A cold hollow feeling opened in David's chest. The world seemed to tilt on an axis that didn't involve the ground. The words were just there, attached to him now. Nascent Fiend. His balance left him. He reeled. A mental vertigo took hold.

  What did nascent even mean?

  The thought filled his head. He had a vague recollection of the word, from somewhere. It was a word that belonged to other conversations. It felt separate from his own vocabulary.

  His mind, a tool for load and stress, worked on it. Nascent. It meant something just starting—the very first bit. Before something was a thing, it was nascent. A one-day-old fetus was nascent. The first spark before the fire took. That was the whole shape of it. So the system was calling him a Fiend that was just getting going. A Fiend in its opening moments.

  Fiend.

  That word was a blank. An ugly, old noise. It felt heavy. It felt mean. It had no picture. It wasn't a type of creature he could look at and understand, like a warg or an imp. It was just a sound the system used to name the box he was now sitting inside. He knew the label on the box. He didn't know what was in the box. The not-knowing was a trapdoor under his feet.

  He opened his mouth. The air felt dense. He was going to have to say something. Something pointless. Mara was staring at him. All the color had drained from her face, leaving it pale and sharp. Her eyes were wide, but not with fright. With a clean, cold rage that had been building and was now a visible pressure. Her lips parted. She was a fraction of a second from speaking.

  Both of them were cut off.

  A blue rectangle of light appeared in the middle of David’s vision. It wasn't see-through. It was a solid, glowing slab, like a pane of blue glass had been welded to the air right in front of his face. It blocked everything—Mara’s furious face, the stark trees, the grey sky. At the exact same moment, from his immediate left, he heard Mara make a sound. It was a wet, choked gasp, as if the air had been violently forced from her lungs.

  [Your nature has changed]

  The words were just there, etched into the center of the blue. No details. No choices. A statement of fact. A receipt for a change he hadn't authorized. It hung there for a sliver of a second, cold and final.

  Then the pain arrived.

  It detonated behind his eyeballs. A hot, crushing pressure, as if two lumps of heated metal were swelling inside his skull, forcing his eyes forward in their sockets. Jagged wires of white fire shot back along the nerves, boring into the meat of his brain. A rough, animal grunt tore out of him. His legs, which had held him up through a plane crash and a small war, just quit. The muscles went slack. He dropped. His knees smashed into the hard, cold, bare earth of the dead clearing. The impact shuddered up his spine.

  Mara screamed.

  It was a short, ripped sound, like something tearing. It cut off into a wet, bubbling gurgle. He heard the heavy, limp thump of her body hitting the dirt right next to him. His own vision was swimming, flashing with red and black blotches from the pain in his head, but he managed to turn his face toward the noise.

  Mara was on the ground. Her body wasn't just still. It was convulsing. Her back arched hard, lifting her shoulders and heels off the dirt. Her arms and legs jerked in sharp, uncontrolled spasms. Her hands flew up and clamped over her eyes. And blood, shockingly dark, almost black, was already bubbling out from under her clenched fingers. It didn't seep. It flowed. It ran over her knuckles, down the backs of her hands, and soaked fast into the fabric of her jacket sleeves, spreading in large, dark stains.

  David was on his knees. The pain in his own skull was a white-hot drill bit focused right behind his eyes. But he could see her. And he could feel it. The thrall link between them, usually a faint, constant hum of connection, was now a wide-open channel. Her suffering poured through it. It was a flood of raw sensation that wasn't his own.

  Her agony was ten times worse than his.

  He knew this. He knew it as a clear, comparative fact inside the storm of shared pain. Where his hurt was a single, brutal point of torture, hers was her whole body and mind coming apart at once. Her pain was a tidal wave of noise and wrongness—a copper taste flooding his mouth, the smell of something electrical burning, a sickening spin in his head—that crashed into his awareness. It made the drill in his own skull pulse and swell, pushing his vision down to a narrow, blurry tunnel fringed with swimming darkness. She was drowning in it, and he was tied to her, feeling her sink.

  “David!” Theo’s voice was a shout, right beside his ear. A hand grabbed his shoulder, shook it. “David, get up! What’s wrong?”

  Corbin’s heavier boots stamped the ground, moving fast. “They’re hit! Something got them!” His voice wasn't a calm order. It was a bark of raw alarm. “Evans! On me! Face out! Jamie, get behind Rhea, now!”

  Evans moved instantly, his back slamming against Corbin’s. Rhea stepped sideways, putting herself between Jamie and the open clearing, her gaze scanning. Together, Corbin, Evans, and Rhea formed a tight, defensive ring around David and Mara on the ground, weapons and attention facing outward.

  “What got them? I didn’t see anything!” Evans’s voice was tense within the defensive ring.

  “Blood! Oh god, look at the blood!” Jamie’s voice cracked from within the circle. He wasn't moving. He was staring. “It’s coming from her eyes! Is it coming from his? Is it coming from his eyes too?”

