The Gap ruptures.
Stone screams as the street tears apart, buildings groan and bend inward, windows shattering into silent light. The hole yawns wider, swallowing lanterns, carts, fragments of voices that don't belong.
And then it rises.
The thing inside.
At first it is a tower, black and endless, stretching far above the rooftops. Then it bends, folding into arms, into wings, into shapes I can't hold in my eyes. Every time I blink, it changes. Every time I look, it becomes something else.
A thousand mouths drip letters like blood. Eyes bloom and vanish. Spines curl into limbs that split, stretch, collapse back into nothing.
I can't breathe. I can't think.
The Mark flares, branding through flesh. My hand burns white-hot, veins writhing black across my arm.
The Hunt has begun.
---
The thing moves.
One instant it is still, stretching endless above me. The next, it is here. A limb, or maybe a face, slams into the cobblestones where I stood a heartbeat ago. Stone explodes, shards slicing my cheek.
I stumble back, lungs heaving.
The Mark drags me forward anyway.
Letters spill into the air from my hand, coiling, twisting into chains. They lash out, binding one of its many limbs. The creature shrieks, no, a thousand voices shriek, the sound tearing through my skull like broken glass.
The chain holds. For a moment.
Then the limb splits into five, six, a hundred tendrils of shifting script. They tear free, whipping toward me.
I throw myself sideways, crashing hard into the wall of a collapsing house. Pain detonates through my ribs. Breath flees.
Get up.
I force myself to my feet as stone rains down around me.
---
The thing bends again. Now it is all mouths, gnashing, hungering, dripping fragments like spittle. Faces fall from it, flickering like torn paper in fire. They vanish before they hit the ground.
The Mark burns hotter. My body moves before my mind. I thrust my hand out, script bursting forward, branding across its shifting hide.
Symbols sear into its flesh. For a second, it howls, writhing, shrinking back.
And then it grows.
Larger. Wider. More.
The Mark trembles in my hand.
I stumble backward, blood in my mouth. My legs are shaking. My shoulder screams from the dog's old wound, tearing open again.
I can't fight this. I'm nothing.
But the Mark won't let me stop.
It drags me forward again, burning me alive.
---
The second strike comes faster.
A limb, long, skeletal, lined with teeth, lashes toward me. I block with my arm, stupid, desperate.
Pain explodes as claws tear through flesh. My blood sprays across the stones.
I scream, collapsing to one knee. My vision blurs.
The Mark reacts before I can.
Letters rip out of me, coiling around the wound, black chains fusing bone, stitching torn flesh. The pain dulls, replaced by cold fire crawling through my veins.
Not healing. Binding.
I stagger up, gasping. My arm still bleeds, but it moves.
The Mark controls it now.
---
The monster laughs.
Not one laugh, thousands. Men, women, children, voices overlapping, echoing, splitting, mocking.
It opens a mouth wider than a house, teeth grinding into nothing. From its throat pours fragments, names, memories, screams. They flood the air, slamming into me like knives.
I collapse, clutching my head.
A soldier dying with his guts in his hands.
A mother weeping over an empty crib.
A boy laughing, running barefoot through grass.
Too much. Too many. I can't hold them all.
The Mark forces me up.
My hand slams into the ground. Words erupt, forming a circle of script around me. The fragments twist, bend, spiral into the journal still strapped to my satchel. Pages flip open, ink searing itself onto paper.
The fragments vanish. The voices fade.
For now.
I stagger upright. My legs feel like stone. My ribs burn. But I'm breathing.
Still alive.
---
The monster shifts again.
Now it is wings. Vast, endless, blotting out the night. Feathers drip letters that dissolve before they hit the ground. Its shadow smothers the city.
And then the wings collapse inward, twisting into spears.
They rain down.
I dive. Cobblestones split around me as spears impale the street, carving trenches. A blast of air throws me against the wall of another house. My skull cracks against stone. Stars explode behind my eyes.
Get up.
The Mark drags me upright. My body obeys even as it screams.
The words surge again, wrapping into chains, into brands. I fling them upward, binding the spears mid-fall.
The creature screeches as the brands sear across its wings.
For a heartbeat, it falters.
---
I take the chance.
I run.
Not away, forward. Toward the void, toward the thing. My legs carry me without choice, without thought.
The Mark is screaming now, blazing like fire. My palm is no longer flesh but pure script, glowing, burning, pulsing.
I slam it against the creature's hide.
Letters explode outward, branding deep into its shifting flesh. The symbol spreads, carving into its skin, rooting like veins.
The monster convulses. Its shrieks split the air, buildings cracking, windows shattering.
The world bends.
For a second, I think it might die.
For a second, I think I might win.
---
Then the Mark falters.
The script burns too bright, veins tearing through my arm, splitting skin. Blood pours down my wrist. My body can't hold this power.
The brand shatters.
The creature surges free.
A limb slams into me, crushing my ribs. I fly backward, crash through a wall. Stone buries me, pain exploding everywhere.
I can't move. Can't breathe.
This is it.
This is where I die.
---
But the Mark refuses.
It drags me up again, bones screaming, lungs collapsing. My body is nothing but pain, nothing but fire.
One last chance.
One last strike.
I stagger forward, every step agony.
I screamed "I HAVEN'T LOST YETT...."
The creature looms above me, shifting, endless, all mouths and wings and limbs.
I raise my hand. My palm blazes white.
The Mark roars.
Letters erupt, a storm of script, chains lashing out, branding across every limb, every mouth, every eye.
The monster shrieks, thrashing, collapsing inward. Its body folds, twisting into itself, dragging fragments with it.
The Gap convulses.
And then
Silence.
---
The street is empty.
The buildings stand whole again. The lanterns flicker. The night is quiet.
But the cobblestones beneath me are slick with my blood. My ribs are broken. My arm is barely holding together, bound by script instead of bone.
I collapse to my knees, gasping, the Mark still burning faintly.
I survived.
But not because of me.
Because it wanted me to.
The Mark. The Hunt. The thing inside me.
I'm not Kaelen anymore.
I don't know what I am.