On the seventh day, they came for him again.
No shouting. No threats. No explanations. Just two guards, nods exchanged in silence, shackles rattling like the bones of some long-dead beast. Their movements were precise, professional — a ritual more than punishment. And yet, the air hummed with intent, the weight of inevitability pressing down from the stone ceilings of Blackstone Keep.
Eighty-Eight rose, wrists raw and blistered, chest heaving beneath the iron bands. His breath misted in the cold air that seeped from the bowels of the Keep. There was no anger in his steps, only measured compliance — until the chains tugged, reminding him of the body he still carried, of the mind he could not yet reclaim.
They led him beneath Blackstone — deeper than the slave pens, past rusted gates that groaned like tortured souls, past dead torches whose shadows seemed to slither along the walls. The air thickened. Damp, cold, metallic, flavored with the ghost of old blood and failed fire. Even breathing was a negotiation with mortality here, lungs scraping against rot and ash.
At the end of the tunnel: a door.
Behind it: a pit.
Black sand stretched into shadows. Faded stains marked the floor like whispers of violence. There were no rules here, no audience, no hierarchy — only the man who waited. Lean, coiled, eyes mismatched and sharp, blades jagged enough to tear flesh with a glance. A killer, or something very close.
The gate slammed behind him with a finality that made the walls tremble. The sound echoed like a death knell in Eighty-Eight's chest.
And the man lunged.
Eighty-Eight moved without thinking. The body remembered what the mind had long since forgotten — spacing, rhythm, flow. A game. A life once lived, now half-buried beneath chains and rust. Steel kissed his cheek; pain seared, but he staggered and recovered, moving with the grace of instinct.
Then—BOOM.
The mark beneath his ribs flared. Not light. Not fire. Just pulse. Violet. Hungry. Wrong.
The attacker froze. His shadow writhed. Something pulled it, tugged it violently from its master. It peeled from his feet like oil separating from water, and in its movement, it seemed alive, as if it knew a world beyond the flesh.
The man screamed. Raw. Primal. Not at Eighty-Eight, but at the impossibility of what had just occurred. He collapsed, thrashing, the shadow clinging to him like a living thing desperate to escape its host.
Eighty-Eight dropped to his knees. Breath came out in thick plumes, heart hammering a rhythm like war drums in a hollow chest. Copper flooded his mouth. Veins throbbed beneath the skin, synced with the pulse of something vast, something hungry. His hands sank into the black sand — warm, humming, almost sentient.
And the jagged sigil beneath his ribs pulsed, not with pain, but with desire. As though it had been waiting for this moment, for the culmination of something older than chains, older than Blackstone, older even than him.
The world fell silent.
No screams. No footsteps. No orders. Only ash drifting like snow across the pit. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for what would come next.
He knelt alone, chest heaving, pulse bleeding through his limbs. And the man — his attacker — lay twisted in the sand, twitching. His shadow, detached and glimmering at the edges, quivered as if it had learned the taste of freedom.
Then, it came again.
The whisper.
"Feed me."
Not sound. Not thought. Hunger itself, coiled around the mark beneath his chest like smoke threading through cracks in stone.
Eighty-Eight dug his fingers into the sand. It shifted beneath him, no longer cold and inert. Hollow, almost sentient, as if something had fed and left, leaving behind only an echo of presence.
He rose slowly, trembling. His hands glowed not at all. Nothing had changed outwardly. But something inside had opened — like a sealed door now swinging freely, no hinges, no lock.
He turned to leave. And his shadow did not follow.
He froze. Looked down.
It was there, and yet not. The edges shimmered, dancing like fabric beneath water. And for a fleeting instant, he swore it had eyes — hungry, searching, calculating.
The gate groaned. Torchlight spilled into the chamber. A guard stepped in. Took one look at the twitching figure of the attacker — not Eighty-Eight — and froze.
"What in all the gods—"
Two more arrived, weapons drawn. Their aim was not at him, but at the man sprawled in the sand.
"Get him out of here," one barked. "Overseer wants him intact."
"And the other one?"
A guard jerked a chin toward Eighty-Eight. Silence stretched, taut as a blade drawn across stone.
"…Leave him," came the command.
And just like that, he was alone again.
That night, the cell was colder than any frost Kaia had ever endured in the Thornevale woods.
He curled into one corner, arms wrapped tight around his knees. Sweat and grime clung to his skin, but his body remembered nothing human anymore. The brand on his chest pulsed, faint but insistent — no light, no pain. Presence. A beast breathing in sync with him, waiting.
In the cell opposite, the beastkin woman sat silently. Golden eyes fixed on her twin bone knife, edges polished and glinting faintly in torchlight. Her movements were precise, deliberate, and almost ritualistic. She had hidden the blade well from the guards.
He finally spoke.
"You saw what happened."
"I smelled it," she replied, voice calm, crisp, like ice cracking underfoot.
"…Smelled it?"
"The Void," she said. "It doesn't shine. It spoils. You carry it like rot."
Eighty-Eight flinched.
"It's not supposed to awaken in someone like you."
"…Someone like me?"
Golden eyes locked on him, sharp, unreadable.
"You're not of this world. You're not Chosen. And yet… the Rift branded you?"
He said nothing. Just leaned back against the cold stone.
"None of this makes sense," he muttered.
She was quiet for a long moment, eyes reflecting the flicker of torches beyond the bars. Then:
"The man in the pit — did you kill him?"
"I don't think so," he said.
"Good," she replied. Not kindness. Not relief. Just fact. "…Not yet."
Far beneath Blackstone, in a hall of quiet gears and chains, the Overseer observed through iron grates, lips slick with anticipation and fear.
"It reacted?" he asked, voice low, wet with curiosity. "The mark?"
"Yes, Overseer," the guard responded. "No chanting. No sigils. Just pressure. The pit cracked. His opponent collapsed. Shadows moved."
"He didn't cast?"
"No, sir."
"Then he's not a caster. He's a vessel."
A pause. Thick and suffocating.
"Move him to Isolation. No more pit matches. No more triggers. We observe now."
That night, Eighty-Eight slept in chains. And he dreamed.
Glass halls shattered under moons that were not moons. Violet stars bled across a sky of obsidian night. Statues whispered in tongues not yet born, languages waiting for mortals to speak.
And in the echo of that unreal place, a single word drifted through him.
Riftborn.
He did not know what it meant.
But something in him exhaled — the stars themselves seemed to speak, whispering a name that had been lost, waiting to be reclaimed.
And deep beneath Blackstone, where shadows twisted and iron groaned, the sleeping marks of something older than men throbbed. The Void stirred. And it was patient.