Night fell over the wilderness like a slow, suffocating blanket.
The trees above swayed without wind. The stars blinked, flickered, shifted—subtle, almost imperceptible movements. But I noticed them. The sky wasn't just wrong anymore. It was reacting.
Cira was the first to feel it.
She snapped awake from her meditation, gears in her pauldron whirring to life. "The Mark's resonance is fluctuating," she said, eyes fixed on me.
"I'm not doing anything," I replied, hands raised.
"That's the problem." She stepped closer. "It's doing something to you."
And then—
I blacked out.
The Dream That Wasn't a Dream
I stood in a world made of silence.
No ground, no sky. Just endless reflections of myself, stretched across a void of black glass. In the distance, a faint glow pulsed—a rhythm I recognized immediately.
My Mark.
But it wasn't alone.
Standing beneath the pulse was a figure—tall, robed, faceless. The only color in the void came from the jagged crown of burning white light atop its head.
The Harbinger.
He didn't speak with words. But I heard him.
"You are incomplete."
I stepped forward. My voice echoed strangely in the void. "I'm not yours."
"You are everyone's."
He raised a hand, and the world split. Memories I'd never lived crashed into me:
—Marching across a plain of bones, shouting orders to soldiers with metal masks.—Standing before a dying god, offering mercy… then slitting its throat.—Opening a gate not with magic, but with belief.
The pain was unbearable.
I dropped to one knee, clutching my head as the world twisted around me.
"The Mark remembers what you've forgotten. You think you can walk a path unclaimed?"
"You are Valec. The First. The Chosen. The Betrayer."
"No," I gasped. "Not anymore."
The Harbinger tilted his head.
"Then prove it."
He raised both hands—and the glass beneath me shattered.
The Duel Within
I landed hard—this time on a platform floating in the middle of the void. Around me swirled fragments of past selves: battle cries, screams, laughter, and rage.
Before me, a figure formed.
Me.
Not as I was now, but as I had once been. Taller, older. Armored in black and silver. The Mark etched across both arms like a web of light. His eyes were cold. Merciless.
He raised a sword made of memory and stepped forward.
"You want to be free of this?""Then defeat the version of you that wasn't."
I raised my hand.
The Mark responded, flaring outward, forming a blade of compressed reality, woven from Divin threads.
Our weapons met.
And the void shook.
A Battle of Wills
It wasn't just a fight of strength. It was identity.
Every strike brought a memory.
When I blocked, I saw a time I had spared a village. When I countered, I saw myself burning it in another life.
The Harbinger watched from the distance, unmoving.
"Why do you resist?" my other self asked. His voice was cold steel. "You had power. Command. The world bent to you."
"Because it cost everything," I said, sliding beneath his blade and slashing low. "I don't want to rule. I want to protect."
"Then you'll die weak."
He surged forward—too fast. His blade pierced my shoulder, and pain lanced through my body.
But I didn't fall.
I gripped his arm.
And I let the Mark speak.
The Surge
For the first time, I didn't command the Mark. I listened.
And it showed me something I hadn't seen before:
A third path.
Not the tyrant I once was. Not the martyr I pretended to be.
But something new.
I focused on the thought—on who I wanted to be—and the Mark responded.
My blade morphed, shifting into a staff of silver-gold threads, pulsating with intent.
I drove it into the platform—and a wave of force erupted outward, blasting my past self into fragments.
The world quieted.
The Harbinger lowered his head slightly.
"You've taken your first step."
I looked down at the Mark.
It had changed.
No longer just the eye and the seven stars—but a crown beneath it.
Return to Reality
I awoke to someone shaking me violently.
It was Elara. Her voice was panicked. "Sylas, wake up. You were—your body—it wasn't breathing."
I sat up sharply, gasping for air.
Kieran stood nearby, his blade drawn. Darian had fire in his palm. Cira knelt beside me, scanning with a device that projected a glowing outline of my nervous system.
"It was the Harbinger," I croaked. "He spoke to me."
Cira's face paled. "You made contact?"
"I fought… myself. The version I used to be."
She exhaled. "Then the next phase has begun."
"What phase?"
She looked up at the others, then back at me.
"You've just experienced the first Threshold Dream. It means your Mark is evolving. And the Harbinger has taken notice."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," Cira said, rising to her feet, "you'll start drawing in things that want to use you—or destroy you."
Marked Again
The next morning, I noticed the change.
Where the Mark once shimmered faintly beneath the skin of my hand, it now pulsed visibly. Faint golden lines had branched up my forearm, spiraling like tattoos of starlight.
"I thought you said the Mark would fade again," Elara said, inspecting it with narrowed eyes.
"It's not fading," I muttered. "It's anchoring."
Kieran tapped the pommel of his blade. "Which means people will see it now. Even if you hide it."
Darian grunted. "Which makes traveling harder."
"Not necessarily," Cira said. "We're close to an Ouro Division outpost. Hidden within a canyon settlement known as Varn's Hollow. They'll know how to help—if they haven't already been compromised."
I met her gaze. "By what?"
Cira looked me dead in the eye.
"The Harbinger has followers. They call themselves the Silencers. And they don't want you to evolve. They want you to shatter."