The tattoo burned that night.
Not the kind of burn that makes you pull away—more like a coal under the skin, waiting for a breath to turn it into a flame. Every time the house creaked, the mark pulsed. Every time a draft slid through the gaps in the door, the lines crawled a finger's width toward my wrist and then retreated, as if testing how much of me it owned.
Everybody else slept the way poor people sleep: hard, quiet, and close together to outvote the cold. Klaus snored like a disciplined bear. Ragnar dreamed out loud in weapon noises. Kayra's breath was the soft part of winter—silent and stubborn.
I got up.
The floor was cold enough to teach lessons. The hearth held last embers; someone had been careful with wood, which is how you can tell a house is honest and broke. I put on a cloak that once had pride and knelt on the rug with the pattern worn off by seasons of being forgiven.
"Hey, kiddo," Lucifer whispered, voice like warm fingers on a frost window. "You going to scratch it or feed it?"
"Both sounded stupid," I murmured. "Feeding wins by a hair."
"Good choice." He sounded pleased by other people's pain in the same way a surgeon is. "You'll need a core."
I set Kayra's basket beside me. We'd come home with more than herbs—she'd been quiet about it, but I'd noticed the way she kept the handle near her body like a secret. I dug under dried stalks until my fingers met something that didn't belong to plants: a fingernail-sized shard, black with a faint red pulse deep inside, like a heart practicing.
"You saw it too," I said.
"Your sister collects hope the way other people collect coins." Lucifer hummed. "Cracked goblin core. Nothing fancy. A good first meal."
I held it on my palm and let the Eyes of Nihility open.
It's not really opening your eyes. It's admitting the world has more eyes than you do and letting them look through you. Mana veins lifted out of the air in thin filaments—threads stretched from ember to stone, from stone to door, from door to the sleeping weight of my family. The core bled a slow, steady rhythm: thum… thum… thum… tired, but proud.
"Breathe with it," Lucifer murmured. "In on the little heart. Out into the mark."
I matched the rhythm. The house fell away one comfort at a time—the smell of smoke, the ache in my ribs, the stiff cloak—and then nothing fell away at all; it simply went patient.
The tattoo warmed, the lines brightening like ink discovering it can glow. The sigil near my wrist—in the shape of Shadow's name—tightened and loosened with my lungs. The faint violet shimmer became a thread that slid down my palm, looped around the shard, and drank.
It wasn't dramatic. That was the worst part. I expected thunder or a hymn. What I got was the precise satisfaction of a lock turning.
"Feel that?" Lucifer asked.
"Like a second pulse."
"That is the first rule," he said softly. "Cores don't give you strength. They teach you how to hear it."
"I thought you said we were feeding the mark."
"We are. But it will never stop being yours, if you claim it."
The shard dimmed. Not completely—just enough to become honest about what it had left. The mark's lines spread a little farther up my forearm, thin as spider thread, careful and sure. Cold slid through me, not hunting heat but replacing it with something that agreed to be measured.
A sound came from the corner: a rat trying to be polite. It put a whisker against the door frame and reevaluated its life choices.
"Don't," I told it.
It ignored me, which is a rat's gift to the world.
"Fine," I said, and reached for a splinter of wood to pry at the lid of Kayra's empty jar. The splinter pushed too deep under my nail, and pain rang like a bell.
"Language," I hissed at the universe.
"Useful," Lucifer noted with academic interest. "Pain is a brighter color with your new eyes."
Blood welled. Not much. Enough to count. The tattoo flared in answer: a soft, hungry exhale from a mouth the world didn't admit existed.
"Mercy or Ruin?" I asked quietly.
"Your choice," Lucifer said, too calm. "Both are practice."
I lifted the tiny vial the witch had given me—amber, the kind of glass that remembers fire—and let a single drop land on the mark. The runes warmed. I concentrated and turned the sequence forward—letters like hooks leaning right.
Mercy moved.
Heat ran up my arm, gentle and matter-of-fact, and the torn nail sealed with the professionalism of a good clerk. The ache softened, then filed itself under Not Urgent.
"Again," Lucifer murmured.
I breathed, turned the sequence backward, carefully—hooks leaning left—feeling the mark resist, then obey.
Ruin is not dramatic either. It doesn't snarl. It simplifies. The ember field of my body—the little brightnesses that the Eyes of Nihility saw like stars—drew a hair's breadth closer to the tattoo and then settled, a fraction dimmer. A cold spot bloomed around the cut and turned it into a ledger entry.
The rat gave the door another try. Rats don't read ledgers.
"I could…" I didn't finish.
"You could," Lucifer agreed, and let me hang there. "If you do, do it quickly. Mercy is clean. Ruin is honest."
I set my hand near the floor, palm open. The rat sniffed. Its little heart was loud in my head now: a skittish drummer. When it came close enough for the world to call it a choice, I brushed two fingers along the mark and touched its back.
The mark took. The rat stiffened, shivered, and lay down like a candle deciding. Its breath went out and changed its mind about coming back. Heat flowed into me in a thin line, and the splinter ache vanished completely—so did the small cold from Ruin. Balance, paid in coins neither of us could spend twice.
I sat there a while, the kind of while that needs a name. The ember in the hearth cracked. A distant dog complained to the moon about taxes.
"You're shaking," Lucifer observed softly.
"I'm thinking about being something I don't want to be," I said.
