The first thing he noticed was the silence.
Not the absence of noise, but the kind of silence that pressed on his skull, smothering every thought. He blinked and found himself lying on cold stone, his breath frosting in the air. Above him stretched a sky he had never seen before—faintly luminous, colorless, as though someone had drained the world of paint.
His chest hurt. Something burned there, deep beneath the skin. When he pulled open his shirt, he saw it: a mark, faintly glowing, etched into his flesh like a scar pressed by fire. It pulsed with his heartbeat.
The pain came in waves, sharp enough to drag curses from his throat. He pressed his palm against it and froze.
The stone beneath his hand… wasn't the same anymore.
A thin layer of frost spread outward, crackling over the ground. His veins lit with cold fire, and his stomach twisted with nausea. He staggered to his feet, every nerve screaming.
That was when he heard it.
A scraping sound.
Something moved in the mist ahead too tall, too thin. Its body bent at wrong angles, joints jutting like broken branches. It had no face, only a hollow cavity where its head should have been. It shambled forward, and with every step, the mark in his chest burned hotter, as though it was being dragged awake.
Panic clawed at him. His legs refused to run. The creature lunged.
He threw up his arm by instinct. A flash—heat, cold, pain, something he couldn't name. The creature staggered, its flesh hissing as if eaten by invisible acid. Its skin peeled away, revealing pale bone. And then, impossibly, its movement slowed—like a recording stuck on the last frame.
It collapsed at his feet, twitching once, then going still.
The silence returned.
Then… a shimmer rose from the corpse. Not smoke, not light. Something in between. A memory, perhaps, or the echo of what it had been. And before he could think, it sank into his chest.
The mark flared. His stomach lurched. Images not his own bled into his mind—the creature's vision, its hunger, the echo of its movements. He gagged, clawing at his throat, but it was already inside him.
His breathing slowed. His trembling stopped. And then, with dawning horror, he realized he understood.
The mark wasn't just a brand.
It was a recording device for reality itself.
And it had just copied the thing he killed.
Not perfectly. Not fully. But enough.
His hands curled into fists. His heartbeat steadied.
The silence broke. A hundred more scraping sounds stirred in the mist. Shapes moved. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
He wasn't alone.
And now… neither were they.