You ever wake up and just know the world wants you dead?
No? Lucky you.
Me? I wake to the taste of blood and the cold bite of rain. Everything hurts. My ribs feel like someone used them for sword practice. My skin? A patchwork of bruises and torn flesh. And my arm—Gods. It still burns, the raw wound of my exile seared into my skin.
The Mark of the Godless.
It's supposed to be a death sentence. Just a slower, crueler one.
See, the Inquisition doesn't just kill people like me. That would be too easy. Too clean. Instead, they dragged me through the streets, let the crowd see me broken and bloodied, let them hear my family name spat like a curse. Then, with a Highlord's blade at my throat, they declared me exiled.
They didn't just want me dead. They wanted me forgotten.
Mercy would've been a blade through the heart.
Instead, they dumped me beyond the last border stone of the Holy Dominion, right into the Wild Lands. No food. No weapons. No real chance. Just me, the storm, and the monsters lurking in the dark.
And of course, there's something watching me.
Lightning flashes, and I see it. A figure, half-hidden in the skeletal trees. Not a beast. Not a scavenger. Someone alive.
Great. Love that for me.
I try to move. Bad idea. Pain lances through my side, and I damn near black out again. My fingers brush something—bandages. Crude. Recently done.
Not my work.
Which means my little shadow out there? They patched me up. They wanted me alive.
Well, that's not ominous.
"Ah, the lordling wakes at last." A voice draws from the darkness—female, smooth as steel sliding free of its sheath. "I half-thought you'd slumber through the world's ending."
I force my head to turn. She's sitting on a fallen log, casually sharpening a curved dagger. Tall, lean, dressed in patched leather. Silver hair, cropped short. An elf, but not the fancy kind.
"Where am I?" My voice is pure gravel.
"The forgotten edge of the world," she replies, testing her blade's edge with a thumb. "A place where names turn to dust, and men like you are left to be swallowed by the dark. Quite the fate, really. Did you choose it, or was it chosen for you?"
I try to sit up, immediately regret it. "Who—"
"If you're about to ask 'who are you,' I may just stab you on principle." She points the dagger at me, lazily. "Predictable. Next, you'll wonder if you're dead. You're not, by the way. Death is far kinder."
"Fine," I growl. "How about: why the hell did you help me?"
She exhales, long and theatrical. "A moment's lapse in judgment. Don't expect another." Her smile is all teeth, sharp as her blade. "I figured you'd be dead by now."
"Disappointed?"
She snorts. "More surprised. Most exiles greet the dawn from the bellies of beasts. You, however, persist. Unwise, perhaps, but impressive."
I press a hand to my ribs. The wound should've killed me.
"You saved me?"
"'Saved' is a strong word." She flicks dried blood from her blade. "I dragged your sorry corpse from the mud before the crows could have their feast. Call it professional curiosity." She tilts her head, assessing me. "Turns out the Inquisition's leftovers make poor conversation partners. All that moaning and bleeding—tiresome."
Lightning cracks, and she tosses something onto my chest. A pendant.
My pendant.
My family's crest—the last thing I have left of them.
"They missed this," she muses. "Must've been in quite the hurry to cast you aside. What was your crime, I wonder? Did you dare question the righteousness of their little empire? Or perhaps—" her voice drops to a whisper, silk and shadow, "—you merely existed in a way they did not like."
I clutch the pendant tight, saying nothing.
"Fine, keep your secrets. We've all got skeletons. Mine just wear finer silks."
"Got a name," I manage, "or should I just call you 'Irritating Stranger'?"
"Oh, it speaks! And with spirit!" She laughs, a sound like wind through broken glass. "I am Selene. Selene Nightwhisper, once of the Twilight Court, now of nowhere at all. Disgrace to my ancestors, disappointment to my kind, and occasional savior of wayward fools."
She stands in a single, fluid motion, stretching like a cat. "And you are…?"
I hesitate. The name I once had? That's gone. The person I was? Dead already.
"Ash," I say finally. "Just Ash."
Selene smirks. "Dramatic. I like it. Let me guess—symbolism for your old life burned to cinders? Very poetic. Very trite." She winks. "We'll work on that."
Before I can respond, a sound cuts through the night.
Howls that are wrong and unnatural. Hollow, stretched too long, like the sound is being pulled apart.
Not a wolf. Worse.
Selene stiffens. "Void take me, this bodes ill." All humor vanishes. "Void hounds. Seems the Inquisition lacks faith in fate's cruelty."
"They sent tracker beasts after me?"
"After us, now, thanks to my unwarranted kindness." She tosses me a rusted short sword. "Do you know how to wield that, lordling? Or shall I prepare your eulogy now?"
I catch it awkwardly. It's awful—heavy, unbalanced, barely more than a slab of iron.
"Not well," I admit.
"Ah, how reassuring. Truly, I feel safer already." She's already gathering her meager supplies. "Listen well, little exile—when the odds are against you, do not fight the storm. Become the wind. Move, or be swallowed."
The howls are closer now. Selene is already moving.
"Come on! Or would you rather learn firsthand how it feels to be unmade?"
I force my battered body to follow, stumbling into the storm-dark forest after her.
"You know," she calls over her shoulder, "most I rescue have the decency to die quickly. You're making this terribly inconvenient."
And that's when it happens.
A heat spreads through my chest. A strange pulse of something old and waiting.
The edges of my vision blur, and then—
[Mark of the Lost God activated.]
[Experience Gain: +2]
I stumble. The words shouldn't be there, but they are, hanging in my vision like ghostly script.
"Ash!" Selene barks. "Move or perish! I haven't the time to compose a poetic grave for you!"
I grit my teeth and push forward.
"There you go," she pants as we run. "I'd hate to tell people I saved a noble only for him to die stupidly. Ruins my reputation."
The forest blurs around us, the sound of howls at our backs.
"By the way," Selene adds, ducking under a low branch, "if we survive this, you owe me a drink. And not that watered-down noble swill. Something that burns like dragonfire."
Because if the past twenty-four hours have taught me anything, it's this:
I was never supposed to survive.
And yet—
Here I am. With an elf who's either going to be my salvation or the death of me.
Possibly both.
"Stop grinning," Selene snaps, though there's a flicker of amusement in her eyes. "It's not an adventure yet. Wait until something tries to eat your face."
Behind us, the void hounds howl.