I stared at the mark on my wrist until my eyes burned. It wasn't ink. It wasn't dirt. It looked as though someone had reached inside me, pulled out my own shadow, and woven it into the shape of a rose with thorns digging deep into my skin. Every time my pulse beat, the thorns seemed to pulse along with it—black, then a deep bruised purple, then black again.
I wrapped a bandage around it. Then a long-sleeved shirt. Then a jacket, even though the day was already sweltering. But no matter how much I covered it, the feeling never went away. A constant, cold throb. Like something alive was breathing just beneath my skin.
At school, I tried to act normal. I sat in the back of the lecture hall, took notes, nodded when the professor spoke. But my mind was somewhere else entirely. Every time someone walked past my desk, I flinched. Every shadow stretching across the floor looked too tall, too sharp, too much like a cloak.
My friend Mia leaned over halfway through the class. "Gerie? You okay? You look like you haven't slept in a week. And why are you wearing that jacket? It's like 32 degrees out."
I pulled the sleeves further down over my wrists. "I'm fine. Just… cold."
She gave me that look—the one that said she didn't believe me but wouldn't push. "If you say so. But hey—speaking of weird things… did you hear about what happened at the old university cemetery last night?"
My blood ran cold. "What about it?"
"Someone broke in. Not to steal anything, from what the guards said. All the graves were fine. But… every single flower on the fresh graves—they were all dead. Withered. Turned black as charcoal. And the soil around them? It was all disturbed. Like something had been… pulling up from underneath."
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because beneath my sleeve, the mark on my wrist burned. Not with heat—with an icy, biting cold that made my teeth ache. It knew. Whatever was happening out there… this thing inside me already knew.
That night, the dreams changed.
The gray fields were gone. Now I was standing in the alley again—the same one I'd run from. But this time, I wasn't alone. The cloaked figure stood right in front of me, so close I could feel the chill rolling off it, colder than winter. It didn't speak with a voice. It spoke with images that flooded my mind like floodwater—graves opening, bones rising, shadows taking shape.
You run from death, it whispered inside my head, but you carry its signature. You are not my victim, Gerie. You are my instrument.
I woke screaming.
The room was spinning. I scrambled out of bed, stumbled to the bathroom, and flipped on the light. I tore off the jacket, ripped away the bandage—and froze.
The black rose was no longer just on my wrist. Thin dark lines—like roots or veins—were spreading from it, creeping up my forearm, winding toward my elbow. They moved so slowly I could barely see them, but I knew they were growing. Every hour, every minute, they were claiming more of me.
I sank onto the bathroom floor, cold tiles biting into my knees, and stared at myself in the mirror. The girl looking back wasn't just tired. Her eyes were darker, deeper, as if something else was already looking out through them.
The Necromancer hadn't just marked me. It was changing me. Slowly, from the inside out. And unless I found out what it wanted—and why it chose me—I wasn't going to survive long enough to find out how it ended.