The first time it happened, she thought it was a dream. The second time, she knew it wasn't. Now, on the third night, Seren Vale didn't scream. She didn't even blink.
There was no transition. No drifting, no hazy slide from the waking world to sleep. Only one breath... and then another... and then the silence of Nightbound wrapping around her like black silk soaked in blood.
She stood barefoot in a place that didn't obey natural laws. The ground beneath her was ash not soft, not coarse, but something in-between, like it had been alive once. Each step left no footprints.
Above her, buildings reached into a starless sky, twisting like bone grown wrong. Some had windows that breathed. Others had none at all. The air was too still. The quiet wasn't peaceful. It was listening. And this place it remembered her.
She had no idea what this realm truly was. No one had told her. Not the orphanage, not the dreams, not even the Bell. But her body knew it now. The tremble in her spine. The nausea crawling behind her ribs. She wasn't just dreaming. She was somewhere else. Somewhere real.
The third night brought familiarity, but no comfort. Only a name: Nightbound.
The word didn't come from her lips. It slithered into her thoughts, already knowing its place.
She moved carefully, her breath fogging in air that wasn't cold. Her pale nightgown fluttered despite the absence of wind.
Every step forward made the world twitch faint shifts in architecture, little pulses in the shadows like something breathing.
She walked past a toppled statue a woman with six eyes and no mouth, her face shattered, her spine twisted like rope. Moss grew from her eye sockets. Not green moss but something... breathing.
Seren turned away. That's when she felt it the mark. A pulse beneath her skin, sharp as static. She froze, lifting her forearm.
There, swirling along her skin like silver liquid frozen mid-motion, was a glowing sigil.
Not a tattoo. Not paint. It shimmered like moonlight reflected in oil. The shape was wrong it never settled. It twisted gently, even as she stared. Her heart thudded.
This hadn't been here yesterday. Not the first night. Not the second. But here it was now living beneath her skin. She took a shaky breath. Her throat was dry.
"What… are you?"
The mark pulsed again. And across the city, in a place she could not yet see, the shadows responded.
They moved. They turned. They noticed.
At first, it was distant like waves rippling through a black ocean. Buildings shifted. Windows wept. Something far away screamed not out of pain, but out of joy. She was awake. And something had been waiting.
It didn't make sense.
The mark didn't belong on her. And yet it felt like it had always been there just buried under her skin, waiting for the right night to rise.
Seren stared at it. The silver lines curled like vines across her forearm, softly shifting, never holding a fixed shape. Her skin wasn't burning… but something beneath it writhed. A pressure began to build in her head.
Like a whisper trying to claw its way out of her skull. She staggered back, the ash beneath her feet parting silently. Suddenly, the world felt too loud. Not in sound in intent.
The towers around her leaned slightly inward, like a circle closing. Far above, something vast and serpentine slithered across the blank sky. It had no shape. Only motion. The mark pulsed again. This time, it felt like a heartbeat hers, but not hers.
And then the whisper came. Not outside her. Inside. A voice, or maybe several voices layered together. "You bear the Echo. The hunger. The leash."
She froze. Her breath caught halfway out of her lungs. She hadn't imagined that. She couldn't have. The voice spoke not in language, but in knowing. It injected meaning directly into her thoughts clean and cold, like ice water flooding the mind.
"You have awakened the Protocol. The devourer's chain."
"You are host. Tamer. Parasite Queen."
"No," she whispered aloud, stumbling backward. "No, that's not me. I didn't choose"
But the shadows didn't care. Across the plaza, something began to take shape. Not walked. Not crawled.
Formed.
The ash began to gather, swirl, condense. The air thickened like syrup. Black tendrils slithered up from cracks in the stone, braiding together, creating limbs… eyes… a mouth that was too wide, grinning with jagged teeth that breathed smoke.
It wasn't attacking.
It was waiting.
Kneeling.
