Kael awoke with a start. His hands were shaking, the faint lines of pale light beneath his skin pulsing in irregular patterns. Memories fluttered at the edge of his mind, some clear, some warped. Names he had known the enclave's children, Varen, even his own slipped like sand through fingers he could no longer feel.
He tried to recall the name of the child from the wall, the one whose soul had burned bright and pure, but it eluded him. A hollow ache settled in his chest, unfamiliar and unnerving.
The Sight whispered as if noticing his weakness, showing him fragments of lives that were not his own. Faces pressed into him some angry, some mournful, some gleeful. Each one carried a memory, and Kael felt himself stretching thin as he absorbed them, the boundaries of self fraying.
Varen approached quietly. "You slept too long," he said, eyes scanning the horizon. "The dead are not patient."
Kael nodded, swallowing. He could no longer tell if he remembered who he truly was or if he had begun to merge with the fragments of the souls he had consumed. Even as he fought the hunger, pieces of himself small, intimate things, laughter, smells, names—faded.
He walked among the walls, trying to ground himself in the living, but the Sight showed him a world layered atop itself. Past, present, and the echoes of the dead intertwined, and Kael realized that each soul he touched left a mark, and some of those marks were permanent.
By nightfall, he felt hollow. The hunger still waited, patient, but Kael understood another truth: the greater his power, the more he risked losing the self he fought to preserve. The cracks had formed, and though they were not yet fractures, the foundation trembled beneath him.
Kael stared at the darkened horizon, whispers brushing at the edges of his mind, and clenched his fists. Humanity was no longer a certainty; it was a choice.