The Western Branch hospital buzzed with unaccustomed activity as four prominent individuals walked through the immaculate corridors. Sunspire guards saluted, their expressions a combination of respect and fear as the group walked by.
Senior Inspector Caelia Vale headed the procession, her Western Branch uniform spotless, silver insignia shining in the soft lighting. Behind her came Aelren of the Eastern Branch, his analytical eyes drinking in every aspect of their environment.
Dren Vokar, the brusque delegate from the Southern Branch, brought up the rear with slow, deliberate steps, and Inspector Varrion—Aelren's subordinate but earning respect in his own right—rounded out the group.
They arrived at the isolation chamber where Alex had been under close watch since his rescue from Caelum.
"His status?" Caelia asked as the head physician arrived.
"Physically stable," the doctor said, reading her notes. "No trauma, no injury we can find. Brain functions are normal, perhaps even higher at some points. But still unconscious."
Aelren moved forward. "We must scan the Mark."
The doctor nodded and took them to Alex's bedside. The young man rested quietly, breathing steadily, colorless skin set against the sheets. With economical motions, the doctor gently swept back the hospital gown to show his chest.
There was a collective gasp in the room.
The Hollow's Bargain Mark lay stretched across Alex's chest—a dense, irregular design like a shattered star with seven uneven points.
Unlike normal Marks that glowed with a steady light, this one throbbed with an unstable beat, its borders stained with a darkness that seemed to draw light in instead of giving it out.
Most unnerving of all, thin filaments of the design were clearly creeping, the whole Mark slowly moving position across his body.
"Impossible," Aelren breathed, hunching forward. "Marks are bound to the bearer's life force. They don't move."
Dren Vokar stiffened, the creased face pale. "Unless it is one of them. The ones in the old books."
"One of what?" Varrion barked.
Dren's voice was lowered to little more than a murmur. "An Everborn. Gods protect us all."
A faint rustling noise brought their gaze to the windowsill where a crow sat, its feathers remarkably shiny and its eyes brightly intelligent. It tilted its head, watching the inspectors with what seemed like suspicion before jumping nearer to Alex's bed.
"That bird has not left his side since they admitted him," the physician pointed out. "Won't be chased away."
The crow sat at the base of Alex's bed, its stance protective looking in some ineffable way. It issued a soft caw that sounded a little like a challenge.
"We must call into session immediately," Caelia determined, not taking her eyes from the slowness flowing through Mark. "If Dren is correct, this isn't protocol. This is emergency."
The meeting room of the Western Headquarters in Velis Solara was meant to awe visitors with the authority and power of the Sunspire. Ancient walls of stone, inscribed with the names of previous High Inspectors, encircled a round table of polished obsidian.
Suspended from the ceiling was a dome of magical glass that refracted the starlight above, casting an ethereal, soft light throughout the room.
"This is unheard of," Aelren said, standing at his appointed place at the table. "If the boy indeed carries an Everborn Mark, we need to take all consequences into account."
"We're jumping to conclusions," Varrion replied, although his junior rank would have normally silenced him in such a group. "The movement of the Mark may be due to other causes."
"Name one," taunted Dren Vokar, his Southern accent thick with feeling. "In twenty-three years of service, I've never witnessed a Mark act this way.
The old books talk of Marks that lived, that moved with intention because they weren't conduits for Starlight—slices of something older."
"Theoretical texts," Varrion retorted.
"Legends and myths, not facts."
Caelia, who had been watching in silence, finally spoke. "The point is that Alex's Mark introduces an unknown factor. As officers of Sunspire, it is our responsibility to comprehend and contain threats."
"He's not a threat," Varrion insisted. "He's a victim, unconscious and helpless. The sole survivor of whatever disaster struck Caelum."
"Which makes his survival all the more worrisome," Dren added. "Why him? Why was he left behind when the others died? The Hollow's Bargain Mark is a possible fault line between Starlight and the void—a door that mustn't open."
A number of Branch inspectors and sub-inspectors stationed around the edge of the room squirmed uncomfortably at Dren's statement.
"I recommend temporary containment," Caelia declared resolutely. "Not as a punishment, but as a precautionary measure until we know what we're dealing with."
"The Eastern Branch has the most up-to-date facilities for Mark study," Aelren suggested. "We could transfer him there to be studied in depth."
