The morning air in the academy grounds carried the faint, synthetic scent of blooming gardenias and recycled ozone, but to Creed Walden, it tasted entirely of copper and burning hair.
Beneath the thick, pitch black fabric of the headband he had hastily tied around his brow, the brand throbbed.
It was not a physical headache—not the dull, pulsing ache of a bruised temple or the sharp pinch of a ruptured blood vessel.
It was an unnatural, multi-dimensional itch. The geometric scar carved into his skull felt like an open doorway suspended over a void, leaking absolute zero straight into his cerebrospinal fluid.
Every step was a quiet exercise in agony.
His lungs expanded, contracted, but felt permanently hollow.
Deep within the core of his chest, where three bright, pulsing nexuses of consciousness had lived, there was nothing. Only an eerie, vast emptiness that felt like a plucked tooth, leaving an exposed nerve dangling in a cavernous grave.
