Dareth followed Erren through the winding guts of Vell's Hollow, his steps slow, shoulders hunched. The air stank of scorched oil and boiled roots, thick with smoke from cooking pits and ash-fires. Structures leaned against one another like drunkards, some stitched from tarp and salvaged plating, others carved directly into ancient, half-buried ribcages that jutted from the earth like broken bridges.
People watched him.
Not openly, not for long. But he felt it. In the way their eyes darted and lingered. In how conversations paused as he passed. Erren had wrapped his left arm in old cloth, hiding the faint pulse of his Sigil, but that didn't stop the smell, like scorched copper, from clinging to him.
"This way," she muttered, cutting between two market stalls. The sound of haggling buzzed around them. Bones traded for tinctures. Relic fragments swapped for filters. A child tried to sell fossil shavings in a cracked tin. Nobody was buying.
Dareth's gaze flicked toward a vendor polishing an oblong shard. It looked like obsidian, but it hummed faintly as if tuned to breath. A trader in a bone-mask whispered over it in ritual tones.
"What is this place?" Dareth asked quietly.
Erren didn't slow. "You're in the Open Market. This is where things that shouldn't exist find coin. Relic fragments. Fossil dust. Sometimes stolen memory threads."
"Stolen… what?"
"Don't ask unless you're willing to trade your own."
They turned a corner into a quieter row of low stalls, this one mostly lined with tar-soaked cloth and aged crates. Erren stopped at a small burner pot, glancing around before speaking.
"Vell's Hollow isn't like the cities. There's no Registry here, no quotas. People come to lose names or sell the kinds of things that get you erased back in Vireth territory."
Dareth glanced back the way they'd come. "Then why does everyone keep looking at me like I'm a threat?"
"Because you're marked. And you haven't done anything awful enough to be predictable yet."
That silenced him.
Erren sighed and dropped a few bone-chits into the burner pot. Flames sparked blue. A symbol flared briefly in the smoke, an eye with a line through it.
"Wards up. Good. This alley's clean."
Dareth stared at the symbol as it faded. "You said there's no Registry here. But… how do people know what not to touch?"
"They don't," she said. "That's the rule. You don't touch anything without a second opinion. Especially if it hums, bleeds, or calls your name."
He felt the skin under his bandages crawl.
Erren noticed. "Come on. We've got one stop left. Someone who knows more than I do about what's happening."
"Who?"
"Name's Crake," she said. "He's what's left of a Sigilbearer who didn't quite burn out. He'll scare the piss out of you. But he's still breathing."
She paused, then added, "Mostly."
They left the last flickers of the market behind and followed a narrow path sloping into the Hollow's underguts, where the air grew cooler, damper, and less friendly. Wooden beams held up the old earth, braced against stone too ancient to name. Dareth kept close to Erren, his boots crunching over ground littered with fossil dust and metal scraps shaped like bones.
She stopped at a doorway framed by rusted chain and bone-charms. The door itself was patched from relic crates and bore a single warning etched in chalk: "DO NOT BRING DREAMS INSIDE."
Erren knocked once, twice, then thrice—sharp and quick. The door creaked open on its own.
"Crake?" she called.
"Don't yell," a voice rasped from within. "Makes the echoes twitch."
She pushed the door open fully and gestured for Dareth to enter. He hesitated. The air inside was thick, like oil smoke and bitter root.
Crake sat cross-legged in a nest of old blankets and stitched leather. He wore no shirt. His chest was wrapped in bandages stained dark, and his left arm ended in a mass of fused fossil and flesh, bone spiraling outward like a fan of petrified roots. One of his eyes had been replaced entirely by a glass marble set in pale scar tissue.
"You're twitchy," Crake said, pointing a knotted finger at Dareth. "Means it's still talking to you."
Dareth swallowed. "You're a—"
"Was," Crake interrupted. "Still am, in the places that count. Erren said you were fresh?"
He nodded.
Crake sniffed the air. "Unmapped. Faint metallic tang coming from your left side. Still changing." He looked at Erren. "And you brought him here?"
"You owe me," she said.
Crake's eye narrowed. "I owe you silence. This—" he gestured at Dareth's chest— "is noise."
