Page 32 of Marked By the Enemy
By morning, the watchers were gone. Nothing marked the ground. The grass lay smooth and unbroken, untouched by heat or footfall. But one thing they left was a wooden disc, wedged into a crack in the rim of the old forge and held there with a rusted shard of iron.
They hadn’t marked it with ink. It was sanded smooth on one side, with a single carved loop that didn’t close. The break at the top of the circle left the groove, ending abruptly as if the blade had lifted mid-stroke.
Darian pulled it loose and turned it in his fingers. “It reminds me of that fifth ring you kept sketching. The one that never quite closed.”
The bond twisted enough to notice before simmering down. “This isn’t a threat,” he said.
“No. It’s a signal.”
He glanced at me. “Do you recognize it?”
“I don’t. But the bond does.”
The tether punched once—sharp, below the ribs. It squeezed the air out of my lungs before pulling me up and yanking me to my feet.
I staggered back a step, catching myself on the edge of a half-buried stone pillar—one of dozens that ringed the old arena in a perfect oval.
The stone beneath my boots was worn smooth, scored by blade tracks and scuffed to dull grey, though the outer edge gave way to grass and moss. At its center lay the ceremonial sparring pit: sunken, circular, and bordered by cracked torch-holders and leaning statuary.
To the east, the Keep loomed across the rise—its main gate visible through a cleft in the training wall, towers softened by distance and age. The third spire was still broken. Ivy gripped the lower battlements, stubborn and green.
Behind me, the wide training yard rolled gently into the southern meadow—flat, trampled, and still bearing the ghost-paths of long-passed drills. Beyond that, the forest crouched like a secret: dense, dark under low-hanging boughs. To the right, beyond a flint wall marked with old sigils, the orchard spread in quiet geometry—rows of fruit trees silvered by the morning light, their branches curled like claws in sleep.
The scent of pollen drifted up the slope, layered over earth and dew and faint ash. None of it mattered. The bond had chosen a direction. West. Toward the trees. I slid my knife from its sheath and stepped beyond the outer ring. The dirt softened beneath my boots. Fallen leaves slicked the trail where none should’ve been.
The bond tugged low in my ribs—tighten, ease, tighten again—like it had remembered something buried in the soil, and wanted me to find it too.
I wouldn’t have believed that prior to the bond choosing me or the Bone Seat choosing me, or whoever had written my name on the wall, under the green scrawl of light which was Darian’s name. But I believed in magic now, and I didn’t know who had been here last night, and I had seen the magic of the Elemental Seats.
Each step dragged. My body felt hollowed out as I staggered through the forest. Every step forward was a choice, and yet it didn’t seem optional. My fingers brushed the hilt at my hip. My eyes didn’t leave the narrow path as it curved downward into a shallow ravine.
Darian remained in the fighting ring. He must have felt my echoes or the bond’s echoes and known that he wasn’t supposed to follow. The bond had separated us.
The trees pressed in tighter now. I passed a rotting log where something had scratched at the moss. With growing urgency, the tether pulled me forward, my feet pounding against the uneven ground, dodging trees.
The clearing appeared like a blade drawn from cloth. The trees bent back in an unnatural ring, their trunks smooth on the inward side as if something had pressed them outward in a perfect circle.
Even the air tasted still. At the center, it waited, perched. Its limbs were folded strangely—too long in the arms, too lean in the torso. Beneath the silk, the angles of its elbows jutted sharply, as if the bones had grown incorrectly after being wrapped in cloth too tight.
Its skin had the stretched, gleaming look of candle wax cooled over sinew, pale gray in some places, faintly green in others where veins pressed too close to the surface. There was no dirt, no dust, no rot—just flesh stretched taut over the remnants of ancient magic, like a withered parchment covering a forgotten tome.
Across its face were four deep circles etched into the skin, each groove a testament to something cryptic. One circle held a mysterious substance; three remained empty. These marks were not mere tattoos or painted designs; they were cut, carved with purpose.
Its head was entirely devoid of hair. The scalp glistened faintly, polished with a slick, unidentifiable sheen that caught the light in an unsettling way. Its eyes were pools of silver, wide and unblinking, devoid of lids, like twin mirrors reflecting a soulless void.
They shone with the blank intensity of an entity that recalled more than it comprehended. Where ears should have been, there was only the smooth, unbroken curve of its skull, as if sealed by an artist who had opted for simplicity over function.
Its mouth hung slightly ajar, a gaping maw too still and too black, an abyss lacking the familiar presence of teeth or the gentle rhythm of breath. I stopped walking. Every part of me said run.
But I remained rooted to the spot, my spine locked in place. My lungs forgot to breathe. I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t swallow.
The bond pinned me there, holding me in place. This wasn’t a warning. It was a memory. The bond wasn’t afraid. It recognized this thing. It wanted to make sure I saw. The thing tilted its head.
And still, I did not breathe.
Chapter ten
Painful Memories
