I went east for three days.
No stars. No sun. Only the grey.
Sometimes the mark would throb left, then right as if it were fighting itself.
Sometimes I felt observed.
But I never caught a glimpse.
The ground started to shift. The black glass yielded to hard earth, then broken stone, then, finally. grass. Yellowed. Sparse. But alive.
And on the fourth day, I discovered the village.
Or what was left of it.
---
It didn't seem abandoned.
It seemed paused.
Houses were standing intact, but the doors were open. Tables were set, but food was rotted. Fires were dead a long time ago, but embers still weakly smoked.
I walked into the central square.
Silence.
No birds. No children. Only the stench of rot and the heavy feeling of wrongness.
And then I noticed them.
People.
Still standing. Still breathing.
But not moving.
Their eyes were open.
They were standing still — a man with an axe half-way to chopping wood. A woman on her knees to harvest herbs. A child caught in mid-laugh.
Each face frozen in some recollection that had frozen time itself.
I passed by the butcher. He did not blink.
The wind brushed against him. He did not shiver.
And then I saw it: a black ash line tracing the ground, connecting each of them like a vein.
It all converged at the well in the middle of town.
The spot on my chest beat hard.
Whatever had done it . it was still present.
---
I edged toward the well.
The air that clung to it was colder. Thicker. I peered in.
Nothing. Pitch-black water and a reflection that wasn't mine.
I shrank away.
And then, a voice. Young. Cracked. Behind me.
"You shouldn't be here."
I turned.
A boy stood at the edge of the square. Thirteen? Possibly younger. Mud-stained clothes. Wide eyes. He wasn't like the others. Frozen.
He was real.
Alive.
"What happened?" I asked.
He didn't respond.
He simply pointed at the well.
"It speaks."
"What does it say?"
"It calls for names. It wants to remember."
I felt a chill run down my spine.
"Your name," he said. "That's why they're like this. They gave it."
I lowered myself slowly.
"You didn't?"
He shook his head, gritting his teeth. "I don't know my name. I never said it. I kept it hidden."
The mark on my chest began to burn once more.
>"The well wants memory," I whispered.
> "It devours it," the boy told me. "One at a time. And if you say your name aloud… you're next."
I stood back from the well.
This was corruption. This was Primordial.
Or older.
A shard of forgotten god, perhaps — lost in a village no one recalled.
A centuries-old trap.
The words "Can it be stopped?" I asked.
The boy gazed at me. Then at the sword on my back.
"You're marked."
"..."
"Yeah."
"..."
"Then perhaps."
"..."
I follow the ash trail.
It throbbed softly as I moved — such as blood in veins. The people started to jerk. Slightly. A hand gripped. A jaw quivered.
I murmured softly, cautious.
"If you can hear me… hold on."
"I don't want to forget again," one of them breathed.
I stayed still.
It was the woman kneeling. Her lips hardly moved. Her voice was so tiny, it might've been something imagined.
He borrowed my brother's name," she said. "And then mine, I think. I don't remember."
I gazed downward.
Her name was being written in the ash beneath her.
Not cut. Written. By nothing. Letters unfolding like smoke:
A V E L I N.
I reacted instinctively.
I drove my sword into the ash.
The line shrieked.
Not out loud — but in my marrow. The ash smoldered where I had pierced it. A surge of pressure shoved me back. The woman screamed — loud, abrupt — and fell.
The others started to move.
But the well…
The well screamed.
---
The earth cracked around it.
Tendrils of black smoke burst outward, lashing, reaching. I dodged, rolled, cut one — it hissed back and sprang away.
The voice from the well was no longer whispering.
It boomed.
"THIEF OF MEMORY. UNMARKED. ERASED. RETURN."
I dashed directly at the well.
The tendrils moved to bar me. I slashed through them — each blow with the sword shone brighter. The symbol on my chest burned white-hot.
I made it to the lip and plunged the blade into the stone rim of the well.
The world broke apart.
---
A column of light burst upwards. The ash veins incinerated in a circle. All the villagers stumbled to the ground, gasping, blinking, wheezing.
The tendrils screamed and disintegrated.
The well split — and fell, shattering inward into an abyssal pit.
And like that.
Silence.
Actual silence.
No whispering. No suck.
Just air. Wind. And liberty.
I gazed down.
The blade was cracked now. Delicate lines traversed the metal, as if it had taken in too much of something it shouldn't have.
I pulled it out.
The boy came over.
"They'll wake up scared," he said. "Confused."
"..."
"You should go," I told him.
"And you?"
"I have to keep walking."
He nodded. Hesitated.
"You never told me your name."
"..."
I hesitated.
Then smiled, a bitter taste.
"Exactly."
"..."
"..."
I departed the village before the sun had risen.
As I walked, the mark guided me east — pulsing with new heat.
Whatever lay ahead had felt what I'd just done.
And it wouldn't be waiting quietly.
---