Its head bowed, its chest open like a blooming flower of bone and mist.Seren's legs refused to move. Her mark burned colder now so cold it felt hot. Her pulse pounded in her ears, faster, louder, until it synchronized with something else: the Nightmare's breath.
They were in sync. The voice returned, quieter now, almost reverent. "It answers your call."
"You are the center."
"You are the tether."
Seren stared at the creature all fang and form and fear kneeling before her like a knight before its queen. And something in her… clicked. Not understanding. Not logic.
Instinct. She stepped forward. The moment her foot touched the ash again, the Nightmare lifted its gaze. Its eyes six of them, gleaming silver locked onto her mark.
Then…It growled softly.
And bowed deeper. Seren's breath trembled. Her lips parted. She didn't know what she was doing. But the words that followed… they didn't come from thought. They came from somewhere older.
Somewhere inside her. "Bind."
The mark on her arm flared. A single, blinding pulse of silver light shot out thin as a thread, sharp as a blade and lanced through the Nightmare's chest.
It didn't scream. It simply sighed. Then dissolved into ash… and drifted into her shadow. Seren stood still. Silent. Shaking.
She didn't feel stronger. She didn't feel victorious. She felt cold. Empty. And somewhere in her chest… something new opened its eyes.
The silence afterward was unbearable. No wind. No voice. Just Seren… and the shadow stretching long behind her, now heavier than before. She couldn't feel the creature inside her. Not truly.
But its presence lingered like a breath down her neck, like a pulse that wasn't her own thudding deep beneath her ribs.
What have I done…?
Her knees buckled, but she didn't fall.
She stood still as the mark on her arm dimmed, its silver glow fading into a dull flicker, like cooling embers after a storm.
But her shadow didn't flicker with it.
It moved ever so slightly a twitch out of sync with her breath.
Just once. Barely noticeable. But she noticed. Seren stepped back. Her shadow didn't follow.
Her mouth dried instantly. Her heart stumbled.She reached behind her, fingers trembling, but of course she couldn't touch a shadow. Instead, a whisper touched her.
"One bound. Slots remain: two."
"The chain begins. The will bends."
She gasped. That voice again. But this time… it was inside her skin. Not in her mind. Not around her. Within. It was the system.
Not cold. Not robotic. Not even mechanical.
It felt alive a parasite, yes… but one that had waited so patiently for a host like her. "Welcome, Eater of Echoes."
The name hit her like a blade. She hadn't spoken it. Never heard it. But the moment she heard it spoken to her it felt like truth.
Like something that had always been part of her and was simply waiting to be remembered. Eater of Echoes.
What echoes? A sound rose in the distance. Not from this street but from beneath it. A chime. One solitary note. Low. Metallic.
The Black Bell.
It shouldn't be tolling now. She wasn't asleep. She was already in Nightbound.
But it rang. And her mark pulsed again.
And far away, in the pit of the shadow city, something ancient stirred.
Seren stumbled forward, clutching her arm. Her breath came too fast now, like her lungs weren't big enough for the air she needed. "I didn't ask for this," she said aloud. Her voice echoed strangely warped, like a memory misremembered.
The wind answered with silence. But then, behind her, the shadow moved again.
It rose.
A second shadow not hers. Another presence. Not shaped yet. Not solid.
But watching. Waiting.
And for the first time, Seren felt something colder than fear. Recognition. "You've claimed the first. You've awakened the bond. But the chain… it binds both ways."
"They feel you now. The Dreamlords. The Unseen. The ones who remember the true throne."
Her skin crawled. Not from cold. From knowing. Whoever they were… they had noticed her. And whatever she'd done by binding that creature, it wasn't just survival.
It was a signal. She had lit a beacon.
Not for help. For war.
Seren clenched her fists and looked up toward the horizon where the city twisted in impossible directions. She didn't understand the system. Or her mark. Or why the nightmares were bowing instead of tearing her apart.
But she understood one thing: She wasn't dreaming. This was no hallucination. And the deeper she walked into Nightbound…
The more she feared she hadn't come here by accident.
But by invitation.