Chapter 2 The Mark

The black disc burned like molten iron.

Zevran cried out and tried to throw it away, but his fingers refused to open, as if the disc had fused to his palm.

"Garrick!" he shouted.

The old demon slid down the slope, his weathered face drained of color. "Drop it!" Garrick barked.

"I can't!"

The burning intensified, and Zevran fell to one knee, clutching his wrist as pain shot through his arm. The symbol of the balanced scales glowed crimson, brighter with every heartbeat. Then, without warning, the disc softened. It wasn't melting from the heat. It was sinking.

"No," Zevran whispered.

The black glass dissolved into his skin. The scales vanished beneath his palm until only a faint black mark remained. Then even that disappeared. The pain stopped, and silence swallowed the battlefield. Zevran stared at his empty hand. The disc was gone.

Garrick reached him a second later and grabbed his wrist. "Show me."

"It disappeared."

"I said show me!"

Zevran opened his hand, but there was nothing there, only soot and dried blood covering his skin. Garrick searched both sides of his hand before looking around the crater with growing panic. "It should still be here."

"It melted into me. I don't know how else to explain it."

"I know what you said."

The old demon's breathing turned uneven, and for the first time since Zevran had known him, Garrick looked completely lost.

A sharp horn echoed across the battlefield, one blast, then another. Every corpse collector froze. A line of black-armored cavalry rode over the ridge, each rider carrying the silver wolf banner of House Nocthar. Their arrival silenced every conversation. The captain dismounted before anyone could move, his crimson cape sweeping across the ash as he surveyed the battlefield with cold, calculating eyes.

"No one leaves," he ordered, his voice carrying across the valley. "Search everyone."

The soldiers spread out immediately, overturning carts, inspecting weapons, searching leather sacks, and questioning every collector they found.

Zevran leaned toward Garrick. "What are they looking for?"

"If they're here," Garrick muttered, "they don't know either."

The answer only confused him more.

One soldier stopped in front of them. "You two."

Garrick stepped forward. "We're only corpse collectors."

The soldier ignored him. "You heard the bell?"

"No."

"You saw anything unusual?"

"No."

The soldier's gaze shifted to Zevran. "You. What happened in the northern crater?"

His heart nearly stopped. How did they know?

"I," he began, but before another word could leave his mouth, Garrick interrupted.

"The boy nearly fainted from exhaustion. He spends too much time apologizing to corpses," Garrick continued with an annoyed snort. "Too soft for this work."

A few nearby collectors laughed. The soldier looked Zevran over once more before losing interest. "Keep working." He walked away.

Only after the soldiers moved farther down the valley did Zevran release the breath he had been holding.

"You lied."

"I kept you alive." Garrick picked up his cart. "Questions can wait."

The rest of the afternoon passed beneath the watchful eyes of House Nocthar. Nobody joked, nobody complained, and every collector worked twice as fast. Fear moved more efficiently than any overseer.

As the sun dipped toward the horizon, the soldiers finally withdrew, and the battlefield emptied in uneasy silence. On the walk home, Zevran noticed something he had never paid attention to before. When a noble carriage approached the settlement, every worker immediately stepped off the road, heads lowered, eyes fixed on the ground. The carriage rolled past without slowing, and inside, richly dressed demons laughed over wine as though the battlefield less than a mile away had never existed.

"They don't even look at us," Zevran said quietly.

"They don't need to," Garrick replied. "They rule because everyone else looks down first."

Neither of them spoke again until they reached their shack. The old demon barred the door and checked the window before turning toward Zevran. "Listen carefully," he said, his voice lower than usual. "If anything strange happens, tell no one."

"Not even you?"

"Especially not me. The less anyone knows, the safer you'll be."

"What was that disc?"

"I don't know."

"The bell?"

"I don't know."

"The vision?"

Garrick remained silent.

"You do know something."

The old demon sat heavily on a wooden stool. "Thirty years ago, another collector found something on a battlefield." Zevran waited. "He disappeared before sunrise."

"What happened to him?"

"No one ever found a body."

A cold silence settled between them, and neither of them tried to fill it.

That night, Zevran lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and sleep refused to come. Hours passed before he finally rose and poured water into a cracked basin. He dipped his hands inside, and the water rippled. A sharp sting shot through his palm, and he jerked his hand back. The black mark had returned, the scales slowly emerging beneath his skin, glowing faintly beneath the flesh.

His heartbeat quickened.

Then a voice echoed inside his mind, not through his ears, but somewhere deeper, as though it had always been waiting there.

"Successor."

Zevran froze, his breath caught in his throat. He looked around the small room, half expecting to find someone standing behind him, but the shack was empty, just the dying fire and Garrick's shadow across the far wall.

The voice came again, ancient and calm, pressing against his thoughts like a hand laid flat over his heart.

"The First Judgment awaits."

The water in the basin turned completely black, and for a moment Zevran could have sworn he saw something moving beneath its surface, a shape without a face, watching him back.