Night fell heavy over Duskveil, the kind of night that seemed too thick to breathe. The town had always been smothered in mist, but once the sun disappeared, the fog turned into a living thing. It wound through the streets like a ghost, curling around lantern posts and muffling footsteps. For most, night meant hearths and homes, laughter behind shuttered windows.
For Kael, night meant freedom.
He slipped into the abandoned library the way a thief slips into a treasure vault—carefully, reverently. Once, long ago, the place had been a grand archive, filled with scholars who chronicled the wars of gods and demons. Now it was nothing more than a skeleton of its past: shelves broken, scrolls rotted, windows cracked and rattling with the wind. But hidden among the ruins were books others had long forgotten, books with words so old even the priests refused to touch them.
And Kael read them all.
A single candle flickered beside him as he traced his fingers across brittle pages. Tonight, the book before him was bound in dark leather that seemed to hum faintly when he opened it. The script inside wasn't human—it twisted like serpents across the page, symbols both beautiful and unsettling.
Yet Kael understood it.
He didn't know how. The words rose from the page as though etched into his mind already, whispering secrets no mortal should hear. They spoke of the Veil—a thin boundary between realms, of beings born of light and shadow, of a war that never ended.
His storm-grey eyes flickered as he turned the page, his chest tightening with the familiar sense that he had seen this before. Not in this life. Not with this body. But somewhere, in dreams that felt more like memories.
A creak echoed through the library.
Kael froze. He wasn't alone.
From the doorway, he felt it first—an invisible weight pressing against his chest, as though the air itself bent under a heavy presence. Slowly, cautiously, he turned.
A man stood there.
Or perhaps not a man at all. His cloak was woven of shadows, the edges shifting like smoke. His eyes burned faintly silver in the darkness, and when he stepped forward, the candle flame bent toward him as if bowing.
Kael's heart stuttered. No one ever came here. No one should be here.
The stranger's gaze lingered on the glowing script in Kael's hands, then on Kael himself.
"You read what was never meant for human eyes," the man said, voice smooth, low, and unsettlingly calm.
Kael's mouth opened, but no sound came out. His instinct—the timid reflex that had saved him all his life—was to bow his head, make himself small, wait for danger to pass.
The man tilted his head, studying him as though Kael were a puzzle. Then, almost amused, he smiled faintly.
"There is more in you than even you know," the stranger murmured. "The mark stirs… soon, you will hear it calling."
Before Kael could gather the courage to speak, the man was gone. Shadows folded inward, and the doorway was empty once more, as though he had been a dream.
The candle guttered, threatening to die.
Kael sat frozen in the dark, his chest aching where the hidden mark pulsed beneath his skin. The whispering symbols on the page seemed louder now, echoing the stranger's words.
The mark stirs.
That night, when Kael finally drifted into uneasy sleep, the nightmare returned.
A battlefield stretched before him, broken bodies scattered like fallen leaves. Above, the sky was torn between blinding light and choking darkness, both bleeding into each other like oil and water. And in the center stood two figures—blurred, faceless, yet achingly familiar. They reached out to him, their voices drowned by thunder.
Kael stumbled forward, calling out. "Who are you?!"
But before he could reach them, fire consumed the world, and he woke in his ruined loft, gasping, drenched in sweat.
The marks on his skin glowed faintly in the dark.
And this time, they did not fade quickly.