Fated Fragment

During his first week, Lenny fed Soren pieces of information-small fragments of how the camp worked and what to avoid.Slowly, the bigger picture came together.

The laborers had no background. No names worth remembering. They were the ones society forgot, the ones no one would miss. Their existence boiled down to a simple cycle: go into the cave, harvest minerals, go to sleep. Repeat.

Soren was one of them now.

People would notice if his family vanished. But him? They might not even remember he existed in the first place. He was always the one missing from their outings, their conversations, their lives. Slowly, people forgot he existed at all.

All the muscles in Soren's body ached from swinging a heavy pickaxe-even if his muscles weren't visible. A relentless week of trying to understand everything, of mindlessly breaking apart stone under the sun. The nights weren't any easier.

Sleep never lasted long. Every now and then, harrowing sounds seeped into the silence. Metal swiping through flesh. A muffled scream nearby. A shuffle of footsteps, then silence. The kind of silence that felt permanent.

But what unsettled Soren the most wasn't the pain, or even the unseen violence-it was the people.

They were changing.

In two ways.

Some of them were slipping-mentally breaking apart, piece by piece. They started muttering strange things, whispering to themselves when they thought no one was listening. Others would stare into the abyss for too long, their gaze fixed on something that wasn't there.

And then, there were the faces.

New ones kept appearing. But somehow, the total number of people never seemed to change.

Soren noticed it quickly. The workers around him weren't growing in size, yet new faces arrived every day. Some looked just like others he'd seen before-but younger, healthier, almost untouched by the labor. Others had the same expressions, the same mannerisms, but their eyes... their eyes weren't the same. Something was just slightly... off.

He had asked Lenny about it once.

"Why do I keep seeing new people, but the number of us never changes?"

Lenny chewed thoughtfully on his stale bread before shrugging. "Yeah. People don't last long in here."

Nothing else. No further explanation. As if that answer was enough.

Soren didn't ask again.

He already had enough to worry about.

That night, Soren left his tent and walked toward the water outlet positioned in the middle of the camp. His shift was always during the day. The camp felt different at night. Fewer people wandered the grounds, but the hacking sounds never stopped.

As he neared the outlet, Soren noticed a man.

A dark silhouette, swaying lightly from side to side. He was humming a tune-soft, almost joyous-far too out of place in this hellish place.

Soren felt something shift in his head.

For the first time, his thoughts felt intrusive. Almost like they weren't his own to begin with.

Joyous tune?Pfft.

Are you entitled to it, old man?

Only if I had a knife could I stop that ear-bleeding tune of yours.

Yes, a knife. What a marvelous idea.

The thoughts came in as suddenly as they left. They weren't his. They didn't feel like his.

And when he tried to recall them, it felt like trying to remember the details of a dream.

The old man at the fountain stilled and let out a soft chuckle.

Soren's thoughts snapped back into place, like a candle blown out before it could burn too bright.

The man spoke in a low voice, just above a whisper-like sharing a secret meant only for Soren.

"The mark has festered."

Soren narrowed his marble-black eyes, focusing on the man's shadowed features-but the details refused to take shape.

"The mark?" His voice came out more questioning than intended.

The man chuckled again, softer this time."Strange, isn't it? You feel it... but it isn't yours."

"Slowly, it takes control."

Soren stepped forward, his voice sharper than intended."Stop the riddles, old man. Just tell me."

The old man didn't even turn to face him.

His voice lingered, carrying something unsettling in its weight."You've felt it, haven't you? Something new. Burning within you."

Soren's breath hitched. His fingers twitched as he stared down at his hands, his mind racing.

Something new?

The moment he lifted his gaze-the old man was gone.

No footsteps. No sound. As if he had never been there to begin with.

Soren let out a slow breath. His thoughts clawed at the edges of reason.

Mysterious old man with riddles... Maybe I'm actually losing it.

He turned his gaze to the sky.

The moon hung above, surrounded by countless stars-just as it had every night before.

And yet... the brightness they cast felt different tonight.Softer. Gentler. As if, for the first time, the sky wasn't just watching-but acknowledging him.

Like a missing piece that had been buried in the haystack-suddenly glowing, begging to be noticed.

All these things kept happening around Soren, yet he couldn't allow himself to focus on just one. His attention had to remain divided, fixed on the most important points.

What happened to his parents-and why? It was too calculated. Every moment had been too precise, too deliberate. The timing wasn't random. It had to be planned. There were a million questions surrounding that night, but no answers.

And then, there was Auren.

Soren never saw Auren die. Not with his own eyes. That alone gave him a reason to believe he was still alive. The thought opened the floodgates, more questions racing through his mind.

His brother-Auren. Is he alive?

Where is he?

If Soren had been taken alive, wouldn't Auren have been as well?

For the past week, Soren had searched for a familiar face in the crowd, hoping to catch even a glimpse of the tall, lean, blonde-haired man. But no matter how many faces passed him by, Auren was nowhere to be found.

Neither was the old man-the one who cloaked himself in riddles.It was as if neither of them had ever been there.As if the old man had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination.The reality of it all was gut-wrenching.

And, like salt on an open wound, the old man had left him with something worse-new thoughts.

Marked.

Marked, as in my soul is like the Awakened's before they changed?

If that's true... then maybe it explains everything.

Humanity was divided-categorized by the same ranking the Awakened had given themselves.

At the very bottom were Dormant people-the untouched, the ones who lived their lives unaware of the horrors lurking within the Havens.

But some of them weren't normal.

Some of them were infected.

They were called Marked.

Their souls... claimed before they ever realized it.

Soren shifted his thoughts away, lifting his gaze as he sat at the same wooden table as before.

His marble-black eyes took in the surroundings. The same. Dull, morbid, and as harrowing as ever.

But there was something new. A feeling he hadn't noticed before.

It radiated from the center of his slender chest-a warmth, steady and pulsing, like a quiet ember buried beneath cold ash.

Not unpleasant. Not invasive. Just... there.

Steady. Waiting.

But alongside it, something else stirred.

Cold. Sharp. Cunning. Uncaring.

The warmth flickered-persistent, patient.

The cold curled around it, a whisper of frost, creeping through his veins like something biding its time.

And yet... they did not battle. They did not resist.

They simply endured.

Instead, they moved in tandem-two forces racing along separate paths.

When the warmth surged forward, the world breathed with it.

The air lightened. Colors sharpened.

Even the weight on his chest felt... lesser.

But when the cold reclaimed its ground...

Everything dimmed.

The world around him dulled-lifeless, rejecting his very presence.

Soren knew this feeling.

He had once found comfort in solitude-in the quiet stillness of the world around him.

But this was different.

This silence wasn't chosen.

It was imposed.

Suffocating.

A silence that settled over everything like a weight, like a force-something absolute, something inescapable.

Then, the wind carried a whisper-but no one spoke.

"Do you remember this... this feeling?"

Startled, Soren jolted, his head snapping up as his eyes darted around.

No one was there.

No shadow lingering beside him, no breath close enough to whisper in his ear.

Just empty space.

And yet, the words... they had felt so close.

The wind carried them away just as quickly as they had arrived, leaving nothing behind.

Nothing had changed.

Soren tried to recall the exact words, clinging to them like fragile threads.

But the more he reached for them, the more they unraveled-fading like a dream upon waking.

"Remember... feeling..."

He muttered, lost in thought.

The whisper faded.

The wind carried it away, but something lingered.

The Mark. The feeling.

With a slow breath, Soren stood, his body moving before his mind had truly caught up.

The cave loomed ahead, waiting.

"Tch. Let's get this over with."

His voice was bitter, but his feet carried him forward anyway.