Varrion's mouth fell open to argue further when the middle Scrying Orb set into the table blazed to life.
Light condensed into the firm face of High Inspector Ryan—the leader of Sunspire and a High Tier V Starbound. His image demanded instant quiet.
"Senior Inspectors," Ryan admitted, his image sharp despite the distance it had to travel. "I've seen the initial reports from Caelum. The situation is serious."
"High Inspector," Caelia bowed her head respectfully. "We were merely discussing the survivor and his. peculiar Mark."
Ryan's face was still expressionless, but something in his eyes hardened. "The breach at Caelum was unprecedented in our records. Up to this point, this young man—Alex—is the sole known survivor."
"What occurred there?" Aelren asked.
"That's still being investigated," Ryan answered. "But more pressing to me right now is the Mark the boy bears. The Hollow's Bargain is rare enough, but its behavior indicates a classification that has been. limited from general knowledge."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Classifications were rarely limited unless they held great peril.
"I am ordering Alex to be placed under temporary detainment," Ryan continued. "Not as a criminal, but as a subject of urgent study. The Eastern Branch will take custody, given their specialized facilities."
Varrion stepped forward, protocol momentarily forgotten.
"High Inspector, with all due respect, he's just a boy who survived a tragedy. Treating him like a specimen—"
"This is not a question for discussion, Inspector," Ryan interrupted him, his tone calm but firm. "Marks such as these are not to be taken lightly. Be careful, even if the boy appears innocent. The power he now wields may have its own agendas."
The suggestion that a Mark might have intent caused murmurs to spread through the room.
"We'll arrange for what needs to be done," Aelren promised, shooting Varrion a warning glance sideways.
"Good. I want to hear daily briefing on any developments." Ryan's eyes swept across the rows of gathered officers. "This is top security clearance. Talk about it only among yourselves."
With that, the projection disappeared, leaving the chamber in strained silence.
"This is wrong," Varrion grumbled, barely loudly enough to be heard.
Dren Vokar let out a deep sigh. "Perhaps. But it must be done."
Later in the day, Aelren tried reaching Ryan once again to inform him about the elusive Weeping Eyes Letter concerning Caelum but was told the High Inspector had left for imperative work with the senior Inspector at the northern branch.
The transfer was done under the cover of night. Alex, remaining unconscious, was transferred with all his medical gear to a specialized transport vehicle. The crow would not be left behind and created such a disturbance when an officer attempted to chase it off that Varrion finally instructed them to allow it to travel with Alex.
"It's just a bird," he argued, although he had observed its surprisingly smart behavior. "If it makes the boy happy, let it remain."
The Eastern Branch building was radically different from the Western medical wing. Constructed into the side of a mountain centuries ago, it blended ancient stone work with state-of-the-art technology.
The research wing where Alex was housed had walls of polished granite inscribed with softly glowing runes that tracked and controlled energy currents.
As Alex settled into the observation room, the crow settled into a perch beside his bed, its piercing eyes taking in each detail of the researchers who worked to install monitoring devices.
"The Mark's migration has sped up a bit," said the lead researcher, a woman with silver strands in her black hair. "It's moved around three millimeters towards his right shoulder in the last six hours."
Her team—a combination of Mark specialists and medical experts—watched Alex behind the glass wall with faces that ranged from scientific curiosity to barely suppressed terror.
"Is it what they're saying?" a younger scientist whispered to her colleague. "That he's an Everborn?"
"Shh," she hissed back. "That's controlled vocabulary."
"But if it's true—"
"If it's true," cut in an older researcher, who had been listening in, "then we're seeing something most thought extinct or mythical. Either a miracle or an impending catastrophe."
The crow suddenly cawed, making a loud, piercing noise that commanded all attention. For an instant, it appeared to regard the older researcher, its dark eyes mirroring the blue light of the room. Then it adjusted its feathers and continued its unblinking watch.
"That bird unsettles me," someone grunted. "Too attached to the boy unnaturally."
"Work on your assignments," the principal researcher commanded, though she, too, shifted an uncomfortable stare toward the crow. "We have instructions to observe and document any changes and not speculate."
As the unit broke up for their posts, none of them saw the minuscule trembling that ran through Alex's right hand—the very first indication that consciousness was seeping back into him.
