Rael hadn't dreamed. His body never left the floor beneath the cracked pipe in the maintenance tunnel. No drifting through memory corridors, no gates flung open into far-off realms. Just an abrupt drop into unconsciousness—no sound, no warmth. Yet when his eyes fluttered open, the world felt subtly skewed.
The pipe hissed once and went quiet. The heat it had offered the night before was gone. Ash clung to his coat. The same rust-stained walls pressed in around him, chipped and flaking as ever. But something in him had changed.
His wrist pulsed.
The mark was still there.
Thin as a whisper, silver spirals beneath the skin, glowing faintly with no clear source of light. It didn't burn. It didn't hurt. But it felt... awake.
Rael sat up slowly, boots scraping against the gritty floor. The mist curled just outside the tunnel mouth, pale and light—a runoff drift, not true fog. Bleed mist from Veilrift's eastern frontier sometimes slipped past the city's containment grates, leaking into the lower tiers when the emotional pressure shifted. It shouldn't have reached this far down—not unless the vent seals were fractured.
He stepped out.
Ashborne stretched around him, tiered and broken in all directions. The city's layout made no attempt at symmetry. Lower districts spiraled around industrial accessways, scaffolded corridors, and heat dispersal towers. The middle tiers—where he walked now—held cracked stone walkways, drainage channels carved to direct residual fog away from market lanes, and squat buildings patched together from grief-treated steel and memory-stone siding.
Vents ran high across the walls, some stitched with old emotion cables, others clamped shut. The upper tiers loomed beyond sight, unreachable to most without registry clearance or emotional license.
Rael passed under a grief lantern hanging crooked from a rusted pole. It flickered when his wrist moved beneath it.
He stopped.
The light flared—once, then twice.
Then dimmed.
A moment later, an Echo scanner mounted to a building arch sparked as he passed. The device—clunky, outdated—clicked once, attempted a scan, then shut down completely.
He stared at it.
The scanners never reacted to him before. Machines built to track emotional imprint always skipped him. No records. No weight. No presence.
Now they noticed.
Rael ducked into one of Ashborne's narrower alleys, drawn by the whisper of a grief merchant's voice. She sat cross-legged behind a stone counter, glass vials lined in rows, each holding memory-hue liquid. Her robe shimmered faintly under streetlight, woven with seal-thread common among emotional tradesmen.
She didn't look up at first. Just slid a vial toward him.
"You've been marked," she said.
Rael hesitated. "I didn't make a Pact."
"Pacts aren't always chosen," she replied. "Some Echoes forge themselves when the ache is deep enough."
He touched his wrist lightly. "Then what did I lose?"
She shrugged. "Whatever part of you believed no one was watching."
Behind her stall, mist curled suddenly—more than fog, heavier. A figure stepped through.
Rael backed away.
It was a boy. Older than him maybe, or simply more worn. His coat shimmered with curved stitching—Echo-threaded loops near the chest. His eyes were gray-white, not blind, just empty of reflection.
He didn't speak at first.
Then: "It started. The Sigil's pulse confirms it. You're being watched."
Rael gritted his teeth. "I didn't give anything."
"But something was taken."
The boy turned toward the vent wall, steam leaking from a cracked seam. "Your Pact isn't finished. The city remembers you now. That changes things."
Rael stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The boy paused. "Someone who gave willingly. You didn't. That means you'll pay in pieces."
Before Rael could ask more, the boy slipped into the mist beyond the street tier, vanishing behind a broken fog gate conduit.
Rael stood alone, heart hammering—not from fear, but recognition.
Ashborne had always blurred faces and erased names.
Today, it saw him.
And the whisper in his wrist wasn't done speaking.
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