The heavy metal door to the laboratory still resonated with a dull thudding echo in Jake's ears, a final sound that confirmed Sophia's departure and sealed the silence in her wake. He sat on the cold cot, extending his right arm. The mark on his skin, now visible in stark intensity, shimmered faintly under the artificial light. The heat it had previously radiated had subsided to a smouldering ember, but the throb was constant, a steady pulse beneath his own skin that before had been barely a whisper but was now a bold assertion. Aria, her expression returning to its characteristic clinical focus, already held the small handheld scanner over his forearm, her gaze fixed on the screen which was beginning to fill with complex data and intricate readouts.
"Try and hold still, Jake," Aria said, her voice devoid of all emotion save scientific curiosity. Her fingers, fine and precise, adjusted the dials on the scanner, calibrating the frequency to penetrate the astral and epidermal layers. The gentle light of the device danced over the mark, making the intricate lines within it seem to writhe and flow of their own accord, far more pronounced than they had ever been before.
Jake watched the scanner's screen. He saw peaks and troughs on energy graphs he didn't understand, lines that shifted colour, and geometric shapes that flickered into existence and vanished. "What… what do you see? Is it… is it bad?"
"'Bad' is subjective," Aria replied without looking up. "It's… unusual. Extremely unusual. The energy signature emanating from the mark doesn't correspond with any I have registered in the academy's archives. Not pure stellar energy, nor tainted abyssal energy like Raven used. Nor is it merely a manifestation of unrefined astral potential. It's… different. What triggered this visible manifestation… that is what we need to understand."
Aria frowned, a wrinkle of concentration furrowing her brow, a sight Jake rarely witnessed. She carefully steadied her gloved hand over the mark. The throb beneath his skin seemed to intensify under her touch, and Jake felt a sharp twinge, not of pain, but of a strange, deep resonance, as if the mark were responding to Aria's energy or the scanner, or perhaps simply asserting its now fully awakened presence.
"I'm detecting a secondary resonance," Aria murmured to herself, her voice dropping. "An echo of another signature… very, very faint. Barely perceptible. Something… ancient. Or very distant. Or very… hidden. It's as if the mark itself were a surface, and this… this were what lay beneath, resonating. It has an unnatural… resonance. Completely alien to the energy flows we understand."
Reiss, from his nearby cot, managed to prop himself up slightly, the pain still etched on his face, but the curiosity in his eyes overcoming the discomfort. "An echo… of another signature… an unnatural… resonance. I've read about that. In the old tomes in the restricted section. Binding marks. Seals of ownership. Sometimes… sometimes, vestiges of pacts or… or transfers of power… that often lie dormant, invisible or nigh imperceptible, waiting for the right moment or propitious conditions to blossom… to fully manifest."
Jake swallowed hard. Vestiges that blossom? Seals of ownership? Pacts? That sounded terribly ominous. "A pact? Transfer of power? Dormant? But… who? Why me? Was it… was it touching the prism… that made it manifest like this?"
"That is the most obvious connection to recent events," Aria said, her tone firm. "The mark doesn't originate from the Lumina Fulcrum prism, Jake. That prism was specifically designed to contain and channel a particular technique I developed. But its visible and palpable manifestation… its activation… did coincide with you holding it, yes. It's possible that the prism, being a concentration of pure stellar energy, in an environment already highly charged by the conflict and abyssal energy, acted as a… a catalyst. Like striking a light in the darkness that drew something's attention, or perhaps simply provided the spark for something already present to manifest. Perhaps the intense stress of the preceding combat, coupled with exposure to abyssal energy, made you susceptible. And the prism was the final push."
Aria put down the scanner for a moment and picked up a spectral visor, adjusting it over her eyes. She observed Jake's arm through the lenses, which filtered reality to show energy flows. "I see… subtle channels radiating from the mark. They extend beneath your skin, integrating with your own astral potential network. It doesn't seem to be actively draining your energy right now, but it's… connected. As if it were an artificial extension of your own being. Or an… an addition. An addition that has been activated."
