Rosen didn't sleep that night. He tried, but each time he closed his eyes, he heard that haunting voice. Nightsworn.
The mark on his neck seemed to radiate heat. It started off as a sort of annoying itch at first, and as the night progressed it became something he could no longer ignore.
Opening his bedroom door as quietly as he could manage, he slowly made his way towards a washroom. His feet slid across the cold white marble. He glanced at unfamiliar pictures adorning the walls as he checked each room with a subtle rapping against doors. Portraits of his family, of people he couldn't recognize.
"Roe," he mumbled. "Stupid name. What am I, an oar?" At last, at the very end of the hall, he stumbled across an already slightly open door. It squeaked as he pushed it open further, revealing a spacious washroom with purple and yellow tapestries lining the walls. More battles were depicted on them. Roe was beginning to think his kin made their fortune as mercenaries of some sort.
The burning seemed to subside some as he doused it with splashes of water. A mirror sat above the sink, and Roe took another look at his strange reflection. Sunlight tricked in from a window a couple feet away, a slight breeze accompanying the coming day. Roe's eyes stared blankly into themselves, forcing answers from their contents. But they stayed silent, and he was left with only a single question: What happened to me?
The ache on his neck returned, this time more fierce than it had been. Like fire licked at his skin.
Nightsworn.
Sweat dripped from his skin and his pulse quickened. He cupped the mark with a hand and closed his eyes.
"Roe? What're you doing?" Violet's voice came from the doorway, but it felt so far away. His head began to swirl, his stomach threatened to come up. "Are you okay?"
Vi made her way to her brother's side. She placed a hand on his cheek and quickly retracted it. "You're burning up!"
Roe's entire body seemed to reject itself. His knees buckled and he slammed onto the hard floor, his head smacking the wall. His eyes struggled to stay open.
"Violet…" he said quietly. "I feel like shit."
She held his head up with one hand and checked his pulse with the other. Her face looked grim.
"Tom!" she called. "Thomas!" A moment later, a half awake man in his undergarments nearly ran into the doorframe, barely catching himself before he could.
"What's going on?" he asked as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.
"Rosen…" Violet helped him to his feet, gently guiding him to a sterling silver tub on the other side of the room. Her touch felt like thornes, his skin suddenly sensitive. "Tom, look after him while I fetch mother. I think Rosie's got that awful virus."
"Right." Tom traded places with Vi as cold water began filling the tub. The water hurt even more than Vi's touch. "Let's have your shirt, then. Gotta keep you cool." He slid Roe's dark shirt over his head with little resistance. The strength seemed to spill from his bones as his eyes closed.
Nightsworn, I will not call again.
"Fucking… voice in my… my head," Roe mumbled.
"What was that?" Tom held Roe's face in his large hand, dragging his eyelids open by force. Blood trickled down like tears from a single eye. "What in the hells…"
A sudden and excruciating pain took Roe's body by storm, sending him lurching forward and splashing Tom in the process. Roe gripped the sides of the tub, his fingers digging into the metal until it bent under pressure.
"Fuck…" Tom gasped. "What is happening? Vi!" He called for his wife.
Roe felt daggers in his back, the breath leaving his lungs in a single moment. Heat seared his brain from the inside out, embers sparking around the boys body until eventually, even while immersed in a tub full of water, he caught fire.
Roe let out a guttural scream, falling back into the water until he disappeared completely. Darkness surrounded him now, and the pain he felt only a moment ago subsided immediately. Breath returned to his lungs.
His eyes flickered open, but he saw nothing. His hands searched his body for damage, but felt nothing. He had become shapeless.
Slowly, a solitary speck of light formed in his mind. One light became two, and so on until he felt the muscles around his eyes form and eventually open.
Arms reached out to this formless version of the boy, dark and ethereal. They were slow to reach and strange to look at, almost reflecting the darkness itself that surrounded him. Roe looked on curiously as he felt a nose form on his face.
As his eyes adjusted to this place, simple shapes could be made out. Blocks made of darkness incarnate, void of any texture or pattern other than the nothing it was seemingly conceived of. These shapes floated around him, bumping into others and devouring one another until only a single mass existed before him. And more arms shot out, this time latching on to his incorporeal form.
Roe wanted to scream. He didn't have a body but it hurt. It was a thousand times worse than the pain he had felt in his home just moments before. He didn't have a body but he could tell he was being devoured.
Sword.
A flash of light. The nothingness returned, his pain vanished. He felt himself floating, on a wave of light that was so warm and comfortable. He finally felt like he could sleep, if he just closed his eyes…
"Not today!" A hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and pushed him forward. Dirt. The smell of tar filled the air. He opened his eyes.
Before him stood a woman in strange clothing with even stranger looks. Lustrous white hair that tried to hide pointed ears sticking out the side of her head, with the same stormy grey eyes as Roe. Caramel skin sung against her flushed complexion, and instantly Roe knew who this woman was.
"Lady Gwyn," Roe felt himself move as if automatic, assuming the servants position on a single knee, his head hung low. "I - how do I know you?"
"Took you long enough." She spat. Roe raised his head to see her exhausted features crumple before him. Her eyes shot closed and she collapsed. Roe caught her before she could hit the ground, moving on instinct to protect this stranger.
Gwyn slept for a while, but it was long enough for Roe to get a handle on things at least somewhat.
Wherever he was, he could tell it was the absolute furthest place from that lake he woke up near just a few hours earlier. The air was thick and hard to breathe, and the sky was purple with black blogs replacing the pearly stars that usually adorned the sky. Mountainous building ruptured the earth and ascended into the sky across the horizon, for as far as he could see. Trees were few and far between, all rotted and falling over. Vehicles, a word Roe didn't know he knew, lined streets under dark lamplight.
Roe found himself knowing more than just that. The longer he was here, the more this place made sense to him. Cars and buildings, however decomposed and rotted through, seemed right. The purple sky, dimmed by the blackened stars, hummed with familiarity.
Gwyn turned over and swung an arm out wide, slapping the ground beside her as her eyes slowly peeled open. Her strange clothes suddenly seemed location appropriate, but a shimmer around her seemed all the stranger now that he could see it.
"What is this place?" He asked. He drew a circle in the dirt beneath him, not looking at the Elf.
"You know what it is." She yawns. "This is where we've come to die."
Roe shot her a sideways glance. A silver necklace danced beneath her shirt, no mark on her neck. Her lips were chapped and her ears wriggled at the slightest sound.
"I know you." Roe looked into her eyes, the same eyes he shares. A storm gathered between their locked gaze. "You're important to me."
She was quiet for a moment. The storm seemed to fade, and a smile crossed her face before she broke out into a fit of laughter. "Well I ought to be," She wipes a tear from her eye. "You owe me." Her laughter dies out and it's quiet for a moment.
"...owe you what, exactly." He asks.
"Everything." She pats the dirt from her jeans and stands, looking at the boy in just his pants and dark hair and shallow grey eyes. "Your life is forfeit to mine own, Nightsworn. You are the blade I will use to cut through this wretched place."