The following days took on the thick, suffocating consistency of molasses. For Dylan, the camp, once a symbol of movent and purpose, had beco a cage under an open sky. Every palisade, every familiar tent, every known face reminded him of his new condition: that of an observed man, a specin dissected on borrowed ti.
Martissant's order had filtered through, transford and distorted by whispers. Dylan was no longer greeted in the sa way. Nods were quicker, glances evasive. So, the superstitious, stared at him with morbid curiosity, trying to catch a glimpse of the famous marks. Others, the pragmatists, avoided him outright. A risk was a risk, even if it wore the face of a forr brother-in-arms.
His first "evaluation" took place three days after the report. It happened not in the archives tent, but in a makeshift laboratory set up away from the main area, near the beast pens. The air slled of dried grass, hay, and acrid chemical traces.
Archivist Marcus, a gaunt man with ink-stained fingers, and Alchemist Valeria, a severe-faced woman with piercing eyes behind copper spectacles, awaited him. Their silence was more accusatory than all of Martissant's questions.
"Undress to the waist," Valeria ordered without preamble.
Dylan obeyed, his jaw clenched. The cold air of the tent made his skin prickle. The stigmata, usually discreet, seed darker, more alive under the harsh light of the oil lamps.
Marcus approached, a sketchbook in hand. He did not touch him, rely tracing precise lines, asuring angles, noting the slightest variations in color, the way the black veins seed to follow the paths of his tendons and blood vessels. His pencil scratched the paper, a dry, impersonal sound.
"Describe the sensation," Valeria asked, arms crossed. "At rest."
"Nothing," Dylan lied.
"And during its... activation?"
He closed his eyes for a mont, seeing the blade sink into his palm again. "A burn. Like molten tal in the veins. Then... power. A cold clarity."
Valeria nodded, taking notes on her own parchnt. "And after? Fatigue?"
"Yes."
"Proportional to the effort exerted?"
"More. Always more."
The Alchemist exchanged a look with Marcus. "The price of the exchange," she murmured, as if to herself.
Next ca the gem test. Valeria brought out a small fragnt of anima, third rank, and placed it on a table before him.
"Hold it," she ordered.
Dylan complied. The mont his fingers brushed the stone, it began to vibrate, emitting a faint whine. Cracks appeared on its surface, and a pale light escaped, absorbed by the skin of his hand. The stigmata on his forearm pulsed once, weakly, like a sated serpent.
Marcus scribbled frantically. Valeria watched, lips pursed.
"Interesting," she comnted. "You don't only draw from within. You also drain external energy. Like a parasite."
The word struck Dylan like a blow. Parasite. That's how they saw him.
The session lasted two hours. They made him repeat the gesture, asure the distance at which he could sense the gem, describe the sensation over and over. It was a dehumanizing, reductive process. He was no longer Dylan, the soldier, the friend, the lover. He was a phenonon. A set of reactions to be catalogued.
Stepping outside, the sun felt aggressive. He dressed hastily, hiding his skin and the marks that now defined him. He caught Elisa's gaze, stationed at a respectful distance. She said nothing, but her expression was eloquent: a mixture of compassion and suppressed anger.
The following days followed the sa pattern. The questions beca more pointed, more intrusive.
"And your father?" Marcus asked one day, without looking up from his parchnts. "Did he exhibit any... similar aptitudes?"
"No," Dylan replied, his throat tight. Unable to admit he ca from a world strange to these concepts of spiritual essence and stigmata.
"Alka ntioned your father," the Archivist pressed. "Why him, in your opinion?"
"I don't know."
"Was he involved in sothing? A cult? A secret society? Forbidden research?"
"He forged nails and horseshoes," Dylan growled, his patience at an end.
Marcus finally looked up, his gaze myopic behind his spectacles. "Sotis, the deepest secrets are hidden in the most absolute banality."