"An addition of what?" Jake asked, his voice a little tight. The idea of something extra, something alien, embedded within his own life energy network, turned his stomach.
Reiss coughed weakly, catching their attention. "The texts spoke of these marks potentially being… bidirectional. A conduit. Sometimes, they transferred power or information to the bearer. At other times… at other times, they allowed something from the other side to… observe. Or influence. Or… control. Once manifested, their purpose became active."
Jake's skin prickled. Control. The word echoed with an icy resonance in his mind. Raven had been controlled, twisted into something monstrous by the influence of Zephyr Blackthorn. If this mark… if it was a channel now active… could it be connected to him?
"Control… Like Raven?" Jake's voice was barely a whisper.
Aria took off the visor, her expression serious. "It's a possibility we must consider. The secondary signature I'm detecting is extremely subtle, almost like a sigh, but it has that unnatural… resonance. It's not the stellar energy we're accustomed to. It could be linked to that abyssal energy Reiss described, or to the source of that energy. To Zephyr Blackthorn. The question is whether the mark is the source of the connection, or if you were already a dormant vessel, and the mark is merely the signal that this connection is now active."
Jake looked at his arm, the pulsing mark now not just a mystery, but a potential sentence. Was he carrying within him a connection to the darkness that had shattered the academy? Would he now be a potential puppet, marked for manipulation? The impotence he felt watching Sophia leave alone was compounded by a new, visceral fear for himself. The idea that this could have been inside him all along, invisible, dormant… it was almost worse.
"But… why me?" he whispered. "Why now? Was it… was it the prism? The energy of the fight? All of it?"
"That's the key question," Aria said, turning back to the scanner with a new urgency. "I need more data. I need to compare this signature with what Reiss saw or felt of Blackthorn's energy. I need to understand what activated this and what exactly this unnatural signature is."
Reiss nodded with difficulty. "I'll try… to remember. The feeling of Blackthorn's energy… It was… cold. Like the void between stars. But with an… an intention. A malice that chilled more than the cold. The secondary signature you're feeling in the mark, Aria… that echo… I think I felt it from Blackthorn… when… when he shattered the arena… during the tournament… It was… similar. Like that unnatural resonance."
While Reiss closed his eyes, concentrating painfully on reliving the horror he had witnessed and felt, trying to isolate that ethereal sensation from the trauma, Aria continued her work, the scanner's light moving methodically over Jake's arm. The laboratory, once a simple refuge, had become a research hub under siege. They had one wounded, a mystery etched onto the skin of another, and Sophia alone facing unimaginable danger.
The time in the laboratory stretched and contracted, marked by the scanner's soft beeping, the sibilant catch of Reiss's strained breath, and the charged silence of unanswered questions. The mark on Jake's arm wasn't merely a medical or astral enigma; it was a symbol. A constant reminder that the external battle had internal ramifications, and that the influence of Zephyr Blackthorn, the darkness of the abyss, could find insidious ways to manifest, even in places that seemed safest, even in those who fought against it. It wasn't simply dark energy; it was a variant, something different, and it had anchored itself in Jake.
They couldn't go after Sophia immediately. Reiss couldn't move. Jake, with that active mark of uncertain origin, was an unpredictable wild card and potentially a risk. Aria, capable though she was, couldn't face Raven and the potential presence of Blackthorn alone. Their fight, for now, was here. Deciphering what that unnatural mark meant. Understanding the new kind of threat it represented. Because perhaps, just perhaps, the key to stopping what was happening outside wasn't in brute force, but in understanding the sign that had blossomed under Jake's skin in the heart of the refuge, and the unnatural resonance it carried.
The scanner's light continued its slow, methodical dance, and the mark pulsed, waiting to be read, waiting to reveal its true nature and why it had chosen to manifest now with such intensity.