The Eastern Branch's medical chamber was eerily quiet save for the occasional hum of healing runes activating around Dren Vokar's bed. His skin had taken on an ashen pallor, the veins visible beneath like faded ink on parchment.
Despite being unconscious, his face occasionally contorted in pain, as though fighting an invisible battle even in his sleep.
Caelia stood at the observation window, her own reflection a ghostly one against the glass. Aelren paced behind her, his footsteps measured and deliberate.
"It doesn't make sense," Aelren broke the silence. "A Shadowwell user whose Mark is taken should be dead. Not hurt—dead."
Caelia's gaze never left Dren's recumbent form. "And yet here he is."
"The boy's Mark did something never seen before," Aelren said, halting to stand beside her.
"It not only repelled Dren's extraction attempt; it somehow. canceled out the void energy without killing the host."
The air vibrated with the unspoken consequences. Any Sunspire inspector understood the inherent laws that ruled their world: Void energy corrupted and killed; Starlight energy healed and conserved.
The two could not coexist. When a Mark bearer was deprived of their authority, the backlash was always deadly for Shadowwell users. Until now.
"What is the Everborn Mark, anyway?" Caelia breathed, to herself rather than Aelren.
A medic came in, took Dren's vitals with professional speed, and realigned the healing runes. The gentle blue light surged briefly before returning to its steady beat.
"His status is stable," the attendant said. "But his energy pathways are. altered. It's like they've been rewritten."
Aelren looked at Caelia. "Rewritten how?"
"We don't know," the attendant admitted. "But where there would be void signatures, we're seeing. gaps. Not destruction, just. absence."
As the attendant departed, Caelia stepped away from the window. "Alert me the instant he awakens," she told Aelren. "And double the guard. If he is indeed Shadowwell, we have no notion what precautions he may have set in motion."
A shiver came over the room, weighing thick with the truth that everything they believed about balancing energies was in jeopardy of being overturned by a ten-year-old boy bearing an ancient Mark.
Velis Solara's Northern Branch bustled out onto the streets from the primary entrance as Head Inspector Ryan came striding in, accompanied by Senior Inspector Ben Walker and an advance party of select Sunspire officers.
Their own boots rang on marble floors, a rhythmic counterpoint to the turmoil they left behind.
Everywhere evidence of Alex's escape was left behind. Smashed pillars where void energy had hit, incinerated walls with the telltale sheen of starlight backlash, and most unmistakably, haunted faces of officers they passed by.
"Status report," Ryan barked without slowing, his voice even-paced despite the situation.
Ben Walker referred to a radiant scroll that unrolled in his palms. "Seventeen officers hurt, three critically.
The Eastern corridor took damage to its structure where the boy. opened the rift. Surveillance systems are online again but recorded nothing during the attack."
Ryan's face told nothing, but his eyes were keen with intensity as they swept over the ruins. "And the boy?"
"Gone," Walker had answered reluctantly. "The rift sealed as soon as he crossed it. Our trackers have left no signature to track."
They walked past a team of healers tending to wounded officers, their hands aglow with healing energy.
One of the young officers glanced up as they went by, his eyes flicking in recognition of Ryan. The Head Inspector nodded acknowledgement but didn't break stride.
"The city?" Ryan asked.
"Shut down according to procedure," Walker attested. "No civilian casualties. The event was contained on Sunspire grounds."
A mercy, at least. Ryan's shoulders didn't relax as they walked to the Eastern Branch, where Aelren and Caelia stood waiting.
The destruction increased here—windows blown out, tile on the floor cracking in a pattern that spread outward from what had to be the center of Alex's energy.
"Head Inspector," a voice said. Ryan turned to behold a junior officer racing toward him, holding out a communications crystal. "Emergency message from Western Branch."
Ryan accepted the crystal, listened briefly, then passed it back, still saying nothing. His look, if it were possible, darkened still further.
"Sir?" Walker asked.
"It appears," Ryan said softly, "that our little Everborn has left us with a good many more questions than answers."
