The first thing I felt wasn't pain. It was the cold.
It was a cold that didn't just sit on my skin; it seeped into my bones, heavy and damp, like I had been carved out of ice and left to melt on the jagged stones of the street. My eyes snapped open, but for a long moment, the world was nothing but a blur of gray shadows and the rhythmic slap-slap-slap of rain hitting the pavement.
I tried to move, but my limbs felt like lead weights. My fingers twitched, scraping against the rough cobblestones. I expected a memory to surface—a name, a face, a reason for why I was lying in a gutter in the middle of a storm—but there was nothing.
When I searched my mind, I didn't find a history. I found a void. A vast, silent white room where my identity should have been.
Who am I?
The question echoed in the emptiness of my skull, bringing a sharp, stabbing ache behind my eyes. I rolled onto my side, gasping as the freezing water from a nearby puddle soaked into my thin, tattered clothes.
Lifting my hands, I stared at them through the gloom. They were pale, trembling, and—most importantly—blank. In the distance, through the haze of the rain, I could see people walking under glowing umbrellas. Even from here, I could see the faint, ethereal light shimmering from their wrists or their foreheads.
The Marks. I didn't know how I knew what they were, but I did. In this world, the light told you who you were. A golden glow on the fingers meant a Master Chef. A sharp blue light on the temple meant a Scholar. Everyone had a "Dream Trace"—a divine sign that they were destined for success.
I looked back at my own wrists. Gray. Dull. Empty.
A sob caught in my throat, but no tears came. I wasn't just lost; I was a "Blank." A girl without a dream in a world that only spoke the language of destiny.
"Well, well. Look what the storm washed in."
The voice was like the sound of grinding stones. I froze.
A pair of heavy, mud-caked leather boots came into my field of vision. I looked up, squinting against the rain. A man stood over me, shielded by a large, dark umbrella. He was broad-shouldered, wearing a coat that looked expensive but smelled of stale tobacco and grease.
He didn't look at me with pity. He looked at me the way a merchant looks at a piece of discarded furniture that might still have some use.
"No Mark," he murmured, leaning down. He grabbed my chin with a rough, calloused hand, forcing me to look at him. His own wrist glowed with a faint, sickly yellow light—the mark of a 'Trader.' "A genuine Blank. Haven't seen one of those in the slums for years. Usually, your kind is cleared out before the sun rises."
"Where..." My voice was a broken whisper, my throat feeling like it was full of glass. "Where am I? Who... who are you?"
The man chuckled, a dark, vibrating sound. "Who I am doesn't matter, little bird. What matters is who you are. And right now? You're nobody. You're a ghost with a heartbeat."
He let go of my chin, and my head dropped back toward the wet stones. He started to turn away, but then he paused. He looked at the way I was shivering, the way I was staring at the glowing lights of the city in the distance—the lights of people who had a path, a goal, a future.
"You want to stay here and drown in an inch of water?" he asked, not looking back. "Or do you want to be useful? I have a shop. It needs cleaning. It needs someone who doesn't have a 'Dream' to get in the way of hard, dirty work. You come with me, you get a dry floor and a crust of bread. You stay here... well, the Night Watch doesn't like Blanks cluttering up the scenery."
I looked at the dark alleyways, then back at the man. I had no name. I had no memories. I had no "Mark" to tell me I would ever be good at anything.
In a world where everyone was born to be something, I was born from the rain to be nothing.
I reached out a trembling hand and grabbed the hem of his heavy coat.
"I'll go," I whispered.
He didn't offer a hand to help me up. He just started walking, his yellow mark flickering in the dark. I forced my frozen muscles to move, dragging myself up from the gutter. Every step felt like a battle against gravity.
As we walked, I saw a girl about my age through a shop window. She was holding a needle, and her hands were glowing with a soft pink light. She moved with such grace, such confidence. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was a Designer. She was destined for greatness.
I looked down at my own shaking, muddy hands.
The Girl Without a Dream, I thought. The title felt like a curse, a heavy iron chain wrapped around my soul.
I didn't know it then, but the man leading me into the shadows wasn't my savior. He was the first person who would teach me just how cruel the world is to those who have to work for what others are given by fate.
But as we turned the corner into the deep, dark heart of the city, a tiny, flickering spark ignited in the back of my mind. It wasn't a "Mark." It wasn't a gift from the gods.
It was the cold, hard realization that if the world didn't give me a dream... I would have to steal one.