Kael Ardent was starving.
Not the usual kind for a sixteen-year-old, but the hollow, spectralkind that presses against your bones and numbs your head. Four days ofno labor meant four nights with no supper, and the smell of roastingmeat from the inn was hell.
He should not have gone in but the alluring aroma snaking through the tavern entrance, thick with garlic and floating in fat, spiced with some strong something that knotted his stomach into a fist. His thoughts faltered as his feet betrayed him, taking him in along with his penniless pockets. One more breath longer, he deceived himself. Just until the smell by itself could fool his body into being full.
The tavern master's flinty eyestrailed Kael the moment he entered the tavern.
"No charity for sewerborn," growled the man, rubbing the cleaver on his belt.
Nobles chuckled loudly in front of the fire, their plates groaning under the herby-spiced boar. Spills running onto the floor, where ale spots and ancient ash had long since claimed the wood.
"Please," he whispered. "Scrap food"
"This is no charity hall. Look to the gutters," the tavern master jeered.
The nobles laughed as they tossed him one single bone that dropped at Kael's feet.
His hunger screamed louder then his fear.
"I'm so hungry I could eat a horse."
The words spat from his lips like a curse.
The roasted boar of the nobleman spasmed. The bones cracked like wood. The meat rippled — and, with one final explosion of steam, the entire roast rearranged itself into a mature baked stallion.
It crashed down onto the table with an enormous thud, dead eyes looking at the shrieking nobles.
Silence. Then chaos.
The chairs were overturned. One of the women fainted. The tavern keeper stood with arms folded hiding his trembling fingers. The nobleman who had hurled the bone leaped back in shock, his red doublet stained with gravy whichnow boiled abnormally on its surface.
Kael's vision dimmed beneath a crushing wave of exhaustion. His legs gave way beneath him, the sudden loss of support leaving him light-headed and off-balance. The screams and chaos around him faded into the background as he rested against the tavern wall, gasping in short, harsh breaths.
His arms weighed him down, each breath a heavier one than the last. Darkness had invaded on the edges of his field of sight, curling inward like smoke. He tried to lift his head, to focus, but his body no longer obeyed. With one last, convulsive gasp, Kael's eyes rolled back, and the world went to nothing as he fell to the ground, insensible.
Kael woke to the scent of lavender and paper. His body ached as though he'd been run over, but the hollow hunger was not there. Sunlight streamed through stained windows, casting rainbow patterns on a strange room.
The bed beneath him was too plush, the type only dreamers and noblesever slept on. His fingers sank into the fabric of the sheets—cotton, maybe. Or silk? His chest ached with an after heat, a low, thrumming warmth like smoldering coals under flesh.
His eye scuttled around the room—high ceilings, bookshelves stacked high with books, shining wooden floors, brass lanterns hanging free in mid-air without chains or hooks. Magic. This was a room of magic.
He tried to sit up and cried out at once, all of his muscles protesting. His limbs felt like overcooked dough.
Something was on fire on his chest.
He yanked open the linen shirt someone had him wrapped in.
A hot spot burned on his sternum—separating, moving. A circle at first glance, the lines altering when he blinked. Curving into the wolf's maw, open eye, spiral of bony hooves. Shimmering as if rendered in fluidlight, but giving off no heat. Only a low thrum, like distant thunder.
"What the hell."
Footsteps.
The door creaked open and a tall woman stepped through, carrying a tray. Her robes were speckled with dust from travel but spotless and sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Her skin was a warm, medium brown— rich like cinnamon bark, smooth and steady beneath the pale gleam of her silvery-white hair. It shimmered like moonlight woven into strands, cascaded over her shoulders and framed a face marked by crimson eyes that watched the world with quiet intensity. She moved with a healer's self-assurance and a scholar's attention.
"You're awake," she said, setting the tray down by the bed. Her voice was gentle. "Good. I was beginning to think you'd never quit snoring."
Kael blinked at her. "Where…"
"My house," she said, filling a cup with tea. "Just on the edge of the South Quarter. Shy enough to wardout guards or rumors."
He blinked again, stumbling. "Why?"
"Because you passed out in the middle of a tavern after transforming someone's dinner into a horse," she said flatly. "And because your Soulmark ignited itself into being loud enough to wake the city's leylines."
She put the cup into his hands. He took it, still trembling.
"I didn't intend to do anything," he said.
"I know," she said. "That's how it usually goes. Not every mark waits until a person is of age. Occasionally, it waits for something worse."
She gestured to his chest. "The Soulmark occurs when the soul is shattered open. When the survival can demand more than flesh and terror can offer. Yours was shattered open in the middle of a crisis. I'd call that poetic, were it not so close to killing you."
He stared at the mark. "What… is it?"
She sat opposite him, hands folded. "A part of you. A truth you were unaware you carried."
"It hurts," he growled.
"It would. A wound like that—so new, so violent—it's an indication of something big. Something disturbed inside you."
He looked up. "Who are you?"
"My name is Sera. I… help people like you when I can." She said nothing else.
Kael scowled. "So there are others?"
"Oh yes," she said. "No two marks ever occurring twice. Your power isn't learned from a text or copied from a mage. It's yours, Kael. Born of your want, forged by your need, fueled by your desire."
He struggled as he tried to stand. "Then what is this one?"
Sera's eyes darted to the aching sigil on his chest, her brow creasing. "I don't know. Not exactly. It's altering too fast to be read clearly. But all I know is that you gave voice to a hunger so desperate it called up flesh from memory. Magic from need."
He blanched. "That's scary."
"Yes," she said. "That's powerful."
Kael returned to sitting on the bed. The tea in his hands warmed his fingers.
"You said you help people with marks. Are there. rules? Orders? A guild?"
Sera shook her head. "No institutions. Not for this. Not yet. Soulmarks are too rare, too intimate. Most of the world doesn't even know what they really are. And the people who do—well, they prefer to keep it that way."
"So I'm on my own."
"You're not," she breathed. "Not while you're here."
He looked at her. Suspicious. Desperate. "Why are you doing this for me?"
Sera's eyes met his, and they stared at each other for a very long time. "Because once, someone helped me when I woke up screaming with a burning spiral on my hand and no idea how I'd gotten it."
She stood and picked up the empty tray. "You can stay here. For now. Rest. Let the mark settle. Try not to conjure anything else."
Kael managed a weak smile. "No promises."
Sera gave him the ghost of a smile in return. "Good. It means you're still you."
As she turned to leave, Kael leaned back and stared at the ceiling, at the swirling shadows cast by colored light.
The mark on his chest pulsed again—like it was waiting. Waiting for something.
And for the first time, he wondered if his power was more than mere hunger.
Maybe it was a question.
One the world wasn't ready to answer yet.