The headaches came first.
They started small. A throb behind my eyes. A dull ache in my temples. But by the third day, I couldn't sit still without the world blurring.
Every time I blinked, flashes of people filled my mind. Strangers. Faces I shouldn't have known.
A woman with golden braids, laughing as she sold violets by the roadside.
A boy with a crooked tooth, whistling while he carved wooden toys.
An old man with clouded eyes, sitting on the docks waiting for a ship that would never come.
They lived and breathed inside me, as real as any memory of Lyra. Yet when I went outside, no one else remembered them. The flower seller's stall was gone. The boy's workshop didn't exist. The old man's dock sat empty.
And each time a memory struck me, the mark on my hand burned.
It had grown darker. The shifting shape of it now hovered between a sharp A and a curved O, never staying still. At night, I swore I saw faint black veins creeping outward from the symbol, threading up my wrist.
The weight of it made me sick. Sometimes I vomited bile. Sometimes I woke gasping, clutching my chest as if someone had stolen the air from my lungs.
But I couldn't stop.
Every memory I wrote down in the journal steadied me. For a little while. Like draining poison from a wound.
And then the mark pulled me again.
---
It began on the fourth night.
I was sitting by the fire, trying to steady my hands enough to write, when the mark seared my palm like a brand fresh from the forge. I dropped the quill, gritting my teeth, nearly screaming.
The pain didn't fade. It tugged at me, literally tugged. Like a hook buried in my bones, dragging my arm forward.
"No," I whispered. "Not now."
But the pull only grew sharper.
I tried to resist, clutching the edge of the desk, but the mark burned hotter until black smoke seemed to rise faintly from the skin. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed my cloak and stumbled outside into the night.
The city was quiet. Lanterns guttered low in the drizzle. The mark throbbed, pulling me down one street, then another. I followed, half against my will, half desperate to see where it led.
It drew me toward the older part of the city, where buildings leaned crooked and streets narrowed into twisting alleys. Places people avoided after dark.
The mark guided me to one alley in particular. Narrow. Black as pitch. The rain didn't seem to touch it.
I hesitated at the mouth of the alley, heart pounding. The pull was stronger here, unbearable. My skin crawled. Every instinct screamed to turn back.
But then I remembered Lyra. Her laughter. Her scar. Her voice calling me brother.
If this cursed mark was a path to her, then I would walk it.
I stepped inside.
---
The air changed instantly.
It was colder, thick, heavy. Each breath felt like swallowing oil. The cobblestones beneath my feet shifted, warping into shapes that didn't quite fit. Shadows stretched too far, curling along the walls like grasping fingers.
And then I heard it.
Whispers.
At first faint, like wind through reeds. Then louder, a chorus of broken voices.
"…he was mine…"
"…don't let me fade…"
"…please remember…"
The sound pressed against my skull, filling me with a sickening sense of hunger and grief.
I forced myself forward, deeper into the alley, until I saw it.
The thing feeding in the dark.
It had no shape at first. Just a mass of writhing shadow, blotting out the lantern light. But as my eyes adjusted, details emerged. A warped figure, half-man, half-ink. Its body was covered in crawling letters, phrases that bled into each other and vanished. Its head twitched violently, as though it couldn't settle on a single form.
And it was feeding.
I don't know how else to describe it. Its clawed hand was buried in the wall, and the stone itself seemed to ripple under its touch. Images flickered across the surface, faces, names, moments. Then they were gone, pulled into the creature's body like smoke inhaled by a flame.
The whispers grew louder.
"…don't let me go…"
"…my name was"
"…please, anyone, remember me…"
The sound tore at me, ripped into my chest until I fell to my knees, clutching my head. The mark on my hand blazed, and suddenly I could see them, the fragments the creature was devouring.
A mother singing to her child.
A soldier swearing an oath before battle.
A girl sketching flowers in the dirt.
All gone. All vanishing into that thing.
Something snapped in me.
I staggered to my feet, clutching the journal in one hand, my marked palm glowing in the other.
"STOP!" I shouted, though my voice cracked.
The creature's head jerked. Slowly, its twisted face turned toward me. Its mouth split wide, too wide, letters spilling from its throat in a torrent of black script. The whispers turned into a shriek.
And then it lunged.
---
I stumbled back as claws raked through the air, slamming into the cobblestones where I had been standing. Sparks flew. The creature rose to its full height taller than a man, bent and twitching.
My legs trembled. I had nothing. No sword. No weapon. Just my journal and this cursed mark.
The mark seared again, blinding white-hot pain. I screamed, raising my hand instinctively.
And the world tore open.
From my palm, black letters erupted, swirling into the air like ink spilled in water. They coiled around the creature's claw mid-swing, dragging it to a halt. The thing shrieked, thrashing, its form glitching between shapes.
The mark burned hotter. My vision blurred. Words I didn't know spilled into my head, flooding me with images, memories, names. They weren't mine, they were the fragments the creature had consumed.
I felt myself drowning in them. A thousand voices screaming at once.
"Remember me!"
"My daughter's name was"
"I lived, I lived, I lived"
I nearly collapsed under the weight.
But I clung to one truth: Lyra.
I forced my shaking hand forward, willing the letters to bind tighter. The mark responded, pulling harder, drawing the fragments out of the creature. Black smoke bled from its body, twisting into words that wrapped around me instead.
The creature shrieked, its form unraveling, collapsing into nothing but scattered script. The whispers cut off, leaving only silence.
And then the weight hit me.
All the fragments I had torn from it slammed into me at once. Memories of strangers. Lives not mine. Pain, joy, fear, love. A flood that nearly crushed me.
I dropped to my knees, gasping, blood dripping from my nose. My head felt like it would split in two.
But the mark pulsed, steady, like a heartbeat. And slowly, painfully, the flood settled. Not gone. Never gone. But buried, woven into me.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
---
I don't know how long I sat there, trembling in the dark.
When I finally looked up, the alley was empty. Just wet cobblestones, crumbling walls, dripping gutters.
The creature was gone. But I could still feel it, traces of its hunger lingering like smoke after a fire.
I wiped the blood from my face and forced myself to stand. My body shook, my vision swam, but I opened the journal with numb fingers and began to write.
Archivist's Record – Entry Two.
I wrote down everything I had seen. The creature. The fragments. The faces. My hand trembled, but the words stayed.
When I finished, the mark pulsed once more, like a silent acknowledgment.
And then I heard it.
A voice, soft, almost amused, drifting from the shadows behind me.
"So," it said. "The new Archivist has begun his firs
t Hunt."
I froze, turning slowly.
A figure stood at the mouth of the alley. Cloaked. Still. Watching me.
The mark on my hand burned in recognition.
I wasn't alone.