The wind rolled low over the fields, scraping across the stone husks of old fort walls and half-dead thorn trees. Morning was only a theory here—light broke reluctantly across the sky, too weak to burn away the soot. In the distance, Dunesmir rose like a scar, its tiered silhouette jagged with towers, ducts, and the curling spires of state-bound sanctuaries.
Raelus Voren lay face-down in the brittle grass, blood crusting in the corner of his mouth.
He groaned. Fucking hell, everything hurts.
Everything ached. His back, his ribs, the inside of his skull—especially that. He rolled onto his side and immediately regretted it. Pain flared down his spine like every bone and ridge was broken. For a moment, all he could do was blink up at the pale sky and try to remember his name.
Rael.
Raelus Voren.
Nullbound. A traitorous voice whispered in his head.
The last word hit him like a nail to the chest. He sat up fast, hissing, clutching at his sternum. The glyph in his chest—his Name-Script—burned under his shirt. Not hot, not glowing, but present. Like a bruise carved into memory. Etched on the wrist of his right hand, was the mark he came to know as the Mark of Deviance. Whatever that was.
It was still both there.
The Mark of Deviance. The Name-Script he wasn't born with. The label the world should've rejected. But hadn't.
He dragged himself upright. His legs wobbled under him. His cloak was half-shredded, and his boots were caked with ink-dust. The mine was gone—collapsed or erased; he didn't know the answer. The last thing he remembered was falling through the various glyphs and runes and error, watching reality peel apart like an overwritten page.
Now he was back.
And something in the air tasted wrong.
Rael trudged toward the road. The poorer districts of Dunesmir (Can he even call it that when the city was poor to begin with anyways?) loomed closer now, built into the bones of a ravine where half the city's under-tier lay buried in layered stone. Towers rose from the old strata like stakes through a corpse. He knew the outer path well; smugglers used it when border guards were tight. The path would lead him through a bend in the east wall where bribes were lower.
He needed to get inside. Find food. Find someone who wouldn't stab him on sight.
But that thought died when he passed the old marker tree. There, waiting beneath the cracked roots, were two boys his age. James and Beckham. Fellow slum-borns. Scrappers. Friends, once.
James looked up from where he was sorting wire loops. His eyes narrowed. "Rael?"
Beckham straightened as he looked up as well, with an unreadable look in his eyes. "Shit. Is that you?"
Rael lifted a hand and managed a weak smile. "Long time no see." He grimaced. He really didn't know how long he was gone, but judging from the dust that gathered on his belongings, it was a week at most.
They didn't smile back. In fact, they took a step backward.
Something shifted in the air. A cold pressure. Rael felt it too—a slight pull around his skin, like static brushing across glass.
James said, carefully, "What... happened to you?"
Rael blinked, confused. "What?"
"Your aura's all... wrong."
That stopped him cold.
Aura perception was subtle—half myth to common folk. But the scums of society like them learned early how to feel when a person was marked. Scripted people radiated that burn of legality. An unspoken "validity" that bled into the world around them.
He didn't realize how much he'd lacked it until now.
Now... he radiated something else.
Not divine authority. Not noble lineage.
Just otherness. Someting that made him even more different than he was before.
Beckham reached into his coat, hand hovering near his knife that Rael knew he always hid in his pocket. "We don't want trouble, Rael. If you're with someone, tell 'em to back off."
"I'm not with anyone," Rael said slowly, raising his hands. "Guys, It's me. I just... came back from the southern ridge."
James's face twisted. "You came back wrong."
That stung more than he expected.
He stepped back and turned without another word, running away from the closest people he could call his friends. Well, now? Not anymore.
No use fighting it. If they could feel it, others would too. Whatever the Mark had done to him, it had changed more than just his skin.
He ran and ran in a single direction until he could see the border between Dunesmir and the next city up ahead. By the time he reached the border path, his head throbbed and his stomach growled like a dying beast.
A checkpoint loomed—a rusted gate between two leaning stone towers, manned by a bored-looking enforcer with scriptmetal gauntlets and a ledger of Names.
Rael hesitated.
No license. No entry. But he had a Name-Script now, didn't he?
Maybe...
He approached.
The enforcer looked up lazily. Then blinked. "Raelus Voren? Hey, I know you. You're infamous 'round these parts."
Rael froze.
"Sorry, man. You don't have clearance to enter. You're listed as Scriptless, remember?"
Rael opened his mouth, then closed it. He wasn't sure what to say so he just stayed put.
The enforcer narrowed his eyes. "This Gate will lead to Lucidorne. This is a Level-Three Province. The Scriptless can't pass beyond the wall."
Rael tensed. Heat built in his chest.
"I'm not Scriptless anymore," he said, biting his lips nervously. "Check again."
The man snorted. "Nice try. Name-Scripts only appear when you're born. You either have them, or you don't."
He raised a gauntlet.
A glyph-circle bloomed in the air, ink and light spinning around a binding clause. An Attack and Restrain Spell.
Rael felt it form before it was even cast. The spell's formula unfolded in layers— a magical array to target, bind, restrain, detain.
And something inside him snapped.
He saw the spell from within, in it's base form.
And rewrote it.
Not with words. With will.
He reached into the structure of the spell and yanked them something loose.
The circle shimmered, then folded in on itself and snapped.
The enforcer stumbled, confused as he stared at where his spell was before it disappeared. "What the—?"
Rael was already running, forcing the magic that closed the doors to do the opposite of what it was enforced to do. His feet slammed stone. His cloak tore on the corner of a guardpost. Someone shouted behind him, but he didn't stop. The door groaned open and he only just managed to slip inside before he released his will on the door and it slammed shut once more.
His eyes blinked erratically as he continued running. "Huh?"
He could see threads now.
Thin glowing lines laced the world—across walls, over cobbles, around runes carved into city gates. Threads of authority. Threads of law he wasn't supposed to see.
But he did.
And some of them... were tugging toward him.
Toward something old. Something buried. He touched a few as he ran and it spasmed and glitched before returning to normal, but this time he could touch and tug it. When he did, it was like he could manipulate the entity the thread was attached to.
He shook his head and closed his eyes, willing himself to relax. When he opened his eyes again, the threads were gone.
He turned a corner and ducked into a slum-side alcove, panting. Above him, the symbol of a broken sun hung over a half-collapsed temple. It was an old church where people gather and archives are stored.
The door was ajar.
Rael wasted no time and stepped inside, too scared of what was chasing him to think of what would happen if he entered a sacred site. Once he stepped inside, it was already too late. For within the sanctity of holy buildings such as these, lie a barrier to keep the unwanted out. It would signal everyone in the vicinity if any scriptless or criminals ever stepped foot inside, like a scream for help.
And the glyphs buried in the stone screamed.