(Next day)
Veritus doesn't remember birthdays. Or names. Or the way your hands used to tremble when they held someone else's. But it remembers silence. And bruises. And things people tried to bury.
I wake again to the radiator. Still alive, still here.
But something's different.
The mark on my back— my Wraithmark— is buzzing. Not just warm this time. Alive. Like it's reacting to something close. Or something coming.
I sit up slowly, and for a moment… I can't tell if I'm in my flat, or somewhere I used to be. The floor's the same. The air smells like rust. But the light—
It's red. Dull. Bleeding in through the window like a sunset stuck on repeat.
June 3
Location: Veritus — Sector 7 (still?)
Wraithmark: Active in sleep?
New symptom: blurred wake/dream boundary.
Feeling: Not alone.
I don't remember writing half of yesterday's journal. The part about the figure in the alley — it feels thin, like someone else's handwriting copied mine.
Still, I write. I have to write.
I dress, slower this time. My hands shake when I knot the scarf. Like the part of me that knows what's coming is trying to stay hidden.
Then I see it — at the door.
A note.
Slipped through the crack sometime during the night. No handwriting. Just a pressed piece of old paper, folded once.
"You're not the only one.
-Sector 9. Midnight.
No Remnants. No marks. Come alone."
My heart stutters.
No one should know what I am. What I've become. I've made sure of that.
So how did they know?
And why now?
I spend the day wandering. Not for answers — I won't find those in daylight — but for signs. Echoes/Remnants whatever you call it. Anything that feels out of place.
Veritus offers nothing but gray and noise. Faint Traces cling to bus stops and storefronts — panic from someone who missed the last train, longing from a girl who stared too long at an empty seat. But nothing sharp. Nothing active.
Until I pass the underpass again.
The one from yesterday.
And the chalk mark is gone.
Wiped clean.
Not faded — removed.
That's when I hear it: footsteps. But not around me — beneath me.
I kneel, palm against the stone floor.
And feel a pulse.
It's not my own.
Something's buried here. Something still beating.
A whisper brushes the back of my neck, and it isn't mine.
"He's starting to hear us now."
I jerk back quickly, breath ragged. Nothing. No one there.
But I know that voice.
It was mine. From another time. A memory echoing forward.
Back at the flat, I pace. Walls too tight. Shadows too thick.
I shouldn't go to Sector 9.
But I have to.
Not just because I'm curious.
Because for the first time since this curse started — someone remembered me first.
Midnight in Sector 9 isn't quiet.
It pretends to be — all dim lights and hollow alleys, the scent of oil and wilted neon — but the air buzzes. Like the city's trying to whisper something behind your back.
I've only been here twice before. Once to trace an remnant that ended in a dead-end memory loop. The other time… I don't remember. Just a vague feeling of panic and rain-soaked clothes.
Tonight, it's dry. Too dry. Even the fog feels thin, like it's scared to settle here.
I walk without my scarf. Without my chalk. Without anything that might mark me as a Wraithbinder. Just as the note instructed.
Still, my skin hums. My Wraithmark aches under my shirt like it wants to wake up and scream.
"No Echoes. No marks."
I keep repeating it in my head like a shield.
But the deeper I go into Sector 9, the more that phrase starts to sound like a threat.
The location is a parking structure. Half-collapsed, eaten by vines that don't belong in this part of the city. I count the levels as I ascend.
One.
Two.
Three.
At the fourth floor, I see it.
A circle of faint light — not electric, not flame. Just… present.
Like a memory of fire.
A figure stands in its center.
Cloaked. Hooded. Hands gloved.
They don't turn when I approach, but they speak.
"I had a name once, too."
The voice is neither male nor female. Filtered. Deliberate. As if everything's pre planned.
"Then the Wraithmark took it."
I stop ten feet away. I can't see their face. I don't even try to.
"Why call me?"
The figure tilts their head. I hear the cloth shift.
"Because you're louder than you think."
"Your Echoes bleed into others. Your mark is unstable. Untrained. Dangerous."
I swallow, hard. "You knew about the girl at the station?"
The figure says nothing. Just raises a hand, and from it, a fragment forms.
A floating shard of memory — faint, flickering, like stained glass shaking in a storm.
It shows me. Standing in the alley from yesterday. But there's something off. My outline is distorted. Faint trails stretch from my shoulders like smoke.
"You leave pieces behind," the figure says.
"And someone is collecting them."
A pause.
Then they turn. A gloved hand points to the shadows behind the lot.
"You're not the only one who remembers what's been forgotten. But you may be the last who still knows what's real."
"They're watching you now."
"Be careful what you touch next."
Then — without a sound — the figure vanishes. Into the thin air.
No footsteps. No exit. Just gone.
I rush to the spot where they stood. Nothing.
But on the ground, something remains.
A symbol. Etched in dust.
Not mine. Not from any chalk I've used before.
A spiral… breaking open.
I don't know what it means.
But when I reach home that night, I draw it in the journal. Carefully.
Then I write beneath it:
Not alone.
Not safe.
Someone is binding me back.
And for the first time in weeks, I don't sleep.