The work began at dawn.
No words. No orders.
Just chains, whips, and the groan of rusted gears kicking to life.
Eighty-Eight was sent to the slag pits — a wasteland of molten runoff and furnace bile. The air shimmered with toxic heat, laced with the scent of burned magic, bitter and black.
His task was simple:
Shovel coal ash. Fill barrels. Haul. Repeat.
Hour after hour.
Bone by bone.
No rest.
No shade.
Only sweat, steam, and the endless shriek of metal crying out against metal.
He didn't see the beastkin woman again until nightfall.
They were kept in separate work crews. Different hells.
But in the holding cells — battered, bruised, half-alive — she'd always be there.
Sitting across the cage. Silent. Still. Watching.
She never spoke. Not at first.
But her golden eyes followed him in the dark — and he, her.
Not suspicion anymore.
Recognition. Resonance.
Like two ghosts trying to remember who they used to be.
The mark began to pulse on the third night.
Not pain — not yet.
A faint warmth, buried deep in his chest. Right where the violet sigil had been scorched into flesh.
At first, he thought it was a fever. Hallucination. Maybe something in the ash air poisoning his blood.
By the fifth day, something changed.
He collapsed mid-haul.
The barrel crashed. Ash burst upward like smoke from a dying god.
A guard screamed and cracked his whip.
And then—
The world stopped breathing.
No sound. No flash.
Just pressure — thick and sudden, like gravity had tripled.
The whip unraveled in midair.
The handle crumbled in the guard's hand.
The dirt beneath Rei's boots cracked like eggshells.
Ash spiraled in slow motion.
Heat radiated from his chest — not pain, not fire — a hunger waking from sleep.
He blinked.
And the guards tackled him.
They dragged him away, silent and wide-eyed.
That night, through the rusted bars, she spoke again.
"You're not normal," she said.
Her voice was quiet, but the words cut.
"I know," he answered.
"You're not a slave, either."
He looked up.
Her gaze met his.
Not cold. Not warm.
Just searching.
"You're a riddle the world's trying to solve," she whispered.
"And I'm just here to see if you survive the answer."
On the seventh day, they came for him again.
Two guards. No explanation. No threats.
Just nods. Shackles. A silent escort.
They led him beneath Blackstone — deeper than the slave pens, past rusted gates and dead torches.
The air turned cold.
The walls sweated.
Everything smelled like old blood and failed fire.
At the end of the tunnel:
A door.
Behind it:
A pit.
Black sand.
Faded stains.
No crowd.
No rules.
Just a man.
Another prisoner — lean, coiled, armed with jagged blades and eyes that didn't match.
A killer.
The gate slammed shut.
The man lunged.
Eighty-Eight moved without thinking.
He dodged on instinct. His body remembered something his mind didn't —
Spacing. Rhythm. Flow.
A game.
A life that no longer existed.
Steel kissed his cheek.
He staggered. Recovered.
And then—
BOOM.
The mark flared.
No light. No fire.
Just a pulse — violet, hungry, wrong.
The attacker froze.
His shadow twitched.
Pulled.
It peeled from his feet like oil separating from water.
It moved on its own.
The man screamed — raw, primal.
He collapsed, thrashing.
And his shadow… tried to run.
Eighty-Eight dropped to his knees.
His breath came out as smoke.
His veins throbbed like drumbeats in the Void.
And in that pit of silence—
There was no voice.
No thought.
Only a presence.
Feed me.