The mark still tingles beneath my sleeve.
Not burning. Not aching. Just… aware.
I keep my hand close to my chest, hiding the black, root-like veins blooming beneath my skin. Every time my pulse beats, the mark seems to answer back — like something inside me is breathing on its own.
Cabe stands a few steps away, arms crossed over his dark robe, eyes fixed on the horizon instead of me. He isn't moving. He isn't speaking. But the silence around him feels heavier than any words.
I clear my throat.
"You left quickly this morning," I say.
He doesn't look at me. His jaw flexes, once.
"I didn't sleep," he answers. His voice is low, distant, like he's speaking from somewhere deeper than the present moment.
My heart stutters. "Because of… the name?"
This time, he blinks. A small reaction — barely noticeable — but enough.
I step closer. "Cabe, you didn't just guess that word. You said it like you already knew it."
"I don't know it," he says.
"But you said it."
Silence.
He finally drags his gaze to me — slow, deliberate. The look is sharp enough to make me take half a step back without meaning to.
"I didn't choose to say it," he murmurs. "It came."
"From where?"
He exhales, long and controlled, as if the answer itself is dangerous.
"Somewhere I don't remember walking."
My breath catches. "You make it sound like it belongs to you."
His eyes narrow — not in anger, but in warning.
"Nothing belongs to me," he says. "Not anymore."
I hate how those words feel — like a door closing.
"Cabe, I need to know what's happening. I woke up with—"
He lifts a hand, silencing me without touching me.
"You think I don't see it?" His voice stays soft, but something dark threads through it. "Your wrist. Your breathing. The way you've been looking at the world since yesterday."
My blood turns cold. "You saw?"
"I didn't have to." He steps closer, eyes locking onto mine. "Whatever woke you… shook something in me too."
The wind shifts. My cloak flutters. Cabe doesn't blink.
"What do you mean?"
He leans in, barely, and for a heartbeat his voice is almost a whisper carved out of stone:
"Every time I look at you, something stirs. Like a memory I shouldn't have. Like a voice waiting for me to finish a sentence I never started."
My chest tightens. "What voice?"
His expression doesn't change — but the space around him feels colder.
"I hear a name," he admits. "Not loud. Not clear. But close. Close enough to make me listen."
I swallow. "Nayo?"
He goes still.
"That one," he breathes. "It's the only one that stays."
"Why does it—"
"I don't know." He cuts me off, gaze shifting away as if the horizon might answer for him. "And I don't intend to chase something that refuses to be caught."
"But you said it when you touched my wrist," I insist. "It reacted to you."
His jaw tenses. "Coincidence."
"You don't believe that," I say.
"No," he agrees. "But believing doesn't change truths that aren't ready."
That sentence chills me. "Ready for what?"
Cabe doesn't respond. Instead, he studies me again — not with curiosity, but with an unsettling certainty, as if he's measuring a line neither of us can see.
"Listen carefully, Sibefer," he says. "If you let this thing — this mark, this word — become your whole world, it will devour whatever life you have left."
I stare at him. "So we pretend nothing is happening?"
He nods, slow and grave. "Until we understand enough to decide what to do next."
"But what if waiting makes it worse?"
"It already will," he says. "Whether we move or stand still."
I hate how right he sounds.
"And the name?" I ask again. "Nayo?"
He hesitates — the first real crack in his composure. For a fraction of a second, something flickers behind his eyes: recognition… or fear.
Then it's gone.
"It isn't yours," he says quietly. "Not yet."
Not yet.
The word hits harder than any truth.
I take a step closer. "Then whose is it?"
His gaze drops to my covered wrist. "If I ever learn the answer, I'll be the first to wish I hadn't."
A beat passes.
Then he turns, cloak sweeping behind him, already slipping away like a shadow that refuses to be caught.
"Cabe—" I call.
He pauses — doesn't look back — and speaks one last time:
"Don't say the name again."
"Why?"
His voice slices the air clean:
"Because names remember things we've forgotten."
And then he's gone.
Just like that.
I clutch my wrist, feeling the mark pulse once beneath my skin — slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat that isn't mine.
Maybe the world hasn't changed.
But Cabe has.
it has already begun to walk toward us.