The Scarline cut through the earth like a blade, its fog thick with thorns and secrets.
Teon Grivalt moved through it, silent, his boots barely stirring the frost-bitten leaves. The air was sour, heavy with old blood and older lies. His bow hung loose, arrow nocked, the bone whistle between his lips humming low to lure the boar he'd tracked since dawn.
The Rot Mark on his back burned under his leathers, a spiral of raised flesh that always flared before bad luck. Hide it, or it burns, his mother's voice echoed, sharp as the Week of Knives that took her. He buried the memory, deep, where it couldn't cut.
A crow cawed from a gnarled oak, its black eyes fixed on him, unblinking. Another joined it, then a third, their feathers glinting like oil under a sun too red, too low. Teon froze, breath clouding, the whistle falling silent.
His fingers grazed his knife, instinct prickling, but the boar's grunt snapped him back. It was close, tusks scraping bark, breath steaming in the mist. He crouched, arrow drawn, the string taut against scarred knuckles. The mark burned hotter, a pulse not his own, but he ignored it. He always did.
The boar charged, a mass of bristle and rage. Teon loosed the arrow. It sank deep, blood blooming black against the beast's flank. It squealed, staggered, and fell, hooves kicking dirt. Teon approached, knife out, and ended it—a clean cut to the throat. The crows watched, still, as blood soaked the earth.
He carved a spiral into the oak's bark, same as his mark, same as the habit he couldn't explain. The blade felt heavy, like it was cutting something alive, something that remembered him. He wiped the knife, staring at the spiral. It seemed to twitch, breathing in the bark.
They say rot is just time remembering the wound. Then what am I? Teon's thoughts clawed at him, raw, unbidden.
A wound that never closes? A memory no one wants? Or proof something lives beneath this silence, waiting to scream?
He pressed his palm to the spiral, felt it pulse, like a heart not his own.
You remember me, don't you? He blinked. For a heartbeat, he saw her—his mother's shadow standing over a crib, face cut with candlelight, whispering a lullaby his blood hadn't forgotten.
Hide it, Teon. Hide it, or it burns.
The wind didn't answer, but it didn't deny him either.
Ruttenmark welcomed him with smoke and noise, a town that breathed defiance and decay. The Gut was its heart, a tangle of alleys where kids bartered knives for bread and trash fires burned eternal. Teon passed Shiver's Row, where drunks carved spirals into walls under torchlight. The air carried ash and iron, a smell that clung like guilt.
He adjusted the boar over his shoulders, its blood dripping down his back, mixing with the sweat of his mark. Kids scattered as he reached the Burnpit, a sunken plaza where Ruttenmark's pulse beat loudest. Torches cast shadows that danced like demons on cracked stone.
The squad sprawled around a fire, stray dogs claiming a corpse. Sura Lenhart sat cross-legged, stitching a kid's torn sleeve with a stolen needle, her braid loose, her caramel eyes catching the flames. Brik Roan lounged against a crate, his iron bat propped like a lover, the Iron Dog brand on his glove glinting.
Lune Roan sat apart, her silver eye sharp under her hood, the blind one shadowed, her knife scraping a whetstone in a steady rhythm. Doma Velk leaned on his cane, red-ringed eyes reading the fire, a crumpled prayer paper in his fist.
"Took you long enough, hunter," Sura said, smirking, her voice warm but her fingers trembling, like she was stitching more than cloth. "Starving us already?"
Brik grinned, hefting a too-large knife. "What if we eat one of them crows? You think prophecy tastes like chicken?"
Lune didn't look up, her whetstone scraping. "If it does, you'll choke on it like everything else."
Sura laughed, sharp. "Both of you shut up before you summon something."
Brik leaned back, grinning wider. "Summon what?" A beat. "Actually—nah, don't answer. I wanna be surprised."
Teon watched from a distance, saying nothing. Their noise was his only peace, a flicker of warmth in his chest, fragile as kindling. He dropped the boar by the fire, blood pooling in the dirt.
"Enough for a week," he said, voice low, heavy.
"Skin it, salt it, then we talk the job." The smuggling run—herbs, sigil scraps—wasn't new, but the Mayor's urgency was.
Teon didn't trust it, didn't trust the ledger Gregor clutched at last week's festival, his name circled in red.
Sura stood, brushing ash from her hands, her music box glinting at her hip, its melody long broken. She handed Teon a strip of meat, her fingers brushing his.
"You're quiet," she said, softer, searching. "Even for you."
"Just the hunt," he lied, his voice steady, hiding the whisper still echoing:
You were born to burn.
Doma's cane tapped once, hard. He stared into the fire, his voice a cracked whisper.
"You ever hear the old rhyme? 'When the crows forget their names, and the trees bleed fire, the Rotten will bloom, and history will lie.'" T
he flames flared, too high, too red, casting his face in shadow. He looked at Teon, his eyes sharp despite their weight.
"I read that verse once in a scroll that wasn't supposed to exist. When I quoted it to the Ash Clergy, they took my tongue for seven days. You should stop bleeding that mark into trees. Someone old might remember it."
Teon said nothing, but his mark burned, a silent answer. A shadow moved on the balcony above the Burnpit. Mayor Gregor, his silhouette heavy, ledger tucked under his arm. His eyes were nails, pinning Teon, measuring him.
The crows were there now, three of them, perched on the plaza's oak, their eyes black and endless. Ruttenmark was home, but it was rotting—and so was he. Beneath his skin, the mark throbbed once. A voice not quite his own murmured:
Soon.