The Eastern Branch conference room was hastily repurposed as a command center. Maps of Velis Solara lined one wall, with burning points marking security breaches and reports of damage.
A second wall showed a never-ending stream of surveillance footage, methodically recounting every instant up to the point of Alex's escape.
Ryan stood at the head of the central table, his hands behind his back as Aelren and Caelia gave their report.
"The surveillance runes broke down about three minutes before Dren Vokar stepped into the room,"
Aelren described, working a timeline that floated on the table. "We originally thought it was a systems glitch, but with what happened.recently."
"It was intentional," Ryan determined. "Dren didn't want anyone witnessing it."
Caelia nodded. "We discovered tampered sigils across the sector. Professional. Not detectable unless you knew just what to check for."
Ryan's face grew somber. "And you're sure of his allegiance?"
"Beyond question," Aelren assured him. "Several witnesses reported void energy coming from him during the fight with Alex. And the Mark—or lack thereof now—tells its own story."
Ryan took this in with professional calm, though the faint stiffening around his eyes revealed his turmoil within.
Dren Vokar had been one of his most reliable inspectors, a fifteen-year colleague.
"And the boy's getaway?" Ryan questioned.
Caelia pointed at the surveillance tape. "The tape comes back here, and Alex is seen in the corridor with what looks like. a crow."
Ryan leaned in, examining the photo. "A crow?"
"Not a normal one," Aelren continued. "From Inspector Lirien's statement prior to her injury, the bird was somehow hacking into our security systems."
"That's impossible," Ryan grumbled.
"As was everything else that went on tonight," Caelia replied, her own voice heavy with a fatigue that wasn't physical.
The video went on, depicting the conflict in the hallway, although it was grainy—tainted by the energies released.
"And then this," Aelren continued, fast-forwarding through the timeline.
The fuzzy image depicted Alex with the blood-red sword, slicing what looked to be a gash in reality itself. And then, darkness.
Ryan straightened, his thoughts working out the implications. "How many are aware of Dren's true nature?"
"Only those in this room, the medical personnel who have been treating him, and the officers who witnessed the confrontation," Aelren promised.
"Keep it that way," Ryan commanded. "If it becomes known that a Shadowwell user penetrated our upper echelons."
The sentence trailed off, thick with potential.
The medical room was quiet with Ryan looming above the bed of the unconscious Dren Vokar, scrutinizing the flat-eyed inspector in shock and grim detachment.
Monitoring runes glowed with a faint blue light, registering every jerk of eyelids, every fragile gasp.
"How could this be?" Ryan finally managed, shattering the oppressive hush. "A Shadowwell practitioner whose Mark is ripped off has disastrous cascade of energy.".
Death comes instantaneously and. messy." He glanced over at Aelren. "And yet here he lies, hurt but alive."
The willowy chief medical officer, her hair streaked with silver, stepped forward. "We've been wondering the same thing, Head Inspector. By all principles of energy dynamics we know, this cannot be. This is impossible."
Ryan walked around the bed in a slow circle. "What do you think?"
"The boy's Mark," Aelren answered. "It appears to possess qualities we've never seen before.".
When Dren tried to drain it, rather than the standard violent rejection response, the Mark seemed to. alter the void energy in some way."
Ryan's eyebrows rose step by step. "Alter it?"
"The medical scans are picking up residue of an energy signature that is neither void nor starlight," the medical officer said, projecting a complicated diagram in the air above Dren.
"It's like the Mark transmuted the void energy into something else—something that our systems are barely able to pick up on."
Ryan considered the diagram, his face pensive. "And this. transmutation. is what kept him alive?"
"We think so," Aelren affirmed. "Though we're in previously unexplored territory here."
Ryan's eyes narrowed. "Are there others? Other victims who were hit by the boy's Mark in a direct contact?"
Aelren shared a look with Caelia. "Yes. Inspector Lirien tried to hold Alex back when he fled. She was hit with power from his Mark."
"Bring it to me," Ryan instructed.
