They told me that my name was Kevin.

I never gave it a name. Someone gave it a name, and it stuck. Perhaps a priest. Perhaps a corpse. I was too young to recall, and too old now to worry.

Names don't matter where I come from. The only names that remain are the titles etched into the walls of the dead. And even those erode with ash and moss.

I was born during a storm. Not the kind with rain and thunder. The kind that had come from the heavens in fury, as if it despised the world. The kind that could melt steel and glass mountains. They referred to it as a Skyfall. Spoke of it in tales as the anger of the Primordials.

My mother passed away from it.

They told me when I was taken out of her body, I was not crying. I was looking.

Wide eyes. Silent. Staring at the curl of smoke in the air as though I'd seen something the others hadn't.

Then they saw the mark.

A line blackened from the top of my throat to the center of my chest. Not carved. Not burned. Branded from within. Like something from within had reached up and put its handprint on me.

They didn't talk about it. Didn't attempt to explain it. They did what they always did with accursed children:

They threw me into the fire pit.

It's not half as exciting as it sounds. The pit was in the back of the shrine, covered in soot and bones. It wasn't designed to burn you to death—it was designed to find out what wouldn't burn.

If you were under a curse, the flames would engulf you. If you were blessed, the flames would pass you by.

I didn't burn.

The flame recoiled.

The lone priest who witnessed it fled from there that evening and never came back. The shrine-maidens stopped calling me by name. And the others. they stopped looking at me.

I grew up in silence.

---

The orphan barracks smelled of iron and mildew. No blankets. No pillows. Just lines of stone slabs and one shared bowl of water between thirteen other rejects, each of whom had something wrong: crippled hands, extra fingers, too much shadow in their breath.

They never spoke to me. Not out of malice—but out of terror. If you stared too hard, they said to me, my mark would shift.

I didn't fault them.

I kept my shirt up and long sleeves. I did not want to even look at the mark. Not because I was scared of it…. but because I did not know what it wanted.

Sometimes I woke up panting, my skin clammy and cold, my chest burning as if the mark was trying to communicate with me. I'd scratch it. Bleed. Didn't help.

And then there was the Night of Culling.

Each year, the Iron Circle, who guarded the shrine, imposed a test. Not written. Not ritual. A battle.

The sickliest of the orphans were "culled," taken to the mines under the eastern cliffs, where no light fell on the stone and no one came back.

The strong were marked and kept alive. Not preferred—merely… tolerated.

I was thirteen. Thin, small, quiet.

They thought that I'd break in seconds.

They pitted me against Garrik to begin with. Sixteen years of age. Twice my size. Already bruised from past fights. He did not hate me. He merely wished to survive.

He charged with a bloody, blunt-tipped wooden spear. I didn't budge.

I should have. I knew so.

But something whispered.

Not words. Just. feeling. Cold. Clear. Final.

As soon as the spear descended, my left hand acted involuntarily.

I don't know what came next, precisely. Only that his spear snapped. That his body twisted in mid-air as if he'd been hurled by the fist of a giant. He crashed head-first into the ash circle, not getting up.

The audience fell silent.

I slowly turned my head, as in a dream, and gazed towards the fire pit on the other side of the arena. Embers there glowed faintly… in harmony with the brand on my chest.

They didn't cheer. They didn't say I was blessed.

They named me Hollowspawn.

Then they locked me inside underground.

No trial. No explanation. Simply a cell hacked out of the cliff face and a bowl of half-frozen rice tossed through a slit every day.

I kept time in water drips. Forty-six thousand by the time they opened the gate again.

When they came for me, I did not resist.

Two helmeted and armored Iron Circle guards of reflective steel said nothing either. They dragged me along chains around my throat and wrists. I was stumbling on rock. I had bitten my mouth and it was bleeding.

They led me to the inner sanctum.

Somewhere I never knew existed.

Within, dripped old stone from the walls as if the mountain was crying. Candles illuminated the space, blue flames dancing. And in the center. a pool.

Not of water. Not entirely.

The air hovering above it glimmered. The surface undulated in patterns that stung the eyes.

A priest stood next to it. Old. Barefoot. Blindfolded.

He never asked questions.

He simply said to him: "You are not meant to exist."

Then he pushed me in.

---

Falling did not feel like falling. It felt like forgetting.

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The mark on my chest seared like fire and ice blended together. And then I heard the voice—not a word, not a whisper, but. truth.

You were never meant to serve. You were meant to destroy.".

I woke up on the other side. Starving.Alone. And the world was never quite the same again.

