The air in the Dead-Zone did not return to normal once Selene vanished; it
remained a bruised, sickly violet, smelling of ozone and the heavy, cloying
scent of funeral lilies. I stood alone in the center of the clearing, the ground
beneath my feet still humming from the tectonic shift I had commanded. My skin,
which had flared into a shimmering, sunset bronze under the influx of Kaelen's
sacrifice, was slowly cooling, the metallic luster fading back into a deathly,
translucent ivory.
But the heat remained in my marrow. It was a pressurized, restless energy that
felt as if it were trying to rewrite my very DNA. I looked down at my right
wrist. The silver tattoos of the ancient runes were no longer white; they were a
deep, bruised charcoal. And circling them, like a predatory snake, was the first
coil of the Mark of the Sieve. It throbbed in time with my pulse—a rhythmic,
black reminder that I had begun to filter the darkness of the world through my
own soul.
