Marked

It wasn’t the first time Mara had killed, but it was the first time she felt pleasure— and hated herself for it.

For so long, the kills had been empty ritual: the body moving without the soul, numbness seeping through every crevice of her conscience. Then, for one terrible heartbeat, she was alive again. But the thrill didn’t feel like hers. It moved through her like borrowed fire—sweet as sin, hollow as worship.

Warm blood clung to her skin like memory. Each hunt was an echo, every stain a tally etched deeper into her soul. The air thrummed with the copper-sweet tang along the blade’s edge. Blood gathered at the tip, then fell slow and deliberate, as if time itself were measuring her. Bodies lay in heaps, faceless, mouths sealed as though the world itself had been sewn shut.

She counted. One. Two. Three. Each drop struck like a bell.

Another challenger who mistook themselves for her equal. Another throat opened too easily. The blade hung heavy, not from fatigue but from hunger unmet.

She told herself they were all the same, that none of them ever mattered.

Then came one that did. The key.

The little girl couldn’t have been more than ten—barefoot, rose streaked across her cheeks. Her emerald eyes were impossibly steady. Was she even real?

Something in that gaze snagged at Mara, familiar, almost remembered, like a reflection glimpsed in dark glass. A rush of the past that she wanted to keep hidden in the dark. No, it must be silenced.

She didn’t scream when the blade rose—only watched, wide-eyed and unblinking, as if she knew something Mara didn’t.

The key is always taken in blood.

That was what they’d taught the faithful: one death, the right one, would open the gate. And when Mara saw the faint shimmer inside the child’s gaze—something bright and terribly pure—her pulse quickened. The glow pulled her close, beautiful and terrible, a quiet terror that seemed to know her name.

Somewhere beneath the rising certainty, a smaller voice begged her to stop.

She hesitated.

For the first time in years, her hands trembled. She saw herself reflected in the girl’s emerald eyes—hungry, cruel, terrified. She could still step back. She could still choose.

The bigger voice beckoned her forward, whispering purpose. Power.

Her one reason for killing. There was no choice.

The sound the child made when the blade found her wasn’t a scream—only a soft, stunned breath. The air leaving a body that hadn’t yet learned to beg. Utterly defenseless. Utterly alone.

The warmth bloomed in Mara’s chest like revelation. Something animal and bright answered in her, an obscene clarity. Watching something so unspoiled fail to resist tightened her like a prayer; the control of it felt holy, and the holiness tasted like triumph.

For one terrible moment, she felt divine.

Then the holiness curdled—turned to decay, to something warm and mortal, rotting from within. The light went out of her, and the small body folded to the ground like fragile glass breaking. Her emerald eyes fell into black obsidian.

A glimmer lifted from the girl’s skin, faint and trembling, like dust caught in dawnlight. For a heartbeat, Mara thought she saw it reach for her before it vanished. The space it left felt unbearable. Her chest hollowed; her throat went unbearably dry, as if something precious had been torn from her and flung into the dark.

For the first time in centuries, she understood what she’d taken—not victory, but breath. Being itself.

Her hand shook. She wanted to weep. She wanted to scream.

Instead, she cleaned the blade. The blood came off easily. The guilt did not.

The silence that followed was worse than any cry. It wasn’t peace. It was the echoing emptiness they had carved inside her, and she hated herself for it.

But she had finally done it. Made the sacrifice they demanded.

Mara steadied her grip. She had now earned her ascension. Hadn’t she?

They had promised the faithful would be remade in light. Every kill a step.

Each drop of blood, a vow.

Yet her chest still ached hollow. Warmth and cold warred beneath her skin; she couldn’t tell which side she fought for. The hunts blurred together—endless, nameless. She was executioner, omen, shadow. Trained, perfected, emptied.

How many more?

How much more?

Her knees struck the wet ground. Palms opened upward—not to beg, but to understand. I have given everything. What remains?

The ground trembled. A crack split before her, bleeding frost and fire. From the rift, a door rose—towering, threaded with sapphire light. Its surface breathed a rigid cold that seared her lungs. Carvings crawled across it: vines that pulsed like arteries, eyes that opened and closed in the iron scrolls. A tremor passed through her ribs, as if the world had borrowed her heartbeat.

Letters stirred inside the sapphire light, embering to life. Syllables uncoiled into a voice that was not a voice. Hail the conquering hero.

The words struck like both benediction and sentence. Light sighed along the seam where the door met itself.

For a moment, she saw figures behind the frost, radiant silhouettes draped in flowing light. Their faces shone like carved alabaster, serene, almost divine. Music rose, too sweet to bear, voices in perfect harmony.

This was the promise. The end of the path. Ascension—so close.

The frost started to melt, and the shapes grew clearer. Their faces twisted beneath monstrous masks. Velvet gowns and jeweled coats swept through pools of blood. Their laughter rang brittle and high—the sound of a feast held long after the guests had rotted.

Was this the glory she’d bled for?

Then, with a twitch, as if the scene itself had flinched, the figures were unmasked and radiant once more, dancing in light too pure to bear.

Had she gone mad?

The vision cleared. Only the door remained.

And then she saw it: a symbol burning faintly across the surface, pulsing as if alive. Not a lock. Not a map. What was it?

The door waited, veins glowing in rhythm with her chest, as though demanding it.

Her breath caught. A key. Direction flickered through the hollow ache. Not release—not yet—something more.

Wasn’t the girl the key?

A thought rose, unbidden. Soft as breath, sharp as command. The key that devours. She couldn’t tell if the words were memory, madness, or her own voice turned against her.

The floor of light seemed to tilt toward her. She took one step, then another. The metal glint of the blade gleamed too bright, too clean. She wanted to run. She wanted to kneel. She wanted—God help her—to belong.

She reached for the door, and light erupted across her wrist. A mark coiled there, the same symbol from the door, searing white-hot, alive beneath her skin.

For one breath, she almost welcomed it. The burn felt like recognition, like coming home.

Then the pain deepened. The light did not bless; it branded. She cried out, but the brilliance devoured her voice.

The symbol on the door blazed—the same glow she’d seen behind the child’s eyes.

Understanding came slow, cruel. The girl had never been the key. She had. Her blood and faith and hunger, every act had been leading here. She wasn’t ascending; she was opening the door.

The masked figures appeared again, no longer dancing, but crawling. Their masks writhed, spitting into snarls; painted eyes forced open, fangs pushing through skin that was no longer theirs. Their tongues lashed for blood, but some unseen force dragged them back toward the beyond.

And what waited beyond wasn’t light at all.

It was hunger, vast and patient, reaching back through her.

She had given herself to be devoured.

Silence fell. The world folded in on itself.

For a heartbeat, she thought she heard her own laughter break the silence—young, soft, distant, and wrong. Or perhaps, it was a little girl’s spell of laughter.

Mara gasped, the air stabbing cold into her lungs as light shattered around her. Her palms were empty—no blade, no frost.

The room held its breath. Nothing moved. The air still throbbed with the scent of copper.

Perhaps it was only a dream.

But the dream had teeth.

And when she woke, the mark was still.