Kael's face cracked sideways as his cheek slammed into the wall.
Stone bit skin.
His teeth clicked together hard enough to rattle his skull.
Before he could suck in air, a knee buried itself into his ribs and stayed there, grinding, deliberate.
"Easy," someone said, amused. "Don't kill him yet."
Kael's hands were already up, palms flat against the cold surface, fingers shaking despite everything he told them not to do.
Three shadows blocked the light.
Three sigils burned on armored chests—angelic Brands etched into flesh and metal alike, glowing faintly through white plate.
Marked. All three.
One of them tugged Kael's satchel loose and shook it upside down.
A wrapped bundle fell, hit the ground, split.
Dry ration bars scattered like teeth.
"There it is," the Knight said. "Whole week's worth."
A boot crushed one bar into powder.
Kael swallowed. He tasted blood.
"You should be grateful," another Knight added, crouching close enough that Kael could smell incense and oil. "Unmarked don't usually get this much."
The third one hadn't spoken yet.
He was taller. Older. His Brand was brighter, lines thicker, more… confident.
He lifted a hand.
Light condensed.
Not fire. Not heat. Something cleaner.
A blade unfolded from his palm, translucent and perfect, humming softly as if pleased with itself.
He brought it up, slow, stopping a finger's width from Kael's eye.
The air trembled.
"Look at him," the Knight murmured. "No Brand. No glow. No purpose."
Kael stared straight ahead.
At the crack in the wall.
At the spiderweb of old fractures running through concrete poured before the Annexation.
He focused on that, because if he looked at the blade, if he let himself imagine how easily it would slide—
"Say it," the Knight prompted. "Say thank you."
Kael's jaw tightened.
The knee pressed harder.
Something in his side shifted wrong.
Pain bloomed, sharp and wet.
"Thank you," Kael said.
The word scraped his throat raw.
The blade flickered, inches from his eye, then vanished.
The pressure eased.
The Knights laughed, already bored.
"See you tomorrow," one of them said as they turned away. "Ceremony's a big day. Don't be late."
They left the rations ground into dust and crumbs.
They left Kael folded against the wall, breathing shallow, counting heartbeats until his hands stopped shaking.
Only when the street noise swallowed their footsteps did he straighten.
Slow. Careful.
He knelt and gathered what he could.
Powder stuck to his fingers.
One bar was intact, barely.
He wrapped it back up, slid it into his jacket.
One bar was better than none.
He pushed off the wall and walked.
The suburbs started rotting the day the Ordo finished annexing the inner districts.
Infrastructure first. Temples second.
Everything else got left behind.
Kael crossed streets where the lights only worked in patches, where old signage flickered with half-dead slogans from a world that no longer existed.
He kept his head down.
Unmarked learned early not to attract attention.
The building he called home leaned slightly to the left.
It had leaned further last winter, after a patrol decided the support beams looked "non-compliant."
Kael took the stairs two at a time.
"Leo," he called before he reached the door.
No answer.
The room was dark. Too dark.
Kael's chest tightened as he crossed to the mattress in the corner.
Leo lay curled on his side, knees pulled up, breath shallow.
Sweat soaked the thin blanket.
His skin looked wrong—pale with a faint gray tint, veins too visible beneath.
"Hey," Kael said softly, kneeling.
He pressed the back of his hand to Leo's forehead.
Too hot.
Leo's eyes fluttered open. "You're late."
"Had to take a longer route." Kael forced a smile. "Knights were out."
Leo snorted weakly. "When aren't they?"
Kael unwrapped the ration bar and broke it in half.
The crack sounded louder than it should have.
He handed the larger piece over without comment.
Leo noticed anyway.
"You need to eat."
"I ate already."
Leo's eyes lingered on Kael's face.
On the faint swelling along his cheekbone.
On the way he favored one side when he shifted.
"Did they—"
"It's fine."
Leo coughed.
The sound turned wet halfway through.
He clenched his teeth until it passed.
Kael's hand curled into the blanket.
The sickness had a name, if you asked the temples.
The Weakening.
A failure of spiritual alignment.
A consequence of refusing the Pacts.
In the streets, it was simpler.
Unmarked Disease.
The body starved for something it had never been given.
The soul thinned.
Systems shut down one by one.
The elixir helped. Barely.
A basic stabilizer sold by the Ordo clinics, priced just high enough to stay out of reach.
Kael stood. "I'll get more tomorrow."
Leo's fingers tightened in the blanket. "Kael."
"Sleep."
He didn't wait for an answer.
The notice burned white against the night.
It hung from a power pole at the edge of the block, projected light anchored by humming emitters.
Kael saw it from half a street away and stopped.
CITIZEN MANDATE
CEREMONY OF PURIFICATION AND COLLECTION
CENTRAL SQUARE — TOMORROW AT DAWN
All citizens aged 16–25 are required to attend.
Blessings await the worthy.
The wording was new. The meaning wasn't.
Kael stepped closer.
Fine print scrolled beneath the main text, dense and legal and absolute.
He read it anyway. He always did.
Collection.
They never used that word for the Marked.
Behind him, someone spat. "Another one."
An old man leaned against a railing, Brand flickering weakly on his wrist.
He didn't look at Kael. "They're running low, I hear. Need fuel."
Kael nodded once and moved on.
Tomorrow.
He did the math without meaning to.
His age. Leo's.
How many people on this block qualified.
How many would come back.
The ruins started where the old city plans ended.
Concrete gave way to twisted frameworks, to buildings that never finished collapsing and never quite stood back up.
This was pre-Annexation ground.
No temples. No patrol routes.
Just ghosts and scavengers.
Kael moved fast, practiced.
He knew which floors held up.
Which shadows hid sinkholes.
He ignored the ache in his side.
Tonight had to be worth it.
He pried open rusted lockers.
Searched fallen offices.
Dug through debris where an archive used to be.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Bones, once. Animal. Maybe human.
He left them where they lay.
His breath grew harsher.
The night pressed in, thick and close.
By the time he reached the lower levels, his hands were shaking again, not from fear.
From desperation.
The wall crumbled when he hit it.
Kael froze, fist still raised.
He stared at the shallow crater his punch had made.
Then the pain hit.
It wasn't like before.
Not the dull ache he'd lived with since childhood.
This was sharp. Focused.
It flared along his right arm, starting at the wrist and racing up to the shoulder.
Kael hissed and stumbled back.
The tattoo burned.
He yanked his sleeve up.
The lines etched into his skin—old, faded, dismissed by every Ordo examiner as meaningless tribal ink—glowed faintly.
Not light. Depth.
As if the skin itself had thinned, revealing something darker beneath.
"What the hell…" Kael whispered.
The pain pulsed. Once. Twice.
It pulled at him.
Not metaphorically. Physically.
Kael turned, breath caught in his throat.
In the far corner of the ruin, where shadows stacked too deep to feel natural, something floated.
A shard of black stone hung a few inches above the ground.
Not reflective. Not matte.
It didn't absorb light so much as ignore it.
The air around it shivered, rhythmically, like a slow heartbeat pressing against reality.
The tattoo flared hotter.
Kael took a step back.
Then another forward.
The shard pulsed.
And somewhere far above, unseen, something ancient stirred.