The air in the Temple was thick with the trinity of priestly smells: melting wax, incense, and the subtle rot of old stone. Rain lashed against the high, stained-glass windows, marking a gloomy atmosphere.
Opposite the Priest stood Varien, a figure carved from shadow. His tightly woven cloak and tunic were the color of charcoal, absorbing the flickering candlelight rather than reflecting it. His face was solemn, etched with a severity that was at odds with its youth, and framed by a fall of straight, dark hair.
He's afraid, Varien thought, his gaze unwavering. Expected.
"Dark times we live in," the Priest intoned, his voice a gravelly thing. He clutched the wooden icon hanging from his neck, his knuckles white. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his brow despite the chill. "When devils walk in the light this freely."
Varien offered a thin, mirthless smile. "Darker times when we devils have to keep you Priests out of the boys."
The old man flinched as if struck. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He made a sound like grinding stones, a guttural noise that barely concealed a tremor of fear.
He remembers the sins of his fellow clergymen. Varien thought.
"How many?" Varien's voice was flat, cutting through the heavy air.
"You already know," the Priest rasped, his eyes darting to the shadows in the corner, anywhere but at Varien.
Varien didn't answer. He could feel them, the reason for his journey. They were like discordant notes in the quiet hum of the world, three faint points of pressure against the lattice of his own mark. Weak. Malnourished.
"Three," the Priest spat the word like a curse. "In this diocese alone. It is a plague. Dark times indeed."
"Let me see them."
With a gesture of profound reluctance, the Priest had an acolyte shove three children forward. They stumbled into the flickering light, brittle things between the ages of five and six. Varien's senses swept over them. He tasted the metallic tang of their fear, heard the frantic, quick beat of their hearts.
His eyes, however, were not looking at the obvious blemishes and grime. They sought the ink of fate, the brand that separated worthless clay from unrefined steel. He found the first two easily. A small, perfect teardrop of absolute black on the girl's earlobe, and on the back of one boy's hand, a faint, spiderweb pattern of obsidian threads.
However, the third resonance was slippery and diffuse. It emanated from the second boy, yet his visible skin was clean-of a mark that is. Strange. The resonance is strong, but… it doesn't radiate.
"And the other?" Varien mused aloud.
The Priest's face tightened into a scowl of genuine revulsion. "This one… is an aberration," he said, his voice laced with dread. He pointed a trembling finger at the boy, who stood unnervingly still, his eyes fixed on Varien with a vacant curiosity. "Check his neck. And his back."
Varien stepped forward. He gently tilted the boy's head. There, just at the hairline, was the faint beginning of a mark, a line of black no thicker than a thread. It wasn't a shape or a symbol, but a path—one that snaked down beneath the collar of the boy's ragged tunic, disappearing along his spine.
A channel. That is unusual.
The Priest couldn't contain his disgust. "The Mark is a penance laid by the Heavens! A brand of sin that must be borne in the sight of man and the gods, a visible testament! For it to hide itself… it is a mockery, a blasphemy against the divine order!"
Varien rose to his full height, his shadow swallowing the old man's. "Silence, you old thing," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous calm. "Your opinion is irrelevant."
The old man shrank back, a tremor running through him that had nothing to do with his advanced years. His jaw worked silently, the words of protest dying in his throat. Beside him, the acolyte flinched as if expecting a blow, taking a clumsy step away to press himself against the cold stone of a nearby pillar.
As Varien turned back to the children, the small girl with the teardrop mark on her earlobe looked up at him, her tear-streaked face pale in the candlelight.
"Are you a devil?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
The Priest's word, thrown back at him by a child. For a moment, Varien saw not the acolyte cowering by the pillar, but a younger version of himself, asking the same question of the grim-faced man who had pulled him from a stinking alley. The memory was ash in his mouth.
He did not answer her. He looked to the boy with the unseen path on his back. "We're moving."
The journey was a purgatory of jolting wheels and freezing rain. The three children were huddled together in the back of an armored carriage. The girl's quiet sobs had subsided into desolate whimpers. The first boy tried to offer what little comfort he could while the third one remained silent.
Hours later, the carriage shuddered to a halt. The incessant drumming of rain was suddenly muffled, replaced by the deep, resonant groan of iron on stone. Varien pushed open the heavy door.
The fortress did not stand upon the mountain; it grew from it. A single, monolithic spire of black rock, it clawed at the sky. This citadel of stone was known as the Anvil, the heart of the Forge, where human souls were hammered into weapons.
The heavy iron gates were already creaking open, as if anticipating their arrival. In the archway stood a figure that seemed less a person and more a living shadow. It was tall and gaunt, clad in featureless black robes that billowed slightly in the unseen drafts. No face was visible beneath the cowl, only an impression of utter stillness. A Mark, a complex swirl of silver and black, covered one of its unnaturally long hands, which rested on the cold iron of the gate. It merely inclined its head, a silent, unsettling invitation into the maw of the fortress, before melting back into the deeper shadows as the carriage rolled past.
Varien herded the children into a vast, torchlit courtyard. The air tasted of coal smoke, ozone, and spilt blood. The sounds were the life of the Forge—the clang of hammers on steel, the percussive impact of training blades, the shouts of instructors. Trainees of all ages moved with a lethal purpose, their marks displayed openly, a declaration of identity in the one place they were not judged, only measured.
"The world is a cruel place, more so for those like us, but here you will learn," Varien said, his voice low but carrying over the din. "Your mark is your name. This is the Forge. Everything you were is over. Everything you will be, you will earn."
But you're still too young to understand what you have already lost, he thought. As we all were.
The boy with the hidden mark finally met his gaze. His small, chapped lips parted, and he spoke for the first time, his voice a dry rasp, yet clear and steady.
"And what happens to those who fail to be forged?"
The question, coming from one so young in such an overwhelming place, caught Varien off guard. He allowed himself another one of his rare, thin smiles. He gestured to the smoke rising from the great furnaces at the heart of the Citadel.
"They become fuel for the fire."