouted from the dark Void. Smoke curled about it as if it were living.
And beating under the figure's glove, a Mark.
But it wasn't like any Alex had ever seen.
It twisted. It shifted. It bled shadows.
The figure cocked its head—observing him.
Not attacking. Not pursuing.
Just observing.
As if Alex wasn't even worth finishing.
The wind shrieked. The outpost creaked, groaned, then burst inward, throwing a shockwave of ash down the street.
When Alex looked again, the figure had disappeared.
The only thing left… was the caw of the crow.
It swooped overhead, cawing once. Harsh. Echoing.
Alex retreated from the rubble.
Everything was shattering.
The stories.
The protectors.
The rules.
And in their place—nothing but silence.
Alex fled.
He had nowhere else to turn.
His feet took him to the only place that was ever safe—
The library.
Elias's voice lingered there, in memory.
Tales of light and hunters.
Warms afternoons among shelves, laughter over old stories, scent of parchment and ink.
But as he turned the last corner—
The library was ablaze.
The front windows were broken, stained glass dripping down the walls like blood.
Burnt beams protruded from the roof like shattered ribs.
The magnificent oaken doors—Elias's pride—stood splintered and ajar.
Smoke swirled up to the sky, black and acrid.
Alex entered.
There was silence, heavy and unnatural. No cries here. No fight.
Only the quiet hiss of fire and the creak of breaking wood.
Then he saw it—
A child's lantern, smothered under a shattered shelf.
Its light, designed to bring cheer on Hunt's Eve, extinguished in glass and ash.
A little distance away, blood. A path.
Small handprints smudged on the marble wall… and then, nothing.
His chest constricted.
He stepped further in.
The reading hall at the center—once crowded with students, elderly scholars, Elias's gentle humming—was lost.
Books, hundreds of them, were consumed by an open fire at the center.
Tales of the First Hunter—its pages curled and darkening—was the last to ignite.
Alex stretched out towards it… then stood still.
Why?
What did this place ever do to deserve this?
His fingers shook.
He wanted to shout. But there was nobody left to hear.
He went down on one knee, enveloped by raging tales, choking on sorrow.
And then he heard it.
The crow.
It perched high over the ruins, eyeing him.
Unmoving. Unblinking.
Its feathers glimmered faintly, as if fighting back something else.
Alex stared up at it.
"What am I supposed to do?" he breathed, voice cracking. "Where do I even go to?"
The crow cocked its head.
And in that instant, under the falling ash and shattered hush,
Alex understood—
This was more than the collapse of a tower.
It was the end of the world he recognized.
Today was supposed to be the last celebration.
Day of Breaking.
The ritual sword was to be broken in the town square—symbolizing Azarion's last strike and the victory of light over darkness.
Instead….
Caelum broke.
Alex staggered through smoke and destruction, his eyes burning from ash, his legs hardly supporting him.
Wherever he looked—
Death.
Lanterns once brightly colored hung like ripped skin from shattered beams.
Holiday banners now billowed like mourning shrouds.
A child's laughter—so boisterous just this morning—was silenced by far-off weeping, abruptly cut off by something sharp.
He saw them.
The Marked children.
Faces painted in ceremonial silver. Still dressed in their celebration robes.
Lying in the streets like broken toys.
One had their hand stretched out toward another—two friends, bridging death.
Alex dropped to his knees.
"Stop… please…"
He crawled by what remained of the baker's stall.
The sweetbread woman's face—what was left of it—glared at him with vacant eyes, her mark ripped clean from her wrist.
A savage message. A ritual.
It wasn't killing alone.
It was erasure.
Smoke engulfed the town square.
The ritual sword—once the centerpiece—was snapped in two now, protruding from a lake of blood.
Beside it, a kid Alex knew in school… the kid who always used to boast about becoming a Hunter.
His mark pulsed softly even in death, humming… and went out.
Alex screamed.
And even his sound was consumed.
The noise did not echo. It disappeared. As if the emptiness consumed sorrow.
He ran once more.
Through crumbled houses. Through flames-consuming memories.
Former friends with open eyes but no breath.
He ran until he couldn't feel his legs. Until the town wasn't recognizable anymore.