Walking away from the room, Ryan sent one final look toward Dren Vokar. The man who had lurked in hiding for years, who had compromised everything that the Sunspire represented.
But even in this treachery, he had discovered something new—something never seen before—the nature of an Everborn Mark.
"Seal off his room," Ryan told the guards outside. "No one comes in without my explicit permission.
Inspector Lirien rested in the nearby medical chamber, her condition clearly worse than Dren's.".
While Dren only seemed exhausted, Lirien's body carried the unmistakable lines of energy corruption—branching, fern-patterned marks appearing on her skin, glowing with an otherworldly light.
Ryan moved quietly to her bedside. "Attacked the kid?"
"Used a standard containment sigil in an attempt to knock him out," Caelia explained. "What she did next was. unexpected."
The med officer called up Lirien's diagnostic reports. "The boy's Mark not only deflected her starlight energy—it absorbed it, converted it, and bounced it right back at her.
But the energy that came back wasn't starlight any longer."
Ryan examined the readings with increasing alarm. "It was void energy?"
"Not quite," said the medical officer, pointing out a specific pattern on the readout. "Look here? It's kind of like void energy in composition but basically transformed.
It destabilized her energy channels but failed to corrupt them entirely like regular void energy."
"Which is why she's still standing," Ryan inferred, the parts clicking into position.
Aelren nodded. "We feel that the Everborn Mark has a special property: to change energies—to take starlight and make it void and vice versa, or to forge something between."
The ramifications were mind-boggling. The balance between Sunspire and Shadowwell had been preserved by the unyielding opposition of their energies for centuries.
If such a Mark existed, one that could span that gap—or, worse, command both energies with impunity—it would radically change the power structures that had defined their world.
"Has she come around?" Ryan asked.
"Temporarily," Caelia replied. "She assured us that the energy that hit her was 'wrong'—neither empty nor starlight, but something that seemed to tap into both."
Ryan stood up straight, his mind made up. "This is outside protocol. Outside anything in our records."
"Sir?" Aelren asked.
"We have to reach out to the Weeping Eyes," Ryan stated gravely.
The words transmitted a palpable shiver of unease through the room. The Weeping Eyes were seldom called on—a mysterious council that fell outside the authority of Sunspire and Shadowwell, charged with keeping the larger balance of power.
"Are you sure that's required?" Caelia asked cautiously.
Ryan's eyes never left the twisted form of Lirien. "A ten-year-old boy with an unclassified Mark just ripped a hole in existence and fled into a realm beyond my knowledge. Yes, Inspector Caelia, I am fairly sure."
The private room off Ryan's ad hoc office in the Eastern Branch was guarded against physical as well as magical eavesdropping.
The old wards buzzed within the walls, forming an airtight shell of secrecy. Here Ryan might talk freely with Aelren without any fear of detection.
"Write the letter right now," Ryan told him, settling into the plain desk. "The Weeping Eyes have to be made aware of each and every detail, no matter how small it may appear."
Aelren nodded, readying the special parchment employed in such messages. "And Dren and Lirien?"
"They'll need to be alerted too," Ryan agreed.
"Put in complete medical reports on both," Ryan answered. "Highlight the anomalous energy signatures. The Eyes have access we don't—they may know what we're dealing with."
The scratching of Aelren's quill filled the silence as Ryan gazed out the narrow window, seeing the first light of dawn touch the spires of Velis Solara.
The city appeared unchanged, its people none the wiser to how fundamentally their world had changed overnight.
"Sir," Aelren said uncertainly, "there's the issue of containment. How much should the other branches be informed?"
Ryan broke from the window. "Only what they need to know. A training accident. An unauthorized experiment. Nothing about the Everborn Mark or Dren's true nature."
"And if someone asks about Alex?"
"He's been sent to a specialized facility for his own protection," Ryan answered unhesitantly. "That should give us time."
Aelren stopped writing. "The senior inspectors won't be deceived so easily."
"They don't have to be kept in the dark forever," Ryan replied. "Just long enough for the Eyes to reply."