I awoke in silence.

No wind. No birds. No water dripping or life humming. Just the chill stillness of the world having held its breath and remembering how not to breathe.

I lay in ash. Not dust, not dirt-ash. Dry, dead, thick enough to sink into.

My hands were scabbed. My ribs hurt. I was naked, skin raw and seared where the mark had blazed like flames before I fainted.

The sky outside was a washed-out grey, neither day nor night. A wrong sort of sky. The sort that didn't belong in any season.

I got to my feet slowly, dizzy. My legs were about to give out. My breathing came in short gasps.

The pool I'd been hurled into? Disappeared.

No water. No rim. Just a smoky scorch in the air behind me, like something had ripped open and then wished it hadn't.

I wasn't belowground anymore.

Wherever I was, it wasn't the shrine. It wasn't anywhere I'd been.

And then I saw something more.

I wasn't alone.

---

There was a body lying in front of me, half-covered by the ash.

I transferred to it instinctually. Not in empathy—out of prudence. Anything left behind in the orphanage was a trap or a warning. This was both.

The body was old. Desiccated, with a skin like cramped bark, fingers clenched tight as if grasping something never attained. But its armor… that was recent.

Steel plates, blackened. It had a symbol on the chestplate, carved in bloodstone: a spiral curled inward, like a snake consuming itself.

I didn't know it. That signaled danger.

It had a knife strapped at its back.

It wasn't ceremonial-looking. It was used.

I ripped it loose.

It wasn't heavy—but it wasn't natural either. The handle was burnt, but the steel wasn't hot. Not rusted. Not worn. There were three words inscribed down the spine of the blade in a language I didn't know, but somehow knew.

> "We who are broken."

I didn't want to know that.

I kept going.

---

The ashlands lay underfoot in every horizon. No trees. No buildings. Only broken windows of stone and the remains of creatures that did not appear quite human.

Bones, contorted. Spears fused into sand. Gigantic impact craters, city gates wide.

I encountered additional bodies—none so fresh as the first one.

Some were attired in armor like his. Others were not.

One lacked eyes. Not gouged—simply… erased.

Another had teeth planted in its palms. Not human teeth.

Whatever war had been fought here hadn't ended neatly. Or at all.

And deep inside me, beneath the flesh, the sign throbbed.

Not pain. Not warmth.

Direction.

It was drawing me in a certain way, toward the east.

---

I went walking.

For hours. Perhaps days. Time dissolved here. The light never changed. The wind never picked up. I existed on puddles of sour liquid collected in the creases of stone, and the ration pack I stole from the dead soldier's belt.

When I lay down to rest, the nightmares happened.

They were not my own.

I saw a woman covered in wires, crying out in a language that sounded like flames.

I beheld a city with its towers turned upside down, planted in the heavens.

I beheld myself, but not as I am, older. Colder. Standing over a heap of bones with the same sword in my right hand.

Every time I woke, the mark glowed softly.

Each time, I felt less human.

---

I discovered the gate on the fifth day.

Not a gate such as a city has. A gate such as a wound.

An uneven stone arch hidden in the cliffs, half-swallowed by ash. There wasn't any wall. No guards. Only symbols etched deep into the rock surrounding it—spirals, reversed stars, names scratched out with strokes that cut the stone inches deep.

Over the arch was one word.

"Veyr."

I said it out loud before I knew what I was doing.

The mark on my chest burned.

And the gate swung open.

---

Within was a corridor of screaming.

I don't mean hearing. I mean sensing.

Each step made the bones in my feet vibrate. Each breath sounded like someone breathing right behind my ear. Names were etched into the stone walls. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Some scratched deeply. Some barely inscribed.

They throbbed as I walked by, glowing softly on and off—until I saw mine.

Kevin.

It was seared into the stone in front of me. Fresh. Still smoldering.

I stopped. My heart was pounding. My hand tightened on the blade.

I hadn't carved it.

So who had?

---

Something moved behind me.

Not fast. Not clumsy.

Careful.

I turned. The tunnel was empty.

But the light… shifted.

And a voice, so soft it could've been a thought, whispered:

"We remember what was erased."

I ran.

---

The room opened up into a chamber cut from black glass. A mirror-room, but distorted—my own reflection splintered into a dozen, all of them fractured, all of them false.

And at the center.

A throne.

No one was seated upon it.

But a figure stood before it.

Tall. Pale. Encased in armor of bone and fabric that did not rustle with his movement. His face obscured by a mask with no mouth—just one black slit where eyes should have been.

