CH 3 The Mark Burns.
1436 Words
Isla
I didn’t sleep after the mark appeared.
Instead, I sat curled on the edge of the kitchen counter, Mama’s quilt wrapped around my shoulders like armor. The fabric still smelled faintly of cedar and dried lavender, but it did nothing to warm me. The cold seeped through the walls of the cottage, breathing through every crack. Every floorboard seemed to pulse beneath me—like breath. Every shadow curled like a finger.
And then came the knock.
Not loud. Not frantic.
Just one soft tap against the door—like a request. Like something old asking for permission to come inside.
I held still.
Another knock. Gentle. Measured.
“Isla?” A woman’s voice. Smoky. Smooth. “Isla, darling, are you awake?”
My feet hit the ground before I realized I was moving. I reached the door, my hand on the knob, my heartbeat pulsing in my throat. I didn’t remember unlocking it.
But the door opened anyway.
She stood in the mist.
Tall. Limbs too long. Hair like damp wheat braided down her back. Her dress—antique, moth-bitten lace—hung off her like memory. Her eyes were the worst: wide, gray, like a porcelain doll’s. But the pupils were wrong. Vertical slits. Like a predator that never needed to blink.
“You look like your mother,” she said softly.
I should’ve slammed the door. I should’ve screamed.
Instead, I stepped aside.
She entered like she owned the cottage. Like she remembered it better than I did. She sat at the kitchen table, legs crossed, hands folded. Smiling.
“I knew her,” she said. “Before the Hollow closed. She was one of the last to speak the old tongue.”
My stomach dropped. “Who… are you?”
She tilted her head. Her voice changed—deeper, layered. “You called to us.”
I froze. My fingers twitched toward the talisman on the counter.
“You were in the Hollow,” I said.
“I was the Hollow.”
Her voice shimmered—echoes layered behind it like a choir of whispers. Her dress twitched like insect wings. Her smile widened, and widened—too wide.
I backed away.
She crossed the room in a blink. Cold fingers grazed my jaw—soft and slow. Intimate.
“We slept for centuries beneath that cursed stone,” she said. “You opened the gate, little one. You let us breathe again.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Shhh.” Her lips brushed my ear. “Don’t lie. You felt us.”
My body wouldn’t move. She hadn’t paralyzed me. It was worse than that. I was entranced—like something in my blood leaned toward her.
Her hand drifted down my neck, fingers resting on the mark. A spiral. An eye.
“You were chosen,” she whispered. “Even if you don’t know it.”
Then came her mouth.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a pull.
She pressed her lips to mine and my breath vanished. My thoughts unraveled like threads in a storm. I fell into her—into rot and roses, shadows and silk. She tasted like altar smoke. Like stolen memories. Like—
She jerked back.
A pulse split the room.
Not thunder.
Not sound.
Force.
She screamed—a sound so inhuman it cracked the glass in the window. Her skin split. Porcelain cracks spread across her cheeks. Black light poured out.
For a moment, I saw her real form.
Her mouth gaped into a void of teeth. Bone wings burst from her back. And then—
She collapsed into ash.
I hit the floor.
Chest heaving. Soul scorched. My lips raw. The mark on my chest pulsed—hard, like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to me.
And that’s when I saw him.
Rael.
Standing just inside the doorway.
His robes were torn, chest bare, runes glowing like fire scars. His eyes—gold, deep, consuming—locked onto mine.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t move.
Just looked at me.
Like I was something he hadn’t expected to survive.
Then—without wind, without sound—he vanished.
Air collapsed where he’d stood.
I lay on the floor, lips trembling, the taste of blood and ash still clinging to my tongue. And I knew then—
Whatever I’d awakened?
It was far from done.
I sat in Mama’s bed until dawn, arms wrapped around my knees. My skin felt stretched too thin. My bones rang hollow.
But it was his eyes that haunted me.
Rael.
Burning gold. Silent. Bound.
I whispered his name again and again.
Like prayer.
Like warning.
I needed answers.
Ashmill’s library lived in the basement of the old town hall—forgotten and water-stained. Barely used. Run by Mags, a frail woman who moved like she was made of crumpled paper and thistle.
She looked up as I entered.
“Well I’ll be,” she rasped. “It’s Isla Blackthorn. Been a long time, sugar.”
I nodded. “I’m looking for something old.”
She raised a brow. “You always were.”
I headed for the locked shelves—local folklore, banned histories, archived diaries no one dared read.
The smell hit first—dust, mold, and wax.
I combed through everything: treatises on demon-binding, accounts of blood rites, drawings of horned beasts with names carved out. But nothing matched Rael exactly.
Not until I found it.
A battered, hand-bound tome. The language was fragmented—Latin, Old Tongue, ink faded to rust.
But in the margins, someone had written:
> “The Bound One walks when the Hollow breaks. Not demon, not god—but other. He is mercy’s edge. He is ruin in love’s disguise.”
I stared.
Beside the text, a crude sketch—flames,chains, gold eyes. A figure reaching through a doorway.
No name.
Just a symbol.
Three vertical lines. One s***h.
I knew it.
The mark.
His.
By the time I stepped outside, night had fallen.
Ashmill was quieter than usual. The wind didn’t blow. The streetlight didn’t hum.
Still—I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore.
I was afraid of him.
Rael.
Why had he saved me?
Why hadn’t he stayed?
I turned a corner—and stopped.
There, painted on the stone wall of the old church, was the symbol.
Wet.
Red.
Fresh.
Three lines. One s***h.
Still pulsing.
I reached for it—
And felt him.
Like a tether pulled tight between my spine and something far away. Something ancient.
I stumbled.
“You shouldn’t touch symbols you don’t understand,” said a voice behind me.
I spun.
Not Rael.
A man stood in the shadow of the church. Long coat. Eyes pale. A cruel smile dancing across his face.
“I—who are you?” I asked.
“A friend,” he said.
I didn’t believe him.
“Did you paint this?”
“No.” His voice dropped an octave. “But I recognize his scent on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
He stepped forward. “He marked you. Whether he meant to or not, you belong to him now.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“No?” He tilted his head. “You think he came to save you?”
My heart thudded.
“He did save me.”
“Or,” the man whispered, “he stopped his own from feeding too soon.”
The silence between us cracked like ice.
I stepped back. “You don’t know him.”
He chuckled. “No. But I know what walks when the Hollow breaks. They always say they’re gods. Or guardians. Or lovers. But in the end, they’re just hunger.”
I gritted my teeth. “Then why warn me?”
“Because,” he said, “if he wants you, others will come. And they won’t ask permission.”
I ran.
That night, I dreamed.
Rael stood at the edge of a black sea.
Fire lit his eyes. Runes burned down his chest. A blade in one hand. A heart—still beating—in the other.
“Come to me,” he said.
I stepped into the sea.
Steam hissed around my legs.
“Come to me, Isla.”
The way he said my name made my skin burn.
I reached for him.
Fell into fire—
And woke.
Alone. Drenched in sweat.
The mark on my chest glowed like it remembered something I hadn’t yet learned.
He was calling me.
And worse?
Some part of me was ready to answer.
- Writer
