The sea smelled like rust and ghosts.
Thuta limped into the salt village just after dusk, one arm wrapped in a torn cloth and the other pressed tightly to his side. The road behind him was long, scattered with tracks he'd half-erased. He didn't know if the Fold still followed. He only knew they could.
The village itself clung to the coastline like a wound — wind-bitten huts, bleached fishing nets, and rows of flat salt beds stretching toward the shore. Everything tasted like brine. The air scratched the inside of his nose.
Locals watched him pass with the silent suspicion of people used to strangers bringing curses.
He found a place to collapse near an old fire pit beside a half-empty tea stall. An old man grunted, took one look at him, and waved toward the back.
"Go see Ama Khin. House near the banyan tree. If she doesn't kill you, she'll patch you up."
Thuta blinked. "Charming."
---
Ama Khin didn't ask questions.
She took one look at his hand, the bruises down his ribs, and the glowing sigil that wouldn't quite fade under his skin — and nodded like she'd seen it all before.
"You're not bleeding right," she said flatly.
"Thanks," Thuta muttered. "I wasn't aiming for elegant."
She turned away and lit a small charcoal burner with salt-dried wood. "It smells like something that's not yours."
He blinked. "What do you mean?"
Ama Khin didn't answer. She pulled a black basin from beneath a cloth and filled it with saltwater, pulled from the sea and filtered through ash.
"You've got more than your soul in you," she said. "Maybe not all of it human. Maybe not all of it alive."
Thuta stared.
"You want to know what's crawling around in your blood," she added, "you make the pact."
He hesitated.
But his hand was still burning.
And he was tired of questions without answers.
"Fine," he said. "Let's make a pact."
---
The ritual was older than language.
Ama Khin laid out chalk marks in a spiraled square around the basin. Thuta sat in the center, cross-legged, shirt removed, hands resting on his knees. She cut his palm with a sliver of obsidian and let the blood drip into the saltwater.
At first, nothing.
Then — a hiss.
The water boiled.
Not bubbled. Boiled.
The chalk symbols caught fire and burned without smoke.
Ama Khin didn't flinch.
The sigil on Thuta's hand lit up like a sunburst. His breath caught. The pain wasn't physical. It was something else. A stretching, a reaching — like a memory trying to get out.
Then a voice rose from the basin. Not his voice. Not hers.
"This blood is not whole. Flame echoes where life should be."
Thuta's eyes rolled back.
The saltwater turned red.
And then black.
Ama Khin whispered something under her breath — a prayer, or a curse.
The basin cracked.
And Thuta fell forward, unconscious.
---
He woke hours later in her hut.
His palm stung, but not from the cut. The sigil had changed again — subtly. A faint third curl had appeared at the edge of the spiral.
Not a full mark.
Just a whisper of what was coming.
Ama Khin sat nearby, drinking tea.
"You're carrying too many names," she said without looking up. "And they're starting to remember."
Thuta didn't answer.
"What does it mean?" he finally asked.
She looked at him. "It means you're becoming something that was never meant to walk this earth again."
He didn't argue.
He couldn't.
Because deep down, he felt it too.
---
That night, he dreamed of someone else's death.
A man — crimson robes soaked in blood — stood before a burning gate. Voices screamed behind it. The man held a sigil in one hand and an orb in the other. He whispered something.
And then stepped into the fire.
When Thuta woke, his hand was wet.
With saltwater.
And the scroll had moved.
A new phrase burned at the bottom in rust-red ink:
"The third seal tastes ash and blood."
He sat in silence.
The Fold was hunting him.
The sigils were changing him.
And the gates were opening — one by one.
-----