I held up the sword. I had no idea why. Instinct.

He did not charge.

He raised a hand.

And pointed at my breast.

"The mark burns," he said, "because the world is wrong."

His voice wasn't loud. But it carried through me like thunder underwater.

"You are the last piece of something that should not exist."

"You were not chosen. You were left behind."

I didn't respond. I couldn't.

He stepped closer, slowly.

"You want to know who you are?" he asked. "Then bleed for it."

He raised his own blade.

And attacked.

The masked man moved as a whisper.

No wasted movement. No warning. No hesitation.

A blink, and the knife was already at my throat.

I managed to bat it away. Sparks illuminated the glass room as metal rang. The reverberation wasn't noise _ it was pressure. As if the world outside us flinched at the impact.

He swung at me again, and again — low, high, left, spinning — his movements more accurate with each one.

I was battling death itself.

My arms propelled themselves with a speed I didn't think I had. My muscles were screaming. I slipped on the black glass twice, rolled once, almost dropped the sword

Then the burn on my chest flared.

And everything slowed down.

"..."

For a moment, the world bent.

His blade sliced toward my ribs — too quick to parry — but I knew the angle. I saw it before it occurred. My body moved not out of fear, but assurance.

I parried through the strike.

His sword passed by a hair.

I struck up.

He parried — just barely.

He regarded me then. I couldn't see his face, but I sensed the shift.

Not rage.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

"So you've begun to awaken," he said.

I didn't respond. I couldn't. I had no idea what he was asking.

He tilted his blade a fraction, just far enough to talk.

"Tell me ... did the Primordials mark you before birth? Or did something older find you first?"

That froze me.

Primordials.

The word was chosen. In the shrines, it was spoken softly, half-prayer, half-threat. They were not gods. Not exactly. They were. founders. Forces of creation. Creation made flesh.

To be marked by one was to be chosen.

To be marked by something older was to be. wrong.

"I don't know," I finally said, voice raw. "I didn't ask for this."

"..."

"No one does."

"..."

Then he lunged again.

"..."

The battle grew vicious.

He started testing me. Not with strength — with accuracy. Each blow was meant to deconstruct me piece by piece. Not to kill. To dismantle.

I fought back with greater ferocity.

I didn't fight with technique or control. I fought with recall — the beatings from older orphans, the survival instinct that kept me going in the barracks, the anger of being cast aside like garbage and made it through anyway.

Steel collided with steel. Sparks rained down. Glass shattered.

Then he feigned — and I believed it.

His elbow hit my jaw. I crashed to the floor. My blade went skittering.

He leaned over me, blade pressed at my throat once more.

"The world doesn't want you, Kevin," he said. "And yet here you are. Still breathing."

"..."

I glared up at him, teeth smeared with blood, vision reeling.

"I'm used to it."

"..."

"Then prove it."

".."

And he shoved the blade home.

"..."

"..."

I rolled , not to avoid, but to access.

My hand struck something icy in the glass — my sword. I didn't think. I just acted.

I moved it up blindly, two-handed, and deflected his blade in mid-strike.

What followed was a sound that wasn't natural.

It was the sound of glass shattering under the ocean.

A wave of force exploded outward.

The reflected room shattered in a ring about us. The shockwave burst outward in every direction. The ceiling trembled. Cracks spread through the throne behind him.

He recoiled — not because he was hurt. Because he was shocked.

"Impossible…"

I stood up slowly, blade buzzing in my hand. My chest throbbed, the mark blazing white now, rather than red.

He gazed at it.

"That's not a Primordial seal," he said. "That's a brand of erasure."

"..."

"Meaning?"

"..."

"Meaning… someone attempted to erase you from the universe. And failed."

I didn't get it.

But I didn't have to.

He moved back toward the throne. Then he sheathed his sword.

"If you seek answers," he said,

"go east. Keep following the mark. But understand this with each step, something you don't wish to lose will be lost."

"And what of you?" I asked.

"Me?" He spun partway around. "I'm not your enemy, Kevin. Not yet."

Then, before I could prevent it, he plunged his sword into the foot of the throne.

The chamber fell.

"..."

"..."

I awakened buried in glass dust.

The chamber no longer existed. Or perhaps I'd been relocated. My body hurt in places I hadn't known I had. But I was alive.

The sword remained with me.

The mark… no longer burned. But it throbbed, faintly. A compass in my bones.

East.

I stood. I walked.

And this time, I didn't look back.

---