Far beyond the shattered remains of Caelum, beyond forests that wept ash and skies where starlight was afraid to shine, there was a place the world had forgotten for a long time.
It was not a temple, not a cave, not even a kingdom.
It was. absence.
A tear in existence itself.
In its center beat a pool—viscous, black, and alive. Its surface rippled without breeze, churned without strength, as if time itself were drowning under its hide. The shrine that held it was constructed of bone and mirrorstone, inscribed with unblinking eyes that shed trails of obsidian ink. None of them blinked.
Until now.
The pool sighed.
The shrine creaked.
And then, in a voice forged from silence and corroded memory, the Shadowwell whispered.
"Caelum. has failed."
A silence. Then words spewed forth like venom into the mind.
"The shard evades the Chain."
"The Hollow awakens too early."
"Another Mr. Hunter awakens with memory… too soon."
The air cooled. Not the type of cold that made the skin tingle—this froze the soul, condensing marrow to mist.
A presence stood at the edge of the pool.
Not shrouded—molded by darkness itself.
No face. No name. No movement.
And yet, the shadows seemed to curve around him… in submission.
He did not blink at the Shadowwell's warning.
He merely turned, slowly, to three cages secured into the shrine walls.
Within: three human-like figures, distorted and deformed, bound with shrieking black thorns. Their mouths contorted in pain, but no voice emerged.
The figure lifted a single finger. The chains lunged forward.
The bodies twitched, then flared—not in fire, but in forgetting. They were consumed, not incinerated. Their suffering absorbed by the shrine itself. Their pain fuel for something much older than cruelty.
The pool glowed brighter.
The shrine's numerous eyes… blinked.
And then the figure spoke.
His voice wasn't boisterous.
But it resonated throughout reality.
"Then bleed the timeline."
"Let the Architect dream louder."
Far, far away… in the world of the living…
Clouds swept in over Varrion's camp.
There was no storm. No wind.
And yet, the sky growled.
Varrion stood at the opening of his command tent, scanning the horizon. His Mark, buried under armor, suddenly pulsed.
He touched it out of habit.
The glow was not normal.
Something—somewhere—was observing.
And whatever it was…
It had just awakened. Varrion walked to inquire about the individual who was taken in by his assistants, in the interrogation chamber….
The interrogation chamber was cold as a tomb.
Stone walls encircled the room like fists. Blue runes glowed weakly along the floor—sigils designed to quell not just power, but memory. The air was stale, heavy with the smell of old blood and something worse: fear.
The hooded figure knelt, bound not by iron—but by sigils that vibrated with cold authority.
He shivered, head dipped, body spasm every few seconds as though something within were attempting to burrow free.
Varrion loomed above him like a tempest kept at bay by a taut thread.
"You sense it?" Livia whispered behind. "It is not him. there is something amiss with the air. It's ill."
Varrion did not reply. Rather, he reached down, caught hold of the prisoner's hood—and pulled it free.
What lay beneath froze even the murmur of the runes.
A face… barely a face anymore.
Gaunt. Hollow-eyed. Skin flaking in patches. His hair was burnt black at the tips, his lips cracked open in places like dried-out leather.
Livia's breath caught. "No… no, it can't be—"
Varrion's voice was ice.
"Dain Marrow."
Surprise shimmered through the room. A name dredged up from the past's dust. A student once so forgotten that even teachers omitted his name during roll call.
Tier 1.
Flickerflame.
A fire that never ignited anything.
Dain laughed, a shattered sound more cough than laugh. "I wondered… if anyone remembered anymore."
Livia moved forward cautiously. "You… you were in my class. You hardly ever said a word. Always had that small journal—"
"Where I wrote the names," he breathed.
Varrion narrowed his eyes. "What names?"
Dain raised his head.
The darkness under his eyes wasn't natural. They curved—like ink veins.
"Those who reminded me each day that I wasn't worth breathing."
He laughed again. There was heat to it this time. Hate.
"They spit in my food. They replaced my textbooks with empty ones. I asked the instructors for assistance."
He smiled, bloody teeth showing. "They said 'You have to earn respect here, boy.'"
He raised a shaking hand. The veins throbbed violet.
"So I did."
There was a silence.
And then he said it:
"I gave my soul to the Shadowwell."
Varrion's eyes grew sharp. Livia gasped.
Dain went on, as if quoting scripture. "They came when I attempted to die. The whisperer… the creature in the black… told me I didn't have to hurt anymore."
Tears spilled into his ravaged eyes.
"All I had to do… was burn."
He pushed open his robe.
Beneath, his chest was a cathedral of scars and rot. Veins like charred wires snaked up to his throat. His Mark—once a small flicker on his sternum—was now a burning furnace, violet and black, its shape mutated beyond recognition.
"I'm Tier 5 now," he rasped. "I could have shattered Caelum's gates myself. They made me a god."
Livia's voice cracked. "But look at you…"
"I am seeking," he growled. "And I see power. I see fear in your eyes now."
He attempted to stand.
The runes flashed—scorched him back down.
"Why did you come here?" Varrion asked.
Dain laughed—mad, gasping. "Because they said so. They said Caelum's light needed to be extinguished. They said the Hunter's Spark had been ignited. And that I would be the tinder."
The serpent behind Varrion shifted.
A flicker swept through Dain's Mark.
Then another.
Livia's eyes went wide. "Varrion… the Mark. It's unstable."
"No—NO—" Dain started screaming. "They promised! They said I could keep it! I earned it!"
But the Shadowwell does not give promises.
It makes deals.
And this one had run out.
Veins burst all across his chest.