Frustration rose in Dylan, a slow poison. He was cut off from everything. Julius and Zirel were often on missions, their brief appearances at camp tinged with an awkwardness they didn't know how to express. Maggie was recovering slowly, but their relationship had beco a field of tender, painful ruins. They avoided the difficult subjects: his departure, his return, what he had beco. They spoke of the past, a safer territory, but every mory felt like a headstone.
Only Elisa remained a constant presence, an anchor in the chaos. She didn't handle him with kid gloves. One evening, as he trained alone, pounding a wooden post with contained rage, she watched him without a word. When he stopped, panting, his hands bloody despite the bandages, she handed him a waterskin.
"You're going to reduce it to splinters," she said, pointing at the post.
"That's the point," he replied between gulps.
"No. The point is to control yourself. Not to destroy yourself."
He turned to her, his face streaming with sweat. "And how do I do that, Elisa? How do I control a thing that feeds on my own pain? How do I control the fact that Martissant sees as an insect to be studied under a magnifying glass?"
"You show them they're wrong."
"How? By sitting quietly while they dissect ?"
"By being smarter than them," she retorted, her gaze sharpening. "Marcus and Valeria are looking for answers in your blood and bones. But the real answer might not be there. It might be in what Alka told you. In that link she has with you. Use this ti. Not to brood. To think. To prepare."
Her words resonated within him long after she had left. Prepare. Prepare for what? The next test? The next humiliation?
One night, while the camp slept and only the distant cry of sentinels disturbed the silence, Dylan couldn't find sleep. The stigmata on his arm itched, a strange, almost impatient sensation. He got up and left his tent, walking aimlessly through the deserted alleys.
He found himself near Valeria's laboratory. A light still burned inside. Driven by a morbid curiosity, he approached and slightly parted the canvas.
Valeria and Marcus were hunched over the table, surrounded by unfurled scrolls. In the center of the table, resting on a black velvet cloth, was the fragnt of obsidian that Alka had held. It pulsed with a faint, malevolent glow.
"... the correlation is undeniable," Marcus was saying, his voice excited. "The essence of the stone and that of the stigmata are of the sa nature. An identical energetic signature."
"It's not a curse, Marcus," Valeria murmured, her eyes fixed on the stone. "It's a symbiosis. Or an infestation. He is linked to the source, whatever it may be."
"And Alka?"
"She shares this link. She controls it, or at least, she influences the source which influences him. It's a loop. Dylan isn't a weapon. He's a... a conduit."
The word fell into the night's silence like a death sentence. Conduit. Not a man. A pipe. A channel for a power he didn't understand.
"Martissant isn't going to like this," Marcus sighed. "An unquantifiable risk."
"A risk, yes," Valeria admitted. "But also an opportunity. If we can understand this link... perhaps we can break it. Or... divert it to our advantage."
Dylan stepped back, his heart pounding. They weren't trying to help him. They were trying to understand the chanism in order to either deactivate it or use it. He was just an instrunt in the hands of his own camp, just as he had been in Alka's hands.
The revelation was an icy shock. There was nowhere to go. No camp saw him as a human being. He was an anomaly, a phenonon to be exploited or eliminated.
He lifted his eyes to the stars, indifferent and distant. The anger that had inhabited him turned into a cold, desperate resolve. Elisa was right. He had to prepare.
But not to prove anything to them.
For himself.
For the mont when the cage would, inevitably, break. And when that mont ca, he would no longer be the docile specin. He would be the storm they all feared.
The following nights wove themselves into a sequence of heavy hours, where the air itself seed to hesitate between sultriness and tal. Dylan moved through this camp like a man from whom his shadow had been stolen. He no longer walked: he glided, a ghost among the living, his skin taut with a tension that was no longer human. The murmurs followed him like eager gnats, and the points of light from the lanterns seed to dance over him, dissecting every corner of his soul.
He slept little. Truth be told, he no longer saw the point. Every waking mont brought him the sa nausea, the sa contradiction: he was still breathing, but less and less for himself.
So he decided, one night, to stop waiting.
To stop being what they expected him to be.
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