The sound came without warning.
A sharp, distorted crackle—like a wire short-circuiting inside a skull.
Ere stopped instantly. She didn't slow down; she simply ceased to move, her body becoming as still as the obsidian ruins around them. Golden almost slammed into her back, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Down," she whispered. Her voice wasn't scared. It was cold. Precise.
The sound came again. Closer. Metal scraping against stone—a wet, heavy, rhythmic dragging.
Golden's arm began to burn.
It wasn't the heat of a fire. It was the heat of a stomach.
The Mark beneath his sleeve throbbed, the black veins twisting and crawling under his skin like parasitic worms. They tightened, pulling his muscles taut, dragging his hand toward the noise. The silver line flared—not with light, but with a cold, predatory sharpness.
For a terrifying moment, Golden realized he wasn't the only thing in the alley that was hungry. The Mark wanted to feed.
Ere's head snapped toward his arm, her blue eyes flickering with a calculated intensity. "…Interesting," she muttered.
Then, the rubble exploded.
The Circuit-Stalker burst from the shadows.
It was a nightmare of geometry and gore.
Rusted iron plates formed a hunched, lupine frame, bolted directly into raw, quivering slabs of red muscle. Wires snaked through its limbs like exposed nerves, sparking blue and yellow as they leaked Essence into the damp air. Its head was a warped cage of bone, a single glowing lens staring out from the darkness of its skull.
The air didn't just vibrate; it screamed. A digital signal that made Golden's teeth ache.
"Don't run," Ere said.
The thing shrieked—a sound like a thousand dying radios—and lunged.
Ere moved.
She didn't sprint. She flickered. One moment she was a silhouette; the next, she was a blur of neon blue, her boots barely glancing off the jagged stone. Her blade ignited, a jagged thermal edge warping the air into a haze.
There was no clang when she struck. There was only a wet, sizzling scream as metal met Essence. Rusted armor sheared away like burnt paper.
But the Stalker was a creature of the Grind. It didn't feel pain; it only processed data.
Wires snapped free from its torso, stabbing into the earth to anchor its weight. Its lens rotated with a mechanical click, locking onto the weakest link in the chain.
Golden.
The hunger in his arm surged into a roar.
"Oh no," he whispered.
The Stalker leapt. It ignored the girl with the thermal blade. It wanted the anomaly.
Golden's body moved before his mind could form a thought. The silver line on his arm detonated with a freezing chill.
The world stretched.
Time didn't stop—it became thick, like walking through deep water. The Stalker's claws crawled through the air, every serrated edge and rusted flake of metal visible in agonizing detail. Golden could see the static dancing between its wires. He could see the path of his own death.
He moved. One inch.
It felt like pulling his entire body through lead.
Time snapped back.
The claws whistled past his throat, cutting only the air. Golden hit the ground, rolling across the sharp stone as agony detonated in his forearm. It felt as if molten lead was being pumped into his bone marrow.
"Don't—use it again!" Ere's voice echoed through the ruins, sharp as a command.
She was a storm now. Lightning arcs wrapped around her limbs, snapping with controlled violence. Each of her steps cracked the stone beneath her. She plunged her blade into the Stalker's core, the digital scream reaching a deafening peak before collapsing into static.
Silence returned. Heavy. Suffocating.
Golden lay gasping, his vision swimming in shades of violet and grey. He clutched his arm, his fingers digging into the flesh to stop the Mark from twitching.
Ere walked over. Her boots clicked—slow, deliberate. She looked down at him, then at the smoking wreck of the beast, then back at his face.
"…You didn't look at me once," she said quietly.
Golden blinked, trying to clear the spots from his eyes. "What?"
She tilted her head, her blue eyes scanning him with an almost clinical curiosity. "Most people stare. The Mages, the villagers... they see the 'Beautiful Architect.' But you? You didn't hesitate. You looked at me like I was just another threat to be measured."
Golden winced as he forced himself into a sitting position. "Sorry," he muttered, his voice raspy. "Monsters take priority over pretty faces."
Ere laughed. It was a short, sharp sound—devoid of warmth, but full of genuine surprise.
"There's a line of nobles in the Spire-Cities who would kill for that honesty," she said. Then, her face hardened. She crouched beside him, her electric aura making the hair on his neck stand up. "That move back there... that wasn't Essence-Tech. You didn't channel. You didn't cast."
She reached out, her fingers hovering just inches from his sleeve.
"Time bent for you, Golden. And the world doesn't like it when people break its rules."
Golden met her gaze, his jaw tight. "I didn't mean to."
She stared at him, and for a second, the suspicion in her eyes was replaced by something worse: pity.
"Whatever that mark is," she said, standing up and looking toward the dark towers of the Spire-City, "it's not a gift. It's a parasite. And if it keeps 'saving' you like that, eventually there won't be enough of Golden left to save."
Golden looked at his arm. The pain was fading, replaced by a dull, satisfied thrum.
He realized then that the Mark wasn't just a scar. It was a witness.
And it was still hungry.