His limbs wracked wildly.
"It hurts—it hurts—it HURTS—"
And then—
BOOM.
His body detonated in a pillar of black flame, screaming, twisting, writhing as his own soul consumed him.
"THEY SAID—"
"IT WOULDN'T—HURT!"
His voice broke into a thousand howls. A thousand regrets screamed in unison.
Livia put her hands over her ears. Varrion didn't bat an eye.
The flames consumed him, incinerated all remains. Until…
Silence.
Ash.
One thing was left.
Varrion stepped forward. The serpent shadowed him.
Something sparkled amidst the ash.
Two iron buckles.
He went down and retrieved them.
Names were inscribed on metal.
Five names.
Varrion didn't need to question.
Livia's voice shattered. "His bullies."
"He couldn't forget them," Varrion said. "So he inscribed them onto his armor."
"No," she breathed. "Onto his bones."
They stood there in silence for a long moment.
Then Livia asked softly, "Do you think the Shadowwell ever considered him human?"
Varrion spun to face the door.
"No."
His tone was flat.
"Just an investment."
One assistant rushed toward varrion
he said, "sir, the boy is heavily fainted, we need to use a starlight energy potion ."
Varrion emerged to alex with him.
Darkness.
No heat. No mass. No noise.
Alex drifted in a nothingness that throbbed like a heartbeat—torturously slow, rumbling, timeless. There was no heaven, no earth. Only black. and a far-off susurration that wasn't a susurration at all.
"It's not your time."
Then another, older voice, desiccated and awed.
"The Hollow can't sleep yet."
He shifted—or something inside him shifted—and he saw a figure far away, blazing like a candle in stormy wind.
The figure stood upright, back facing him, grasping a broken blade made of time itself, its edge clicking, unraveling the air around it. One eye, gold and blazing, flashed back at Alex.
Then the voice spoke again.
"He's watching. Wake up."
And then—
Pain.
It was sudden and choking, like being pulled up from drowning.
Alex's body jerked as he tried to draw breath, but his limbs refused to listen. Couldn't scream. Couldn't move. He was only vaguely aware of a woman's hands holding him hard, the world trembling in shreds of light and blood.
"He's slipping again—hold him still!"
The voice was a woman's. Hard, quick, furious.
She cupped his head and drew out a vial from her belt, its contents shimmering silvery-white, like moonlight in a bottle.
"Starlight Elixir," she whispered. "Please work…"
And before anyone could protest, she tilted Alex's chin and poured it down his throat.
The heat struck like a sunbeam. Alex felt it flood through him—but rather than healing his wounds, the light went elsewhere.
His Mark.
Under the cover of his shirt, the odd sigil smoldered red-gold, with the apparent fuel of bellows at the heart of a blacksmith's forge. Incandescent lines threaded up his torso like veins of flame.
The woman—Livía—reached back with an open hand, round-eyed.
"It's not rejecting the elixir." she whispered. "It's. hoarding it."
Something hissed.
The material of Alex's robe rippled—and deep within his sleeve, the knife Elias had given him emitted a low hum. Not a threat. A resonance. As if it had tasted something familiar.
A voice, too quiet for anyone but the crow to hear, muttered from within the steel.
"He burns too early."
The crow, sitting close, cocked its head but did not caw. For a moment, its adorable marble-like eyes sparkled—like they were seeing beyond flesh. Beyond soul.
They gazed at Alex's Mark.
Blinked.
And the moment was gone.
Alex's breathing returned to normal.
His eyes flashed open—not awake, but no longer suffocating. The blue of his irises glimmered faintly. Not shining, not paranormal—but. attuned.
Varrion knelt beside him. He looked haggard, dirt and Voidbeast blood on his armor, serpent coiled tight at his back like a guardian statue.
He whispered, not as a commander, but as a man barely containing his relief.
"Rest. You're safe… for now."
Alex couldn't reply. His body was still too weak, too distant. But he felt the words settle in his chest like a truth half-remembered.
Somewhere, deep within, beyond bone and breath and memory, a voice awakened.
Not his.
Not human.
"You touched the Well…"
"You shouldn't touch it again."
"Not until you recall your true name."
A shadowy figure stood singly at the brink of the world.
Enveloped in a frayed, hooded cloak, he stood before a pit that violated every principle of existence. It wasn't earth. It wasn't even nothingness. The Shadowwell seethed like a living wound, a cut ripped into reality's backbone—its surface churning like liquid hell, shifting between obsidian, bone white, and void-black.
No wind blew. No birds sang.
Only the whispers.
They flowed upwards from the pit in delicate tendrils, curling like ash fingers and memory. Every whisper was a different tone—some pleaded, some cried, some laughed in a tongue no sane mind should know.
The figure did not speak.
He only listened.
Then, like a heartbeat through the bones of the world, the Shadowwell shook.
And it spoke.
Its voice was not loud. It did not have to be.
It was old, a union of pain, purpose, and prophecy.
A noise that sewed itself into the bone of everything that listened.
"The Caelum has failed."
"Its mark is carved."
"The Gate will open. sooner than the Starlight fears."
The man cocked his head—just a little, as though listening to something more. Something beneath those words.
Then he turned and started walking away, his footsteps leaving no prints, as if the world itself would not recall him.
But before disappearing into the horizonless mist, he lifted one hand—gloved, shaking with something too immense to be termed power—and made a single motion.
At his feet, the fissured earth hissed and seared itself with fire.
A sigil.
A shattered crown encircled by three chains.
And then—he was gone.
The Shadowwell remembers. The Crow lies. And Alex... is not who he believes.