Until he was the last one running.
He fell beneath the statue of Azarion Dawnbreaker, cracked and headless now.
Above him, the sky was a maelstrom—swirling with unnatural hues, bleeding from the rent in reality that had consumed Caelum.
And the crow landed next to him, silent.
Alex didn't cry anymore.
He couldn't.
His soul had already started to empty.
Ash fell from the air like charred snow.
Alex crouched under the broken statue of Azarion, gasping, chest constricted. Blood stuck to his skin, not all of it his. The sky—once colored in the gentle pinks and blues of dawn—now lay torn open. A huge rift sagged like a wound, throbbing with unnatural light, splitting reality asunder.
And then, silence.
No screams. No flames. Only… quiet.
The air shifted. Pressure fell. Shadows undulated through the shattered town like waves in a dying sea. Alex's ears reverberated as the thrum of something old bore into his head.
Then—it came.
A form fell through the cleft, too heavy to be measured. It did not fall, did not fly. It slipped between space itself. Its hide curled with smoke and burning cracks. Eyes—hundreds, perhaps thousands—opened along its coiled wings. Each of them blinked in a different direction. A crown of spines hovered about its twisted skull.
It did not belong to this world.
It never had.
Alex's eyes met its own.
Something within him yelled to flee, but his body did not stir. Perhaps he could not. Perhaps there was nothing to run to.
The monster loomed over the devastation, and for a frozen, endless instant… it just regarded him.
And then it laughed.
Not an auditory sound—but a pressure, a psychic maelstrom bulldozing its way through his mind. Derision. Ridicule. The laughter of something that had devoured a thousand cities already before this one.
Alex stood.
Not with bravery—but with sorrow. His legs trembled. Soot and tears streaked his face. He parted his lips to say something, but there was nothing. Only a single word materialized in his spirit.
"Elias."
The beast awakened.
With a blur of movement, it charged.
Reality fractured. Space collapsed inward like a torn page. Its mouth opened—not like an animal's, but like an abyss in the form of hunger.
And then—
Alex was not there.
No scream. No flash.
Just the gentle collapse of air as the final human breath in Caelum's Hollow was consumed.
Darkness engulfed all.
Alex floated in it—weightless, lost. No ground, no light, no hurt. Only the faint echo of screams caught in the belly of the void. Other voices. Others lost.
Then, a gentle flutter.
The crow.
Even in this place, it pursued.
It alighted beside him, quiet and unscathed. Gazing at him with eyes old as time.
A heartbeat resonated in the void.
Darkness.
Not black. Empty. The sort of silence that wasn't hollow—but observing.
Alex drifted. No floor. No air. Only numbness and the sound of screams too large to contain.
Everyone was gone.
His arms wrapped around himself—if he still had arms. It didn't matter. The town. The festival. The library. Elias.
Gone.
He wanted to scream, to rend the darkness—but he couldn't even locate his own voice.
And then—fluttering.
The gentle thud of wings.
One crow had flown into the pit, settling close to him. Its feathers gleamed with an otherworldly sheen, as if oil reflected the light of stars. It cocked its head, looking into him—not at him, into him.
Alex blinked. Or tried to.
"Why are you here?" he whispered, but no sound escaped.
The crow inched closer and knocked on his chest with its beak.
Suffering boiled up through his soul.
An abrupt burst of light, cut not into his flesh, but through his being—a fluid, burning glyph carved in gold and darkness.
The Mark.
It wasn't bestowed.
It recalled itself.
One beat—like a heartbeat. And with it, the memories: the heat of the library. Elias's tales. Elias's warning. The town's faces. The children. The blood.
The crow cawed.
The void shook.
Something deep within Alex broke—and through it, something old replied.
His body reshaped—first light, then flesh, then will.
He opened his eyes. The darkness blinked back.
The monster that consumed him stirred. A shudder worked its way through its belly.
But too late.
He stood inside it now.
Not broken.
Not lost.
Not alone.
The Mark pulsed on his chest, alive, burning with a power the void did not comprehend.
The crow unfurled its wings.
Alex tightened his fists.
His fear was gone.
THE MARK HAS AWAKENED.