Kael staggered through the tunnels, each step sending fire lancing through his limbs.
The darkness pressed in around him, but it felt different now—alive. As though the world could see him for the first time… and hated what it saw.
His breath came ragged. The new mark on his arm pulsed, feeding a dull ache that throbbed with every heartbeat. He didn't know what the brand was, not exactly. But it wasn't natural.
Whatever had happened in that chamber had changed him.
He stopped near the exit shaft, bracing against a rusted support beam, and exhaled sharply. When he glanced at his reflection in a piece of broken glass, he barely recognized himself. His pupils had dilated into slits. Faint lines of silver threaded across the whites of his eyes.
"Great," he muttered. "Now I look like one of them."
The Awakened—those touched by the Dream Realms—were feared and worshipped alike. But Kael wasn't one of them. He was Forsaken. And in this city, the two didn't mix.
Not unless someone was about to die.
He had to get back to the Surface Districts. Fast. Before his condition worsened—or someone found him like this.
He climbed the shaft and slipped out into the night.
---
The slums were quiet. Too quiet.
Kael moved through the shadows like a phantom, avoiding the lit paths and patrol routes. His muscles screamed with every movement. Whatever had bonded to him wasn't passive—it was alive. Twitching beneath his skin, whispering just outside the edge of hearing.
When he finally reached the broken warehouse where he slept, the sun was threatening to rise.
Inside, the walls were damp and peeling. Shattered furniture and broken machinery littered the space. Kael slumped against the wall and exhaled, cold sweat running down his spine.
He pulled back his sleeve to examine the new sigil. It shifted as he looked at it, as though reshaping itself in response to his thoughts. The moment he focused, the world around him twitched—like a film catching on an old projector.
And then he was no longer in the warehouse.
---
He stood in a void.
It was not empty—it was memory. Shadows formed vague outlines of places he'd never seen. The air hummed with distant screams, and far above, floating like stars in the dark, hung chains—thousands of them—each glowing with faint energy.
At his feet, a circle of fractured mirrors surrounded a twisting spiral of light and dark.
> "The Labyrinth..." he whispered. The word came unbidden. Natural.
A low voice echoed through the place, deep and guttural.
> "One Echo sleeps within. Claim it, and take your first step."
Kael turned—and saw a door forming from nothing, wreathed in shadow. It opened.
On instinct, he stepped through.
---
The scene changed instantly. Kael found himself in a memory—but not his own.
He stood in a rain-soaked field beneath a storm-wracked sky. Across from him loomed a beast—a skeletal hound twice the size of a man, its ribs exposed, jaw hanging open unnaturally wide. Its eyes were empty sockets that bled mist.
It snarled and lunged.
Kael dove to the side, adrenaline surging. This wasn't a vision. It was real. He could die here.
He reached for something—anything.
And the mark on his arm responded.
A thread of shadow unraveled from his hand, forming a crude blade.
The hound pounced. Kael rolled beneath it, slashing upward. The blade caught its belly, silver-black ichor spilling into the mud. It shrieked—an echoing, dissonant cry that rattled his skull.
Kael didn't stop.
He turned, drove the blade into the creature's spine.
The hound convulsed once, then went still.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the world shuddered. The beast melted into strands of shadow and light, and those threads coiled into Kael's mark, searing a new glyph into it.
---
[Echo Acquired: Skein of the Hollow Fang]
> Type: Instinctual
Effect: Enhanced reflexes in moments of danger. Gains brief precognition against lethal attacks.
Stability: Unstable (1/3 fragments collected)
---
Kael gasped as he was pulled back into the real world.
He slammed into the warehouse floor with a grunt, clutching his chest. Sweat poured from him, but his pulse felt… sharper. Focused.
The mark on his arm glowed faintly, and when he looked at the world now—it felt slower. Not by much. Just enough.
It had worked.
He'd killed something that never lived.
And stolen the echo of its instinct.
Kael lay there, breathing hard.
No one had ever taught him how to use power. He had no family left. No mentors. No path.
But now?
He had something new.
A foothold.
And in a world built to erase people like him, that was more than most ever got.
His lips twisted into a smile—not of joy, but of grim resolve.
He would climb.
No matter the cost.
---
End of Chapter 2