The clearing was a cathedral of ancient oaks, their gnarled branches reaching upward like skeletal fingers trying to pluck the moon from the sky. The Queen's along with her people had departed. Only the Commander of the Royal Guard remained, standing over the man who was her own living ghost.
Kaelen's jaw ached. The bruise Aeryn had left on her face burned a mark of shame from the woman she had worshipped. Across from her, the man she had captured sat bound against an altar stone, his eyes tracking her every movement with a predatory familiarity.
"Look at you," the man spat, his voice a jagged, baritone reflection of her own. "The Queen's favorite hound, kicked by her mistress and still wagging her tail. Does the iron in your soul taste like her boot, Kaelen?"
Kaelen's hand went to the hilt of her sword, her knuckles white. "You speak of the Queen as if you know her. You are a puppet. A construct of the Resistance meant to shake my resolve. Tell me who wove you into existence, and I might grant you a clean death." She said poetically in a whisperish tone that was devoid of any emotion.
The man laughed, a sound that started as a chuckle and grew into a roaring, hysterical gale. "Wove me? You still think this is a Weaver's trick? Look at my hands, Kaelen! Look at the scars on the knuckles! Remember the winter you fell from the ramparts at the age of seven? I still feel the chill in the bone. I am not a trick. I am the truth she tried to drown in a shallow grave."
"Liar!" Kaelen roared, she tried to act as if she didn't care but now she didn't pretend anymore. She crossed the distance in a blur, her fist connecting with his jaw.
He didn't flinch. He leaned into the blow, grinning through a mouthful of blood. "Is that all the Commander has?"
He again spat. " you see…Manipulation is a fine art, sister. Aeryn didn't just give you a name and a sword; she gave you a cage. She took your memories, your family, your very gender, and she buried them beneath that suit of armor. She needed a weapon, not a woman. And certainly not a twin."
"We are not twins," Kaelen hissed, her voice trembling. "I am unique. I am the singular blade of the Empire."
"You are a half-measure!" the man screamed back, his bound body straining against the ropes. "She split us! One to lead the armies, and one to hold the darkness! Why do you think you never feel 'whole,' Kaelen? Why do you feel empty inside you? Why if the loyalty for the country is taken away from you, there will be nothing but hollow inside??? I know you have these questions!!! Let me tell you! It's because I'm calling to you from the void!"
In a frenzy of rage and confusion, Kaelen grabbed the collar of his tunic, intending to shake the madness out of him. With a violent tug, the fabric gave way, tearing down the center.
She froze.
Etched into the center of his chest, directly over the heart, was a tattoo that defied the normic laws of light. It was a mass of shifting, oily black smoke trapped beneath the skin in the shape of a jagged eye the mark of the Void-Seers. It pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly violet light. it looked like a trapped black worm wobbling in a specific shape inside his chest. it was abhorrent to look at and even more nauseatic to touch.
"What is this?" she whispered, her blood running cold. "What have you done? Who are you?" every hair on her body was raising.
The man looked down, his eyes widening in genuine, sudden terror. The arrogance vanished, replaced by a hollow confusion as he stared at his own flesh. "I... I don't know," he stammered, his voice losing its baritone edge, becoming high and thin. "They said... they said if I wore the Mark, you would believe me. They said I would become the truth."
He wasn't a brother. He was a vessel, a blank canvas painted with someone else's nightmares. He had been mocking her, insulting her, and reciting memories he had been fed, completely oblivious to the engine of dark magic ticking inside his own chest.
Kaelen drew her dagger, the silver blade gleaming. "I will cut this heresy from your flesh."
"No, wait " the man gasped, but it was too late.
Kaelen plunged the dagger into the edge of the tattoo.
She expected blood. Instead, a geyser of absolute darkness erupted from the wound. It wasn't liquid; it was cold shadow, any more coldness and it could even shatter bone. The smoke surged up the silver blade, leaping onto Kaelen's hand like a living parasite.
As the darkness touched her, the man began to change. His face didn't just pale; it began to deteriorate, the flesh turning to grey ash and peeling away like burnt parchment. His features blurred, the "twin" likeness melting into a featureless, terrifying void. He wasn't even human; he was a facade, a dark magic construct designed to break her mind.
The world tilted before her eyes and trees melted into pillars of obsidian. Kaelen was no longer in the clearing. She was standing in a vast, echoing chamber where the stars were made of dying eyes.
A vision tore through her mind: a high-born crib... a mother's scream silenced by a silver garrote... a man in a hooded robe standing over two infants...
And then, she saw him. Not the melting thing before her, but a third figure standing in the shadows of the vision. A familiar face. A face from the Royal Court someone she had guarded, someone she had trusted. The person responsible for the Great Forgetting.
Kaelen tried to scream the name, but the black smoke filled her lungs, turning her internal organs to ice. The last thing she saw was the facade the man who claimed to be her brother collapsing into a pile of black soot as the life-force was sucked from the world by the very Mark he hadn't understood.