  Rhea glanced back over her shoulder, her face tight. “Check his face. Is he bleeding too?” Her voice was clipped. A hand, not gentle, gripped David’s chin and turned his head. Fingers pressed near his eye socket. He felt a warm wetness. “He is. There’s blood. From his eyes. Both of them.”

  “It has to be an attack,” Harris said from where he stood just outside the defensive ring, his eyes darting between the trees and the two of them on the ground. “They were fine, then they weren’t. Something invisible is here. A toxin, a spell.”

  “I don’t see a target!” Corbin snarled, his gun sweeping the dead tree line, his finger on the trigger guard. “But it’s here! It has to be!”

  “They’re dying right in front of us!” Chloe’s voice broke through the defensive perimeter, high and desperate. She pushed past Evans, who tried to grab her arm and missed. She dropped to her knees in the dirt beside Mara’s shuddering, bleeding form. Her hands came up, already glowing with that soft, green-gold light. The healing energy brightened, illuminating the dark blood on Mara’s face. “I can stop this! I can heal this!”

  David’s vision was a blurry, pain-wracked tunnel, but he saw the light.

  He felt the secret knowledge like a punch. He was full of demonic energy. Mara was now saturated with it too, especially after draining the priest. They had stolen something else from the priest as well, something that had deepened the thrall connection into a thick, screaming cable. Chloe’s healing energy was pure, restorative light. It was the opposite of what was in them. It wasn't water on a grease fire. It was like pouring pure oxygen on a fire. It wouldn't heal. It would feed the conflict. It would make everything burn hotter and faster. The logic was a cold, hard stone in his gut.

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  “Don’t!” The word tore from David’s throat, raw and ragged. It wasn't a shout. It was a guttural snarl of pure, barely restrained fury. He couldn’t move. He could only glare, his eyes locking onto Chloe’s. “Get your hands off her. Do not touch her with that.”

  Chloe froze, her glowing hands hovering inches from Mara’s temple. “She’s bleeding out!”

  “You will kill her,” David said. His voice dropped, each word a flat, heavy stone. He didn't explain. The secret was a wall between them. He just stated it. “Back. Off.”

  As the white-hot agony behind his eyes finally subsided to a deep, throbbing ache, David became aware of voices shouting questions. “Are you okay? Can you stand?” He pushed himself up, his movements clumsy. Beside him, Mara was also staggering to her feet, her breath coming in ragged, wet hitches.

  The logic clicked into place. They’d stolen life force and demonic energy from the priest. They must have stolen something else, too. The very nature of that freakishly strong, devastating black beam that had punched a hole through him. That energy was in him now.

  And as he rose, the thrall connection to Mara had changed into something new. The old feeling of reaching out to grab a leash was gone. The new feeling was the reality of a second set of lungs inside his own chest, breathing on their own but completely his. Her exhaustion was the heavy, sore weight in those new lungs. Her pain was a sharp ache in that extra set of bones. Her will to stand up was the same tension he felt in his own legs, a muscle he could flex for her. He still owned her. The command was still there. But giving an order now felt like asking his own new hand to clench into a fist. She was a living, breathing piece of his own system now, a permanent addition to his body that came with its own set of feelings he had to manage.

  The thin, fragile string of control had fused into something thick and solid, a steel cable buried deep in him, carrying a shared current that never stopped moving.

  David immediately dulled the connection, almost on instinct. Rather than feeling alien, he hated how natural it felt.

  The pain behind David’s eyes changed. The intense, drilling heat was no longer. It had become a cold, deep ache, like someone had packed the inside of his skull with wet gravel. He blinked. His vision cleared. He could feel the tight, cracking pull on his skin. He lifted a hand and touched his cheek. His fingers came away with flakes of dried blood, dark as charcoal. He looked at Mara. She was still on her knees. Two thick, dark lines of dried blood ran from her eyes down her cheeks like terrible war paint, cracking as she took a shuddering breath.

  A new blue box appeared.

  [Your Soul has been marked]

  Marked. The word sat in his head. His soul. The system knew he had a soul. Something had marked it. A brand. A tag. A target. The feeling it left was more than fear. It was a cold, final kind of dread. This wasn't a temporary status effect. This was someone, or something, putting its name on a part of him he couldn't even see.

  The text in the box shimmered and changed.

  [Your nature has brushed with beings beyond the abyss, through proxy, and diluted by a forsaken priest, greatly weakening contact. You have survived, where you should not. You have been marked. You have gained an aspect of its nature. Aspect: Oracle of the Unknown]

  David stared. Beyond the abyss. The priest served the abyss. So there were things past even that. Through proxy. Diluted. Forsaken priest. The priest had been a filter. A weak one. A condemned one. Contact with the real thing would have erased him. He’d survived a diluted sip of something that should have killed him outright. Survival here was an accident. A mistake. Aspect: Oracle of the Unknown. It sounded like a curse. It meant he was supposed to see things that shouldn't be seen. He hadn't been chosen. He’d been contaminated.