Dareth pulled the bandages down slowly, revealing the glow beneath. The lines had shifted again, curling into tighter, more intricate spirals. They pulsed like breath.
Crake didn't move.
"That's not finished," he said flatly. "And it's not clean."
"What do you mean?" Dareth asked.
"I mean it's loud. Most marks hum. Yours howls. Fossils give what they remember, but yours hasn't chosen what to give. It's still… arguing with you."
Dareth felt suddenly cold. "Arguing?"
Crake leaned forward. "They're not just dead bones. They're memories of beasts older than thought. When you survive a Pulse, your mark fuses with what you were in that moment. It fills your cracks. Your regrets, your wounds, and if you've got too many of those..."
He tapped his skull. "Sometimes the mark thinks it gets to be you."
Silence hung in the room.
Crake sat back and exhaled slowly. "Don't trust what it shows you, not yet."
Dareth whispered, "How do I make it stop?"
"You don't," Crake said. "You learn how to listen without obeying."
Crake stared at Dareth's mark for a long while after he spoke. The pulsing light dimmed, steadied, as if the thing beneath his skin was listening, too.
"You've barely survived the Pulse, and it's already moving," Crake muttered. "That's early."
He pulled a battered kettle from a scorched burner and poured two cups of a dark, steaming brew. It smelled like ashwood bark and rust. He handed one to Dareth.
"Drink. It's not poison."
Dareth took it warily, sipping. It was bitter. He glanced down at the mark again, the slow, curling pulse of it.
"You said it's arguing with me," he said. "I don't feel like anything's happening."
Crake snorted. "That's because it isn't. Not yet. What you're feeling now? That's the Kindling stage. The first scar. The Sigil's found you, marked you, but it hasn't decided what it's going to be. You're walking around with a loaded relic under your skin and no idea which way it'll fire."
He sat back, cradling his own cup, and nodded at the glow. "Right now it's shifting. Feeling you out. Most people stay in Kindling for weeks. Months, sometimes. It changes based on what you do. What you feel. What breaks inside you."
Dareth frowned. "And after Kindling?"
Crake raised a finger. "Burning. That's the second stage. It's the one that kills most. That's when the Sigil shows itself. You might see visions, feel heat, but then one day it just... erupts. A flash. A scream. Something impossible. The fossil memory tries to shape itself into the world using you as a lens, and most people crack."
Dareth's eyes widened. "That's when the power comes?"
"Power, sure," Crake said. "But raw. Untamed. Some folks implode. Others burn out. Some just go mad from what they see. If your mind isn't solid, it breaks. You're still in the shallow end. The pain you've felt? That's just the mark finding a place to sleep."
Dareth looked down at his chest again.
"And if I survive that?"
Crake lifted a second finger. "Then comes Smoldering. That's when the real war starts. You and the mark begin to fuse. Your thoughts start echoing things you don't remember thinking. Your body changes. Your instincts shift. Sometimes permanently."
He paused, staring into the cup. "That's where I stopped. Barely. I walked through Smoldering and came out with a few pieces missing."
Dareth shivered. "So I'm not even close to that."
"Not yet," Crake said. "But your mark's restless. It's moving too early. That's not good. Either you've got something it wants, or it remembers something the rest of us forgot."
He met Dareth's gaze, his relic eye glinting.
"Either way, you'd better learn fast. Because when it moves to Burning, you won't get a warning. Just a chance to survive it."
---------
The Hollow felt different when Dareth stepped back into it. The air had weight, like someone whispering just behind his ears. He followed Erren in silence, his thoughts tangled around Crake's words. Kindling, then Burning, then Smoldering. He hadn't even crossed the first gate, and it already felt like something inside him had teeth.
Erren led him through a shadowed corridor carved between fractured support beams. Above, makeshift chimneys belched pale smoke.
"You alright?" she asked, not looking back.
Dareth hesitated. "No. But I'm still walking."
She grunted approval. "That's better than most."
They emerged into a broader lane where old scaffolding had been turned into a second level of walkways and suspended stalls. A rickety bridge overhead held a cage full of broken tools and hanging relic scraps. The light was dim here, filtered through layers of tarp and smoke. People moved around them, quick, quiet, some armed, most armored only in mistrust.
