Morning came to Vale like a reluctant confession.
The sun rose, but it did so thinly, its light stretched pale and brittle across the stone towers of the guild as though the sky itself was uncertain whether the world deserved warmth. Shadows clung too long to corners. The banners above the main hall stirred without wind. Even the bells—normally loud, proud things—rang with a muted, hollow tone, as if the sound had passed through water before reaching mortal ears.
Arlen stood alone in his room, staring at the faint sigil above his collarbone.
It had not faded.
That alone unsettled him more than the whispers, more than the lightning that no longer waited for his permission. He had scrubbed the mark raw in the early hours of the morning, standing half-naked in the cold basin water while the city slept. He had pressed ice against it until his teeth chattered. He had tried heat. Nothing changed it.
The sigil did not glow. It did not pulse. It simply was—pale, deliberate, carved into his skin as if the world itself had written a note and decided his body was the safest place to leave it.
"One of seven," he murmured, tasting the words again.
They did not answer this time.
That worried him even more.
A knock came at the door—soft, controlled, familiar. Lira didn't wait for his answer. She never did anymore.
"You're still alive," she said, stepping inside with a faint, crooked smile. "Good. Saves me paperwork."
Arlen huffed. "You joke like you didn't sit awake watching me breathe."
She didn't deny it.
Her gaze flicked, just briefly, to his collarbone. He saw the moment her breath caught before she schooled her expression back into neutrality.
"It didn't disappear," she said.
"No."
"Does it hurt?"
"Not the way wounds hurt," he replied. "More like… pressure. Like something expecting me to move."
Lira leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "The guild's in a quiet panic. Mira hasn't stopped recalibrating her instruments. Darek swore the ground growled under him during watch."
Arlen exhaled slowly. "The Veins are reacting."
"Or remembering," Lira corrected.
That word again.
Remembering.
It followed him everywhere now, like a ghost that refused to stay behind glass.
Vale summoned them before breakfast.
The council chamber smelled of ink, old parchment, and restrained anxiety. Maps covered the central table—fresh ones layered over older drafts, redrawn so many times the lines had begun to blur into something organic. Arlen noticed immediately that the Blackwoods were no longer the focal point.
The disturbance had spread.
Lines radiated outward like fractures in glass. Small circles marked locations that had no reports yet, only absence. Villages where messengers failed to return. Roads where travelers spoke of time stretching strangely. Forests where echoes arrived before footsteps.
Vale stood at the head of the table, hands clasped behind his back. He looked older today. Not weaker—never that—but weighted.
"The ambush in the Blackwoods was not isolated," Vale said. "Nor was it coincidence."
Arlen said nothing. He didn't trust his voice not to betray the storm coiled inside him.
"The Obsidian Fang has denied involvement," Vale continued. "Which means either they are lying—or someone wants us to think they are."
"And the Veins?" Mira asked quietly from the corner.
Vale turned his gaze to her. "The Veins are unstable. Not collapsing. Not surging. But… adjusting."
Lira frowned. "Adjusting to what?"
Vale's eyes settled on Arlen.
"Someone who should not be awake."
Silence thickened the room.
Arlen felt it then—a subtle tug behind his sternum, the same pull he'd felt in the Blackwoods, now stronger. Directional. Intentional.
"I don't know what you think I am," Arlen said slowly, carefully, "but I'm not some ancient calamity waiting to happen."
"No," Vale agreed. "You are worse."
Arlen stiffened.
"You are a variable," Vale finished. "And the world hates uncertainty."
The next assignment came swiftly, almost brutally so, as if delay itself might invite catastrophe.
A rift—minor but abnormal—had been detected near Hollowmere's southern ruins. Not a tear, not yet. More like… a thinning. A place where reality forgot to hold itself tightly together.
"You'll go," Vale said. "You and Lira. Quietly. No banners. No witnesses."
"And if we find something?" Lira asked.
Vale's jaw tightened. "You will not engage unless necessary."
Arlen almost laughed.
The road to Hollowmere felt wrong.
Not hostile—worse. Indifferent.
The air grew heavy as they traveled, thick with the kind of silence that swallowed sound rather than echoing it. Birds avoided the treeline. Insects ceased their hum when Arlen passed. The sigil above his collarbone tingled faintly, as if responding to a distant call.
Lira noticed.
"Don't," she said softly when his hand twitched toward the hilt of his blade.
"I didn't—"
"I know. That's why I'm saying it."
They reached the ruins by midday. Hollowmere's southern district had been abandoned for decades after a magical collapse twisted the land into something half-real. Stone structures leaned at impossible angles. Archways folded inward like ribs around an invisible heart.
At the center of it all lay the thinning.
It looked like nothing at first.
Then Arlen stepped closer.
The world bent.
Not visually—not entirely—but conceptually. Space around the thinning felt… negotiable. Sound arrived late. Light refracted strangely. When Arlen reached out, his fingers seemed to stretch farther than they should.
Lira grabbed his wrist. "Enough."
The moment she touched him, the sigil burned cold.
The thinning reacted.
A pulse rippled outward, knocking both of them back. Dust lifted from the ground and froze midair, suspended as if time itself had stumbled.
And then the whisper returned.
Not one voice.
Many.
Layered. Fragmented. Familiar.
Arlen screamed.
Lightning detonated outward, uncontrolled, raw, ripping through the ruins in jagged arcs that carved molten lines into stone. Frost followed instinctively, blooming across shattered ground, sealing the chaos into brittle silence.
When it stopped, Arlen was on his knees.
Lira was beside him instantly, hands on his shoulders, grounding him. "Arlen. Arlen, look at me."
He did.
Her eyes anchored him. Pulled him back.
"I didn't choose this," he rasped.
"I know."
"But it keeps choosing me."
She swallowed. "Then we make sure it doesn't choose alone."
The thinning collapsed in on itself moments later, sealing with a sound like a door closing far underground.
But something remained.
A shard of light, no bigger than a coin, hovered where the rift had been. It pulsed slowly, rhythmically—like a heartbeat not meant for this world.
Arlen stared at it.
The sigil on his skin burned once.
And somewhere, far beyond Hollowmere, something ancient marked his name into memory once more.
The world had begun collecting its debts.
And Arlen Vayne was at the center of the ledger.