  The notification repeated. The same words, again. A second blue box, identical, layered over the first for a second before fading. The system was insisting. This was fundamental. This was irreversible. This was a problem that wouldn't go away.

  He pulled up his status screen. His skills list was short. At the bottom, a new line.

  [Skill: Touch of the [Unknown]]

  That was it. Just the name. He stared at it, full of questions he knew the system would never answer, the usual trial and error of skill gain already in his mind.

  Then something completely new happened.

  As he looked at the skill name, text began to unspool beneath it. It wasn't system-blue. It was a grey, wavering script, like words written in ash.

  [Skill: Touch of the [Unknown] - You have been marked.]

  David looked at the words.

  The word ‘Skill’ felt wrong. It was a word for something you learned. A trick. This wasn't a trick. ‘Touch’ was wrong too. It was too gentle. This was a brand. A burn.

  The rest was just noise. Of the [Unknown]. The brackets made it feel like a blank space. A hole where a name should be. They’d put a label on a thing they couldn’t name.

  You have been marked.

  That was the only part that mattered. It was a statement of fact. It was past tense. It had already happened. The system wasn't giving him anything. It was telling him what had been done to him. He was marked. Like an animal. Like property. Someone, or something that called itself ‘[Unknown]’, had put its sign on him. He didn't know what the sign was. He didn't know what it meant. He just knew it was there, on a part of him he couldn't see or touch.

  The feeling was a cold hollow in his gut. This wasn't a power-up. It was a receipt for a transaction he hadn't agreed to. He was carrying someone else's tag.

  David stared at the brackets. [Unknown].

  That was the part that stuck. The system, this all-powerful thing that could shove them between worlds, assign levels, define the rules of magic and monsters... it couldn't name this. It had a box for everything. A classification for wargs, for imps, for abyssal priests, for his own new "Fiend" status. But for this, it just had a placeholder. Empty brackets. A blank space.

  It hadn't said "Touch of the Great Evil" or "Touch of the Outer God." It hadn't given it a title. It had given it a question mark. [Unknown].

  That meant the system, for all its power, either didn't know what it was, or couldn't define it. The thing he'd brushed against was outside its catalog. It was a file with no name. An error code. The priest had been a weak antenna picking up a signal from a station the system's own scanners couldn't lock onto.

  The mark wasn't just on him. It was a piece of static from a channel the system couldn't tune. He was carrying a glitch.

  Then, David focused on the new addition to his status panel; the new ‘Aspect.’

  And as he suspected, he saw something deeper than just a name.

  [Aspect: Oracle of the Unknown - You have brushed against a remnant of (?Unknown?),the Betrayer, Oracle of the Unseen, Deceiver of All Hells, Scourge of the Gods, Foe of ???│??_??—??╱??, Second of the Forsaken Pantheon… and at last, devoured by the Abyss. You have inherited an aspect of its Sight.]

  David’s breath caught. The status had never done this. A skill had never done this. It had never told him what it was. The words flickered, especially the garbled name, like his mind couldn't hold the shape of it. Betrayer. Scourge of the Gods. Second of the Forsaken Pantheon. This was a list of titles for something that had made enemies of everything. And the last title: devoured by the Abyss. Not killed. Not destroyed. Eaten. Consumed. And he had a piece of its Sight. He hadn't gained power. He had gained a way to see things that might make him insane. A way to see things that might get him noticed by whatever was left of the thing that had been eaten, or by the things that had hated it.

  The immediate thought was simple: I don’t want to see.

  The deduction followed: This wasn't active. It was passive. Aspect of its Sight. It would just happen. He would perceive things. Echoes. Hidden things. Forbidden things. Things that were supposed to stay unknown. He would see doors he was never meant to find, and he would have no idea what was on the other side.

  The implication was a cold weight in his stomach: Seeing might mean being seen back.

  The emotional undercurrent was a silent, grinding terror. This was the cost of surviving the priest's final attack. He had brushed against a dead god's corpse and come away with its eyes. He was marked, contaminated, and now aware in a way that felt like a liability. If the gods were enemies of the thing he’d touched, what did that make him? Not a hero. Not a chosen one. An accident. A carrier.

  He let the status screen fade. The cold ache in his skull was his new normal. He looked at Mara through the thrall link, which now felt like a shared vein. He could feel the echo of the same cold ache in her, the same stunned confusion, and beneath it, the same quiet, alien resonance. They had stolen a problem.

  David wanted to rip his status open right then, to pick through every skill, every element, and every line for hints about the mark, but Corbin’s gun was still up and they were all standing in a corpse-clearing next to a building that screamed 'abandon all hope' in carved stone, which ranked pretty low on his list of good places for a careful review.