The moment the fragment sank into my palm, the desert went silent.
No wind. No heartbeat.
Just a trembling hum spreading through my bones like liquid fire.
I stumbled back, clutching my hand. The black shard had melted into my skin, a glowing sigil pulsing faintly in the center of my palm—like a heart that wasn't mine.
"Who dares wake what was sealed?"
The voice wasn't heard—it was felt, sliding behind my ribs like breathless laughter.
I spun around. The temple stood empty, half-swallowed by the dunes, its cracked pillars gleaming in the dying sun. Shadows twisted across the walls, lengthening into shapes that didn't belong to this world.
"Show yourself," I whispered. My voice sounded smaller than I meant.
From the far corridor, a soft scraping answered. Then the echo of bare feet.
Someone—or something—was walking toward me.
A man stepped from the shadows, shirtless beneath a torn cloak, his body marked by the same sigil that now burned on my palm. His eyes glowed faintly blue, calm and cruel all at once.
He wasn't human. I knew it instantly.
"You touched it," he said. Not a question—an accusation.
"It called to me," I replied.
He studied me like a hunter studying a wounded animal.
"That fragment belonged to the god of dusk. Now it belongs to you. That makes you his vessel… or his curse."
The hum beneath my skin flared. Heat spread up my arm, across my neck, reaching my lips like a fever.
"I don't want to be anyone's curse," I said.
"Then you shouldn't have bled for it."
His voice darkened. "Every fragment chooses a price. It doesn't ask permission."
He came closer. The air around him shimmered, bending light. The scent of rain and ash clung to him. I could feel the pulse of the fragment reacting to his presence—as if recognizing him.
"Who are you?" I managed.
He tilted his head. "Once, I was the guardian of the temple you just desecrated. Now, I'm what's left when duty dies."
He lifted a hand toward my palm. The sigil blazed bright, and pain exploded through me. My knees buckled. He caught me before I hit the ground, his touch cold but electric. The fragment's energy surged between us, bright enough to burn the air.
"Let go," I gasped.
"If I do, you'll die."
"Then maybe I should."
His eyes softened—for a moment, something human flickered there. Then he released me, and I collapsed onto the sand. My breath came in ragged bursts.
The world tilted, and I saw visions—blinding flashes of another time:
—A woman in golden armor kneeling before a god.
—A storm of shattered temples.
—A promise whispered against blood-wet lips: "Find the other fragments, and you will remember who you were."
When I opened my eyes again, night had fallen. The guardian knelt beside a dying fire, watching me silently.
"You saw them," he said.
"The fragments?"
He nodded once. "There are six. Yours is the first. Together, they make the Immortal Core. Whoever gathers them will become what the gods once were."
"And you want them?" I asked.
"I want nothing," he said quietly. "But they'll come for you—the priests, the collectors, the dead who forgot they were dead. You've awakened a hunger older than creation."
The fire cracked. Shadows moved like living things across the temple floor.
I studied him through the flickering light. "You could have killed me when I touched it. Why didn't you?"
He didn't answer right away. Then, softly: "Because you reminded me of her."
"Who?"
He looked at me, eyes burning with something that wasn't grief—but close. "The goddess this temple was built for. She carried that same defiance. She died because of it."
Silence stretched between us, thick and strange.
The fragment hummed again, and I realized it responded not just to power—but to emotion. When he looked at me, the sigil on my skin glowed brighter.
I turned away. "I'm leaving at dawn. I'll find the others before they find me."
"You can't control it yet," he warned.
"Then teach me."
That startled him. "You're asking a dead man to train you in surviving the living?"
"I'm asking the only one who hasn't tried to kill me yet."
His mouth curved in something almost like a smile. "You'll regret that."
Maybe I would. But regret had never stopped me before.
We didn't sleep.
He showed me how to still the fragment's pulse, how to breathe through the burning, how to summon the glow without letting it devour me. Each lesson cost blood. Each success made the temple tremble, as though it remembered his old power and resented me for stealing it.
When exhaustion blurred my sight, he reached out, brushing his fingers against my wrist. The touch steadied me—and sparked something far more dangerous.
The fragment flared between us, bright as a small sun. For one suspended heartbeat, our thoughts weren't separate. I saw his memories, felt his shame, his centuries of loneliness. And in return, he saw my hunger—my need for power, for redemption, for something more than being a thief scorned by mortals.
We broke apart, breathless. The sigil dimmed.
"What was that?" I whispered.
"Resonance," he said. "When two fragments recognize each other. Even if only one still lives."
I frowned. "You have one too?"
He didn't answer—but the faint glow on his chest told me enough.
Before dawn, the desert wind rose again. He stood by the broken gate, staring toward the horizon.
"They'll come soon," he said. "The Order of the Pale Flame. They guard the remaining fragments. They don't forgive thieves."
"I'm not afraid of priests."
"You should be afraid of what they serve."
The first light spilled across the dunes, painting him in gold. For a moment, he looked less like a ghost and more like a man.
I stepped beside him. "If I'm going to die, I want it to be for something worth dying for."
He turned to me. "Then don't die yet."
He reached into his cloak and pressed a small obsidian shard into my hand—smooth, carved with ancient runes.
"This will mask your aura. For a while."
Our fingers brushed, and the air thickened again.
I didn't pull away.
We left the temple as the sun climbed. The ruins shrank behind us until they were only scars on the horizon. The silence between us wasn't empty—it was charged, humming with the energy of two people bound by something neither understood.
By midday, the first signs of pursuit appeared: black-winged symbols burned into the sand, tracking sigils that writhed like serpents.
He saw them too. "They've marked you already."
"How long do we have?"
"Until nightfall. Maybe less."
He reached for his blade, ancient and dull, etched with the same glyphs as my palm.
"Stay close," he said.
I laughed once, bitter. "Where else would I go?"
His smile was almost sad. "Anywhere that isn't beside me."
By sunset, the dunes trembled under the march of something unseen. The horizon darkened—not with clouds, but with shapes. Cloaked figures walking through the sand without footprints, their eyes burning white through the dusk.
The Order had found us.
He drew his sword. "You can still run."
"No," I said. "This is where I stop being afraid."
The fragment inside me flared like a heartbeat breaking open.
I felt the ancient power rise again—the same hunger that once destroyed temples. And this time, I didn't fight it.
The first of the priests raised his hand, chanting in a language of flame. The sand turned to glass where his words touched. I stepped forward, lifted my marked palm, and whispered back in the same forgotten tongue.
Light exploded between us.
The world vanished into white.
When the light died, I stood alone.
The priests were gone—reduced to ash spiraling into the wind. The guardian lay motionless beside me, his body cracked with light like a shattered statue.
I dropped to my knees. "No… no, not you."
His eyes flickered open, faint and distant.
"You're stronger than I thought," he murmured. "Too strong."
"Don't talk," I said. "We can—"
He smiled faintly. "Find the next fragment. In the ruins of Tareth… beneath the sea of bones. That's where it sleeps."
And then he was gone—his body dissolving into dust, leaving only a single glowing feather where his heart had been.
I picked it up with shaking hands.
The sigil on my palm flared again, brighter than ever.
The wind whispered through the dunes, carrying his last words like a curse.
"Every fragment remembers its owner… and every owner forgets what it means to be human."