The burden of duty weighed heavily between them. In his entire career, Aelren had only seen contact with the Weeping Eyes twice—both occasions leading up to major changes in policy and authority.
"What do you think they'll do?" Aelren asked softly, the question which had hung unspoken since Ryan had come to his decision.
Ryan's face gave nothing away. "What they've always done. Whatever is required to achieve the balance." He rose, smoothing his uniform.
"Complete the letter. Make use of the Scrying Orb in my quarters for transmission. This cannot be delayed for regular channels."
As Ryan stepped out, Aelren stood and asked one last question: "And what of us, sir? What do we do while we wait?"
Ryan hesitated at the door. "We prepare," he replied bluntly. "Whatever comes next won't be easy or clean. See to it that our people are prepared."
The upper echelon had convened in the main room of the Eastern Branch, faces serious as Ryan stood before them. Morning light flowed through towering windows, filling the room with long shadows.
"By this point, each of you has probably heard multiple different versions of what happened last night," Ryan opened, his words ringing clear across the space. "Everything that you have probably heard falls somewhere between rumor, exaggeration, and sheer invention."
There was a murmur among the inspectors assembled there.
"What I'm going to tell you is need-to-know Top Level," Ryan went on. "It leaves this room. Nothing."
He turned on a display sphere suspended in the middle of the chamber, which gave off an image of Alex's Mark. "This is the Hollow's Bargain Mark which the boy Alex carries. Or at least so we believed."
The picture changed, exposing faint patterns in the Mark that had not been apparent before.
"Our first guess was off," Ryan told them. "This is not just a Hollow's Bargain Mark. It has the mark of something much older, much stronger. It is, we suspect, an Everborn Mark."
The subsequent silence was deep, interrupted only by a quick breath drawn in by someone in the back of the room.
"For those who are not familiar with the term," Ryan went on, although he knew everyone there knew what it meant, "Everborn Marks precede our present knowledge of energy manipulation. They are outside the established categories of Sunspire and Shadowwell."
Inspector Thaelon, the silver-bearded Northern Branch delegate, took a step forward. "Head Inspector, if that is the case, then the boy poses a fundamental threat to the balance we have maintained for centuries."
Ryan nodded, recognizing the worry. "Which is why I've sent word to the Weeping Eyes."
This statement caused more commotion than the revelation regarding the Mark itself. The Weeping Eyes were a sort of myth to the majority of the inspectors—whispered rumors, seldom glimpsed, but their power absolute.
"Inspector Aelren is going to be filing a thorough report," Ryan went on once the gossip had died down.
"Until we get instructions, containment is our main concern—of information, not security. The public doesn't need to know what happened here."
The session went on, outlining individual tasks and procedures, and Aelren disappeared to fulfill his mission.
The letter to the Weeping Eyes was almost done, but the most important details—the precise nature of Alex's ability and the unprecedented shift of energies—had to be carefully phrased.
In his temporary chambers, Aelren activated the Scrying Orb, a limited artifact reserved solely for the senior-most Sunspire officials. Its surface churned with energy like mist, waiting for him to command it.
"To the Weeping Eyes," he recited in distinct tones, "from Inspector Aelren, Sunspire Eastern Branch, priority alpha, authorization code Helios-Seven-Nine-Echo."
The orb throbbed with understanding, prepared to send his message through distances and barriers conventional communications could never span.
Aelren breathed in deeply and started reading the letter that could well alter the destiny of their world.
Far, far away from the Valis solara City:
Darkness.
Not a lack of light—but an emptiness that throbbed with silence.
Elias drifted within it. Weightless. Thoughtless.
Time did not exist here.
There was only the vibration of something ancient. watching.
He opened his eyes—no light, but he could see. Infinite shadows curled and slithered, whispering in forgotten tongues.
A broken reflection floate
d by—his own face, shattered into pieces.
Movement in the distance. A gate? A heartbeat?
The emptiness changed.
Elias extended a hand, fingers touching unseen strings that pulled against reality, with a reality shard in his grasp…
His lips twisted into a grin.
"It's about the time."