Erren guided him toward a split between two metal-sheet walls. "This way. We need to get you off the surface for a while. Word's out that something flared during the last storm. Too many ears in this place."
"You think they're looking for me?"
"I think they'll be looking for something. And you're literally glowing under your shirt."
She pulled aside a rusted panel and gestured him through. Beyond was a narrow stairwell that spiraled downward. The air shifted from smoky to still and cold.
"What is this place?"
"Smuggler's vault," Erren said. "Old hideout from when the Hollow used to run relic routes. Supposed to be sealed, but I know a few ways in."
The tunnel at the bottom leveled into a stone corridor reinforced with bone braces and scavenged beams. It smelled like rust, damp clay, and old leather. Faint luminescent moss clung to the walls, casting a greenish haze.
Dareth paused. "Why here?"
"Because it's quiet," she said. "And down here, if you start sparking or shrieking or melting things, it won't take half the Hollow with it."
"Comforting."
They reached a chamber. Empty save for some broken crates, a few glass fragments, and a half-melted statue of something that might've been a human once, or a fossil echo warped by heat.
Erren pulled a roll of cloth from her coat and tossed it to him. "Rest. Watch your breathing. If the mark starts acting up, don't fight it. Just focus on staying inside your skin."
Dareth sat. The stone was cold. The walls felt closer than they should.
He closed his eyes.
That's when he saw it.
A vast plain of ash. A creature made of ribs and smoke dragging itself across a shattered field. Its eyes, if they were eyes, burned like distant suns. And it howled, not in sound, but in memory. A pressure like grief punched through his chest.
He gasped awake. The moss-light pulsed. The lines under his skin shimmered violently.
The Sigil was listening.
Dareth didn't move at first. His hands trembled against the stone floor, his breath shallow and ragged. The vision still clung to him, ashes falling like rain, a sky that wasn't sky, and that creature dragging itself across memory like it was a battlefield.
Erren was speaking, somewhere distant. Her voice reached him through water.
"—Dareth. Hey. Breathe."
His eyes flicked toward her. She was crouched in front of him now, a hand on his shoulder. She wasn't alarmed—she was watching, focused, like she was waiting for something else to happen.
"I saw—" he started, but stopped. What was there to explain?
Erren's hand tightened slightly. "Was it just images? Or did it speak?"
He shook his head. "No words. Just… feeling. It knew me. Like it was remembering me back."
She exhaled. "That's earlier than I expected."
Before he could ask what she meant, something flickered behind her.
A pale, fractured glow pulsed in the corner of the room. Half-buried in the wall, beneath layers of soot and bone-scored stone, was a relic—a cracked ceramic mask fused to the rock. As Dareth stared, its features twitched. Not movement—just a subtle shift, like wet clay adjusting beneath heat.
He stood slowly. "That wasn't here before."
Erren turned, froze. "Shit. Don't touch it."
"I didn't."
The mask flickered again. Its eye sockets were empty, but light pulsed within. Faint. Rhythmic. Like breath.
Dareth stepped forward, hand trembling. The mark on his chest itched, burned, thrummed.
"I think it's reacting to me."
"Of course it is," Erren snapped, standing. "Old relics still carry fossil resonance. Yours is flaring like a beacon."
Before she could pull him back, the mask spoke.
The sound was wrong. Not a voice—more like pressure reshaping the air. The words came in pieces, old syllables fractured by time:
"—returning… dreamless flame… buried echo… who… bears… breach—"
Dareth stumbled back. The mark on his skin blazed white for a breath, searing through the bandages. The floor beneath the relic cracked.
Ash spiraled upward from the cracks, floating in slow motion. The air thickened. The statue in the corner groaned, its form warping slightly, as though the room itself remembered a shape it had forgotten how to hold.
"Dareth!" Erren grabbed his arm, yanking him away.
As she pulled, the relic let out one final pulse, and then the mask shattered, not violently, but like sand losing its shape. The light within vanished. The glow under Dareth's skin dimmed.
He dropped to his knees.
Erren crouched beside him, whispering curses.
He looked at her, dazed. "It knew I was here."
She didn't answer.
Because somewhere far above, a horn blew once, long and low, the kind used only when Vireth scouts entered the Hollow.