Alex drifted in darkness, unmoored from time and space. Bits and pieces of memory crept up every now and then: the camp at Caelum, the strange visions during the days leading up to the accident, the instant when everything had gone so horribly wrong—then they were followed by visions he could not understand.
A shattered light that dissolved into infinite colors.
A tower constructed from weeping stars.
Five vacant thrones drawn in a perfect circle.
Along the way, a woman's voice addressed him—insistent, persuasive, familiar and yet strange. The words swirled about him like specks of light, most vanishing before he could understand their message.
When consciousness finally returned, it arrived as a shock—a jolt of awareness of his body, the chill of air on his skin, the gentle beeping of machines. His eyes opened to the unfamiliar ceiling of highly polished stone inscribed with shimmering blue runes.
This wasn't Caelum. This wasn't anywhere he knew.
Alex attempted to sit up, groaning as the motion tugged on the tubes attached to his arms. The room was round, his bed in the center and around it lines of monitoring equipment. Outside of that, a see-through barrier divided his area from what looked like an observation section, presently unoccupied.
"Hello?" he attempted, his vocal cords cracking with lack of use. "Is anyone there?"
Silence greeted him.
The dream visions dissolved away as reality took over, his mind automatically attempting to rationalize what he saw. The visions had been nothing but dreams, the result of trauma and lack of consciousness.
But one line hung on, refusing to disappear along with the rest of the dream, of the Elias :
"Find the Fractured Light."
A gentle rustling noise attracted his notice to the end of the bed. There was his crow, craned forward, looking at him with those shrewd, clever eyes. Seeing the friendly creature was strangely reassuring.
"Hi there," Alex whispered, trying to raise a weak smile. "Least I'm not totally alone."
He looked down at himself, seeing the hospital gown and the tubes in his arms. But what he noticed was the odd feeling on his chest—a warmth that seemed to beat in an uneven rhythm. Gently, he pulled the gown aside to see.
The Hollow's Bargain Mark had been with him all along, a shattered star pattern that most Mark Readers had labeled a third-string curiosity, not anything important.
But now it seemed different—edges darker, its luminescence irregular, and most unnervingly, no longer where it used to be. It had shifted some inches to his right shoulder.
"What is happening to me?" he whispered, a chill crawling through his veins.
The crow hopped closer, its stride somehow both careful and determined. It came to rest beside his hand, its feathers touching his skin in a sensation that seemed like reassurance.
As the minutes ticked into what seemed like hours, Alex was keenly aware of being observed though he saw no one watching him. The feeling tingled down his skin, more disturbing than the tubes and wires tracking his status.
He attempted to reconstruct what had transpired at Caelum, but fragments were all his memories could show him.
The camp, the unusual happenings during the period leading up to the incident, the moment something had started going awry—everything commingled in the dream imagery which still hovered around the edges of his awareness.
"I need to get out of here," he murmured to himself, though he had no idea where "here" was or where he would go.
The crow suddenly stood at attention, its feathers ruffling as if caught in a breeze that Alex couldn't feel. It cawed softly, the sound somehow expectant.
Then, like a whisper directly against his ear: "You're not safe here."
Alex sat bolt upright, shoving the medical equipment away from him as he scanned the room wildly. The voice was unmistakable, feminine, the same one from his dreams—but no one else was in the room.
"They don't know what your Mark really is," the voice went on, as if coming from all directions and none at the same time. "You need to get out of here, before it remembers."
"Who are you?" Alex breathed, racing heart. "What's happening to me?"
Instead of responding, the voice just echoed the words that had stayed with him from his dreams: "Find the Fractured Light."
The crow jumped onto his lap, its gaze locked onto his with an intensity that was almost human. It leaned its head, beak open, and Alex could have sworn he heard words taking shape in his head and not in his ears:
"Let's go to find the fractured light."
Alex looked at the bird, wondering if he was dreaming still or had gone mad at last. But the vividness of the instant—the chill of the wind on his skin, the sting of where needles were inserted into his veins, the dead-certainty of the crow's stare—persuaded him this was not a dream.
Whatever "real" had become now, in a reality where Marks shifted back and forth between skin, disembodied voices cautioned, and birds seemed to talk directly into consciousness.