Ten Hollows.
Ember knew without looking back because he could hear them — that wet, borrowed screaming splitting the grey in every direction, and all of it aimed at him, all of it getting louder.
Run faster, he thought. That's the whole plan. That's all there is.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The Reaper matched pace behind them. Not closing. Not falling back.
Escorting, he thought. Like I'm a parcel being delivered.
"There." Wick's arm went out.
Walls. Low. Salvage and rust and timber that had given up trying to look like a wall and was just trying to stay upright.
That's it? That's what we're running toward?
"Move," Kaelen said.
They moved.
A lookout yelled from the top. Wick called something back. The gate opened.
They went through.
It closed behind them.
Ember turned around.
The Hollows were still screaming — ten of them, maybe more, out past the walls in the grey dark. But not closing. Not hitting the walls.
Just standing there.
Why aren't they—
Then the screaming stopped.
Oh, he thought. That's worse. That is so much worse.
THOOM.
Once. Then silence. The Reaper, somewhere past the dark, deciding something.
It stopped, Ember realized. Not retreating.
Just — stopped. Like it got what it came for.
He looked at his right hand.
Like it was making sure I got here.
Thirty people inside the walls. Fires in iron cages. Children who looked at him and then didn't. He understood that. He'd started to understand it at the second settlement and by the fourth he'd stopped taking it personally.
It's not you, he thought. It's what you're wearing on your wrist.
A woman came from the inner gate. Short hair. Eyes like iron that had been in too many fires. She checked Wick's shoulder — still bleeding, the arrow wound opened again during the run. Glanced at Kaelen. Then fixed on Ember and the fixing didn't stop.
"Marked."
"Yes."
"How far spread?"
He pushed his sleeve up. She counted the veins. Counted again.
It won't change, he thought. I've tried that.
"Eighteen."
"Nineteen now."
She looked up.
"How long since contact?"
"Two days."
A silence that had weight to it.
"You should be dead."
"I know."
Something shifted in her face. Not softness. Colder. The look of someone reassigning him to a different column in a ledger she kept in her head.
"Sal. I run this place. You'll sleep in the structure with the blue post." Clean. Practiced. Like a speech. "Not because I distrust you."
"Because they sleep better with distance," Ember said.
She looked at him sharply. "You've heard that before."
"Enough times to finish it."
She studied him. Then looked at Wick, and something passed between them — old, specific, nothing Ember was meant to catch.
"You brought him here deliberately."
"I brought him somewhere with walls."
"That isn't what I said."
"No. It isn't."
Wick walked past her. Sal watched him go. Then looked back at Ember.
"Blue post."
Ember went.
Cot. Brazier. One coal left. Shelf with nothing on it.
He sat and looked at his right hand.
That wasn't the mark.
That's what Wick had said. Two words, a closed door, and then nothing. Like he'd said too much by accident and had been punishing himself for it ever since.
Palm up.
Come on.
Nothing.
He pressed his thumb hard into the centre.
Like maybe it needed pressure. Like maybe it was stuck.
Real sophisticated theory. Very technical.
Still nothing.
He told himself that was fine.
It's not fine.
He needed to know it was still there. Not use it — just confirm it. Because things vanished without warning. Rain's laugh had vanished that way. No ceremony. He'd only found out when he went to reach for it and found the empty space instead.
What colour were her eyes.
Dark brown. He knew that. He'd always known that..
What shade.
He couldn't get the shade back. Six days trying. Nothing.
Don't touch it, he thought. Don't reach for whatever that was. Because if it costs what the mark costs — if it takes the shade of her eyes or something I don't even know I'm still carrying —
He closed his fist.
Not yet.
Kaelen came in without sound. Set a bowl down. Sat against the wall.
He ate.
"You stepped back. In the rocks. When I told Wick about the shadow."
"I know."
"You didn't know you'd done it."
"No."
"Does it change things."
She was quiet long enough that he knew she was actually thinking, not just performing it.
"There are stories," she said. "In the outer settlements. Of those who carried more than one gift."
"What became of them."
"Different things. Depending on the story."
"The bad ones."
"They stopped being people." Straight across. Nothing softened. "Not at once. Slow. Like a voice going quiet through a long winter. By the time anyone thought to call out—" A pause. "Nothing came back."
The coal ticked.
"And the good stories?"
She stood. Brushed dust from her knees.
"Haven't heard one."
She left.
Great, Ember thought. Wonderful. Very encouraging. Love a bedtime story like that.
He looked at his palm again.
What are you.
Nothing.
Fantastic.
Wick came in deep in the night. Said nothing. Sat with an arrow across his knees.
Ember let the silence run for a while.
"You recognised it. In the rocks. You looked at my hand like you'd seen it before. On someone else."
Nothing.
"Wick."
"What do you remember of the night before the mark."
"Nothing."
"Nothing strange."
"I've gone over that night every day for three months. I slept. I woke with the veins already spreading. There is nothing there."
Wick looked at him then. The full weight of it.
"The mark leaves a trace. On whatever gave it. Something you can follow back." A pause. "Whatever gave you the shadow left nothing."
Ember went still.
"The mark was done to you."
Wick looked at the doorway.
"The shadow came with you."
Came with me, Ember thought. From before. From before any of this. Something I've been carrying my whole life without knowing it had a name.
He opened his mouth.
THOOM.
The ground moved. Close — far closer than it had been since the Spires. The coal tilted in the brazier.
Neither of them moved.
It didn't fade. It settled. Sat just past the walls like something that had arrived and was done pretending it was passing through.
It's not following anymore, Ember thought. It was never following. It was making sure I got here.
Why here.
"Wick."
"I heard."
"What does it mean."
Wick looked at him. Last light of the dying coal.
"It means you're almost out of time to not know what you are."
The coal went dark.
Ember stared at the ceiling.
Nineteen veins. Two things without names. Ten Hollows standing outside those walls like they're waiting for something. And a Reaper-sized god that just escorted me to a settlement in the middle of nowhere and then stopped..
Why here. Why this settlement. Why me getting inside these walls specifically.
What's here.
He looked at his right palm in the dark.
It was warm.
Not the mark's hunger — that was sharp, wanted something. This was quieter. Patient.
And underneath it.
That sensation.
The same hollow-drawer feeling from the night Rain's laugh went. Not pain. Just something already unlocked. Already waiting to be taken as the cost of whatever came next.
No, he thought. Not tonight.
He pressed his hand flat against his chest.
The warmth faded slowly.
Is it learning, he thought, or just waiting?
He didn't know which answer was worse.
Outside, ten Hollows stood in silence.
The Reaper had not moved.
Not following, Ember thought. Escorting.
So what am I being escorted toward.
He stared at the dark ceiling and did not sleep.
And in the corner, Wick sat with his arrow across his knees and his eyes on the doorway.
Neither of them said anything else.
Neither of them needed to.
THOOM.