The rain had not stopped since the previous night. It fell in slanted, icy sheets, washing the grime from the ruins but not the scent of blood that clung to them.
Ezra sat cross-legged beneath the hollow archway of a shattered mausoleum, his breath steady but shallow. A dim ember pulsed in the center of his chest — not of flame, but of something deeper, more alive. The mark on his palm glowed faintly through his damp wrappings, its veins spreading a little further each day, like black roots crawling toward his heart.
He had discovered, quite by accident, that when the mark drank from fallen foes, it didn't simply consume — it refined.
The energy of the dead became his. Their strength, their cultivation essence, their fragments of will — absorbed, filtered, and woven into his own being. But it left behind a mark on his skin: dark tattoos, faint at first, forming intricate patterns that told the story of what he had taken.
Tonight, the third had appeared.
He opened his eyes. A wisp of blue smoke rose from the corpse lying just beyond the doorway — a rogue cultivator who had tried to rob him only an hour ago.
The mark pulsed once… then went still.
Ezra exhaled, and the air shimmered faintly around him.
"Three fragments… and yet it feels incomplete."
"How much does this mark truly hunger?"
He didn't know what the mark truly was — a curse, a gift, or something between. All he knew was that it came alive in places heavy with death… and that it was growing bolder with each kill.
A faint sound broke his meditation — the distant crunch of boots over wet stone. He stilled immediately. The Black Spire was supposed to be deserted this far below, yet even the silence here had eyes.
Ezra rose, hand brushing the hilt of his short blade.
From the fog stepped three figures — cloaked, masked, and carrying torches that burned green with corpse-oil. Their robes bore the faint sigil of a serpent eating its own tail: the Ouro Sect, one of the lesser cults that thrived on forbidden corpse refinement.
"Another scavenger?" one sneered, voice distorted behind his mask.
Ezra said nothing. His fingers brushed against the mark on his hand — it burned faintly, eager.
The leader tilted his head. "You're not one of ours… and yet, you carry death's scent. Tell me, boy — where did you learn to draw essence from the dead?"
Ezra's silence was his answer. The torchlight reflected in his eyes, cold and calculating. He shifted his stance slightly — half-turned, not defensive, but ready.
"Kill him," the leader ordered.
The first cultist lunged. The mark flared. Ezra moved — not gracefully, not yet trained — but with instinct born from desperation and something darker. His hand caught the cultist's wrist mid-strike, and the sigil burned against flesh. A scream ripped through the rain-soaked air as black smoke poured from the man's body into Ezra's palm.
The other two stepped back in horror.
Ezra stood over the collapsing body, steam rising from his skin.
The tattoo on his forearm extended — curling upward, swallowing the light.
"You shouldn't have come here."
The second came at him; the third fled. Ezra struck, swift and silent — the blade flashing once, a whisper of steel. When it ended, only the storm spoke.
He wiped the blood from his face and looked toward the endless dark of the ruins. Somewhere above, the factions were stirring — clans, sects, cults, all clawing for dominance.
And beneath them, in the shadows, something new was forming — something born of the Spire itself.
He didn't have a name for it yet.
But one day, when he had mastered the mark and torn open the heavens — he would.