"Then don't," he said, almost tender. "Learn to be precise instead."
The core shard stopped pulsing. The mark quieted, lines faint again, but farther than before. I wiped my fingers, wrapped the shard in cloth, and tucked it back where Kayra had hidden it. She'd pretend not to know I'd found it; I'd pretend not to know she'd seen me use it. That's family.
I lay down carefully and let sleep inspect me for weapons.
Dawn came in cold strips. Klaus woke the way commanders stand—upright and already judging the day for weaknesses. Ragnar rolled off his straw like a boulder changing careers. Kayra poured water that remembered a glacier.
"Training," Klaus said.
"Breakfast?" I asked hopefully.
"Training," he repeated. "You can eat once you stop holding the scythe like a fishing mistake."
We walked to the bare strip of earth behind the house where nothing lived because we needed it to not. Frost crackled underfoot. The river off to the right wore its armor and pretended to be a road. Our father would have stood where Klaus stood, once; the ground held that memory with uncomplicated grief.
Klaus set a wrapped bundle on a stump and unrolled it with the reverence of a priest and the practicality of a farmer. Steel winked in the gray light.
"Your shadow gave you a shape," he said, handing me a pole with a curved blade my size. "Make it a tool."
The scythe was heavier than the ghost that had flickered in the witch's hut, and lighter than regret. The haft fit against my palm like it had tested all the other hands and chosen mine on effort.
"Stance," Klaus said. "Feet—shoulder, not wider. Elbows—soft. You don't swing a scythe; you draw it. If you hack, you die. If you reach, you slip. If you commit, you kill."
Ragnar spun his katana behind him with the grace of a man picking a fight with his own reflection. "Or you could just do this," he said, and sliced the air so precisely the cold leaked out.
"Don't listen to him," Klaus said without looking. "He lives in a poem."
We started with breath. Then with steps. Then with what Klaus called Small Deaths—exercises that killed bad habits, one at a time. The scythe bit the straw dummy, then snagged; bit again, skated; bit a third time and finally followed the line I had asked for.
"Better," Klaus said, which meant I had survived long enough to make new mistakes.
"Again," he added, which meant the day had chosen its favorite word.
My Shadow watched from under the skin. I could feel her attention like cold fingers resting on glass—unseen, precise, judging me on criteria older than my language.
"Ask," Lucifer suggested, low. "It wants to be used by someone who knows its name."
I kept my breath even. "Shadow," I said in my head, which felt insane and turned out to be necessary. "Help me draw the line the world doesn't see."
A pulse through the tattoo—approval, or the courtesy of not laughing at me.
I stepped. Shadow Step caught for half a heartbeat—my foot fell into the scythe's future line instead of the present one and the strike slid as if it had been oiled by intent. The straw parted more cleanly; frost leapt and then forgot to land.
"See?" Ragnar said cheerfully. "He's cheating."
"I'm learning," I said, panting.
Klaus's mouth almost remembered how to smile. "Again."
We went until my muscles issued complaints in bureaucratic triplicate. We went until the mark cooled from coal to stone and the core shard in my pocket remembered it had a job. Then we went a little longer, because Klaus believed in the part of practice where you do the thing right once after you would have liked to stop.
"Now cut with yourself," he said at last.
"With—?"
"With your fear." He stepped aside and pointed to a wooden post that had held up a lean-to the winter we lost, then lost again. "Give it something it can't ignore."
I could feel Ragnar watching me with the specific love brothers reserve for moments that might be funny later or tragic now. Kayra had appeared at the edge of the yard with tea as if she'd grown there.
I took one breath for Mercy, one for Ruin, and then none for either. I let Shadow climb into my shoulders and down my arms, let the scythe's edge learn my pulse, let the Eyes of Nihility show me the post's grain, where it would rather separate than unite.
I drew the blade.
For a blink I wasn't in my body. I was where the cut would be a moment from now, which is… a nice place to visit.
The scythe hissed. The post whispered finally and became two truths instead of one lie. Frost dust lifted, glittered, and settled like applause that wasn't sure it was allowed.
Klaus nodded. Ragnar whooped. Kayra's lips shaped a small "oh."
"Name it," Lucifer murmured, pleased. "You'll use it better if the world knows what to call it."
"Shadow Slash," I said, and the cold kept the word for me.
"Good," Klaus said. "Eat."
We ate porridge that had heard rumors of oats. It was the best thing I'd tasted since dying.
When our bowls were honest again, Klaus tied his cloak. "Hunt," he said. "Small. We bring back meat, not pride. If you see pride, leave it for someone wealthy."
"Goblins?" Ragnar asked, hopeful.
"Wolves," Klaus said. "Goblins tomorrow."
Kayra handed me the wrapped core shard without looking at it directly. "You dropped this," she lied helpfully.
"Thanks," I said, and lied back with gratitude.
We set off along the river, three boys and a girl and a shadow that kept pace under everything. The sun came late to this part of the world and left early. The trees made a cathedral of the cold. Somewhere ahead, something with teeth practiced being hungry.
"Hey, kiddo," Lucifer whispered, fond as a fault. "Try not to die before lunchtime."
I touched the mark under my sleeve. It pulsed once—patient, hungry, awake.
I wasn't strong yet. I was F-rank, armed with practice, a cracked core, and a family that expected breakfast.
Good.
Power tastes better when you have a reason to chew.