The shadows screammed as they surged forward, a tide of black smoke and gnashing maws. The ground trembled with the force of their charge. Above them, the Warden's chains writhed like serpents, striking the ash in thunderclaps of metal.
Kai didn't think . There was no time to think. He grabbed Airi's hand and pulled her into a sprint, ash splattering under their feet.
The first chain slammed down where they had stood a heartbeat ago, sending up a spray of molten sparks as it carved a trench through the dunes. The impact rattled Kai's bones.
Airi screamed, but Kai didn't dare look back. The Warden's voice bellowed, each word shaking the storm:
"Unmarked. Impure. Escape is blasphemy."
A dozen shadows leapt, their jaws wide. Kai ducked, dragging Airi under the rusted arch of a half-buried ruin. The stone cracked as the chains followed, tearing through walls like paper.
They stumbled into darkness. The ruin swallowed them.
The air inside was stifling, heavy with the stench of rot and old ash. Faded murals lined the walls—figures kneeling before a spire that looked hauntingly like the Ivory Tower. Their painted faces were blurred, their eyes black pits.
Airi clung to his sleeve, trembling. "It's following us…"
Chains rattled in the distance, scraping closer, dragging metal across stone. The ruin quaked with every step of the Warden outside.
Kai's chest heaved. His hand still burned where he had touched Airi's sketch-weapon. The heat hadn't left. It pulsed under his skin, like something alive.
Whispers crept into his skull.
"Fight."
"Bleed."
"Claim the Mark."
Kai shook his head violently. No. He wasn 't going mad. Not now.
The shadows slithered through cracks in the ruin, smoke forming claws. One lunged.
Kai reacted without thought. His arm moved faster than it ever had before—snatching a fragment of broken stone and slamming it into the creature's skull. The shadow shrieked, dissolving, its smoke boiling into the air.
Airi gasped. "Kai your arm!"
He looked down. Black lines burned across his skin, crawling from his wrist up toward his elbow—jagged patterns, like veins filled with ink. They pulsed, glowing faintly.
The whispers laughed.
The Mark.
The ruin shook again. A chain tore through the ceiling, spraying stone dust. Airi shrieked as rubble collapsed around them. Kai threw himself over her, shielding her as a boulder crashed down inches away.
The chain writhed, pulling free, then coiled back toward them.
Kai's body moved before his brain could. He grabbed Airi and rolled, the chain smashing into the ground where they had lain. The Mark on his arm flared, filling his veins with impossible speed, with instincts not his own.
It terrified him. And yet—it saved them.
Airi fumbled open her sketchbook, her hands shaking. "Touch it! Touch it again!"
Kai slammed his palm onto her drawing of a shield. The page burned with light, and suddenly the shield was real—metal, heavy, solid. He raised it just as the chain struck.
The impact nearly broke his arm, but the shield held. Sparks rained across the ruin.
Airi's eyes were wide with terror and awe. "It only works… when you touch them…"
Before Kai could answer, the shield crumbled to ash, gone.
The Warden roared outside, chains writhing in fury.
They fled deeper into the ruin, down crumbling staircases that seemed to spiral endlessly. The shadows followed, their smoke seeping through cracks, whispering promises in voices that were almost human.
Kai's Mark pulsed with every step. It burned, seared, but also sharpened him—he could see in the dark, hear the faint scrape of claws on stone. His fear was still there, but buried under a strange clarity.
Airi stumbled. Kai caught her, pulling her forward. Their breaths echoed in the silence, the ruin stretching into endless catacombs beneath the ash.
Finally, the shadows stopped at the entrance of a vast chamber. They hissed, but did not cross the threshold.
Airi noticed it first. "They're… afraid."
Kai swallowed hard. "Of what?"
The answer came in sound.
Not chains. Not whispers.
But breathing.
Deep. Slow. Wet.
Something older than shadows stirred in the darkness ahead.
And as Kai's eyes adjusted, he saw it:
A massive, skeletal figure bound to the wall by ancient spikes, its ribs rising and falling
The Mark burned again hotter, darker, alive. And for the first time, Kai wondered if the power inside him belonged to him at all.
with every unnatural breath. Its skull tilted slowly toward them, empty sockets blazing with faint light.
The shadows retreated. Even the storm above seemed to hold its breath.
Airi's grip on his arm tightened until her nails dug into his skin.
"Kai…" she whispered. "We shouldn't be here."
The Mark on his arm flared so bright it hurt.
The chained corpse… was waking.
End of Chapter 3