The chamber was dark, too quiet for a man who had spent weeks surrounded by the clamor of chains, coughing prisoners, and the stink of rot. Silence pressed in on Elias like a weight. He lay on the narrow bed, hands folded across his stomach, eyes fixed on the beams overhead.
He should have been grateful. No iron on his wrists. No damp straw to sleep on. A guard posted at the door, yes, but only one. That alone marked him as something other than a prisoner. And yet sleep eluded him.
Because silence gave space for whispers—the ones from outside and the ones inside his head.
He heard again the mutterings of knights in the hall. Foreigner. Spy. Lucky bastard. He remembered Garran's sneer at supper, the knight's words laced with venom: Our lord entertains beggars now?
Elias clenched his teeth. He had survived by wit and tongue alone, but wit was a fragile shield. One slip, one inconsistency in his story, and the mercy of Lord Hadrien would vanish.
He rolled onto his side, determined to force rest. And that was when the burning started.
At first, it was a faint prickle under his sleeve, like the irritation of an insect bite. He scratched absentmindedly, muttering, "Not tonight, curse it."
But the itch grew sharper, hotter. Fire crawled along his veins, converging on the scar etched into his forearm—the mark. Elias hissed and tugged at his sleeve, dragging the fabric back to expose it.
The lines carved into his flesh glowed faintly, pulsing with a light that had no right to exist.
"No, no, no—" He pressed his palm against it, as if smothering the glow might extinguish it.
It didn't.
The pain spiked, blinding white, and then came the voices.
Not voices like men. They were fractured, metallic, echoing as though spoken through stone. Elias staggered upright, bracing himself on the wall.
The stone drinks blood.
His breath caught.
The mark endures.
He shook his head violently, muttering, "Shut up. You're not real."
Chains will break.
And then his sight wasn't his own.
The chamber dissolved. In its place, a field of fire stretched to the horizon, the air choked with ash. Shadows writhed like serpents, snapping chains as thick as towers. A figure stood amidst the chaos, faceless yet watching him with unbearable intent.
Elias fell to his knees, clutching his head. "No! Leave me alone!"
The figure extended a hand, and in the roar of flame came one last whisper:
The chained soul must unbind… or be broken.
The vision shattered. Elias was back in his chamber, gasping, sweat pouring down his back. The mark still glowed, faint but relentless, before slowly dimming back into scar tissue.
He stared at it, chest heaving. His throat felt raw, his palms damp.
Then the absurdity struck him—his outburst, the words he had shouted without thinking. By the Radiant's bone.
He sat back, panting, and laughed bitterly. He had heard the phrase first in the pits, shouted by some half-dead wretch when the guards came with whips. Since then, he had heard knights and servants alike spit it in frustration. And now here he was, adopting it as though it were his own.
A curse tied to Orravia's holiest faith—the Radiant, the so-called light of men. People here invoked his "bones" in anger, his "blessing" in prayer, his "wrath" in judgment.
Elias clenched his sleeve over the scar. The irony burned deeper than the mark itself. He was swearing by their god while carrying something they would call blasphemy. If the priests of the Radiant ever saw what lay on his arm, they wouldn't hesitate to name him heretic and feed him to the flames.
"Perfect," Elias muttered, still trembling. "Borrowing curses from people who'd kill me for existing. Brilliant move, Elias. Truly brilliant."
He slumped back onto the bed, dragging the sleeve down to cover the scar.
The whispers were gone. The mark was quiet again. But the fear lingered, heavy and sour in his gut.
He closed his eyes and forced his breathing to steady. No one could know. Not Kael. Not Lord Hadrien. Not the watchful Silven Marrow with his probing eyes.
Especially not the Church.
If anyone saw this, his story would crumble. His careful survival would turn to ash. He would be branded not Elias of Nowhere, but Elias the Cursed.
He turned on his side and pressed his arm against the mattress, as though the weight might bury the secret deeper.
"No one must see," he whispered to himself. "Not yet. Not ever, if I can help it."
But in the silence, he could not shake the truth: something had chosen him. Fate, gods, or demons—it didn't matter. The mark was no scar. It was a claim.
And Elias, curse-spewing, lie-spinning, survival-scraping Elias, had no idea if it would save him or damn him.