The moment I opened the bedroom door, the Auditor’s Mark flared.
It burned purple and violent beneath my ribs, reacting to the split-self resonance that still hummed through my bones. The flare sent a shockwave through the hallway, invisible but unmistakable. Ward glyphs flickered along the walls. The golden patterns that had always welcomed my presence stuttered and froze mid-glow.
Lilith was beside me, one hand steadying my shoulder.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“The Mark,” I gasped. “It is reacting to what I became.”
We stepped into the main hall of Corinthian, and the rejection was immediate. The wards pulled back from me as if I were no longer the person who had walked through these doors hours before. The building that had always hummed like a cathedral made of light and old trust now felt like a creature pulling back from my touch. The walls flickered with pulled threads, their golden patterns stuttering into static. Even the windows had a heartbeat that did not match mine. Something inside me had changed shape. The building knew it.
Eizek stood near the ruined hearth, jaw tight, one hand pressed to the trembling lattice of wards above it. His other arm was exposed, and the lines of tattooed script on his forearm flowed like wet ink, sliding into different arrangements every time he blinked. He was scanning the wardlines, his expression growing grimmer.
“Your signature,” he said without turning to me. “The Auditor’s Mark flare during the resonance split. You are registering on three frequencies now. None of them match what you were before.”
“They do not recognize you anymore,” he told me, finally meeting my eyes. His voice was all gentleness and razor-wire. “The identity-shear shifted your signature across multiple bands. If you stay, the Hall may try to purge what it thinks is an intruder.”
“It thinks I am something else,” I said. “Something that shouldn’t be in the room.”
“You are something else,” he answered.
Lilith remained at my side, grounding me as the walls rippled again. She placed a hand on my shoulder, protective and steady.
“There is a distress pulse coming from Salem,” she said. “One of the resistance runners. I cannot hear the words, but the rhythm is urgency.”
Bramble approached with a look caught between prayer and panic. He held a cracked glass talisman, its sigils pulsing in a slow strobe. Darius sat wrapped in a blanket near the great window, his sister beside him, both watching me with cautious gratitude and something that might have been fear. They were still recovering. Still weak. But they were watching.
“The pulse is tied to a Codex fragment,” Bramble said. “Not one of the original seventeen. Something related, but hidden. Someone extracted it years ago. Camilla’s name is on the resonance.”
My throat tightened.
“So we move,” I said.
Nathaniel stood near the grand staircase with Alrik and his trolls. Gray spoke quietly with him, their silhouettes framed by the fractured light. The warriors already carried rucksacks and bundled weapons, preparing for their own mission north. Another Codex fragment. Another lead. Another risk.
“You take care of yourself,” Nathaniel said as I passed him. His hand brushed my arm, leaving warmth behind. “This place is yours to return to, I’ll get the wards recalibrated to recognize your changing signature.”
“I will hold you to that,” I told him.
Alrik bowed, a soldier’s gesture filled with the gravity of ancient wars. Gray gave me a nod that said things he would never speak aloud. The trolls rumbled their farewells in low voices that vibrated through the floorboards.
Then they were gone, heading for Plattsburgh.
Bramble stayed behind with Nathaniel, Kratch, and the freed imps, who were still clustered in small groups near the windows, blinking through shock and new freedom. Kratch squeezed my wrist once in silent warning. Do not let the Codex swallow you. He did not have to say it out loud.
Eizek, Lilith, Mercury, Ilyse, and Loki followed me outside.
The cold slapped the heat out of my face the second the door shut behind us. Snow from the earlier squall had not melted. The sky was a bruise. Winter had come early, with no warning.
My Jeep sat under a film of frost, the runic ward I had carved on the hood still intact, although its edges had begun to curl like burnt paper. The Unmaking Mark on my wrist pulsed with interest, as if enjoying the cold.
Mercury hopped into my lap the moment I sat behind the wheel. Lilith slid into the passenger seat, boots braced like she was ready for a fight. Ilyse and Loki climbed into the back, both wrapped in quiet tension. Eizek lingered outside.
“You are not coming with us,” I said.
His expression was unreadable.
“I will meet you there,” he replied. “My path is shorter when I do not pretend to be bound by roads.”
Lilith snorted under her breath, but he vanished before she could sharpen the sound into words.
I turned the key. The Jeep growled awake, lights flickering over ice, exhaust curling like breath in winter. My marks flared under my sleeves, each one reacting in its own language. The silver one whispered. The purple one burned cool. The Codex script across my hand shifted in tiny rearrangements, like a dream trying to remember itself.
I glanced back at , Ilyse, “It would be safer for you to stay here. Things always get complicated around me.”
Ilyse leaned forward, her eyes following the movement under my skin.
“You think I am staying behind?” she said. “Your mark is singing in Chorus-notation. If it goes dissonant again, I am the only one here who can stabilize the soundscape.”
When Ilyse spoke, her voice held a faint doubling, as if something else was layering words beneath her own. Script flickered across her pupils, bright and geometric. The resonance-infused tone made the air shimmer slightly.
“You are here because you can hear things I cannot,” I told her.
“Exactly. And also because if you die, whatever is inside you gets loose. None of us want to see what happens then.”
Ilyse blinked hard, as if waking from a dream. “What did I say?” she asked, looking confused. “I do not remember... it felt like someone was speaking through me.”
Loki grunted agreement from beside her. He had been an imp long enough to know the smell of catastrophic magic.
I shifted the Jeep into gear and pulled away from Corinthian Hall.
The building shrank in the rear-view mirror, its lights flickering in uneven rhythms, as if watching us leave and trying to decide whether to mourn or attack.
I kept the Jeep in normal drive, ignoring the subtle hum of its realm-crossing capacity beneath the steering wheel. Reality was already fractured around me. One more veil crossing and I might tear something that wouldn’t heal. Better to take the long way. Five hours up I-95, through snow that was just starting to stick to the roads.
Philadelphia gave way to highway lights and industrial sprawl. The snow fell heavier as we passed through the city limits, coating abandoned factories and strip malls in white that looked cleaner than anything had a right to be. Lilith sat in the passenger seat, quiet, occasionally touching the window like she was testing whether glass was still solid. Mercury curled in my lap, purring in Camilla’s cadence, a sound that should have been comforting but just reminded me how many ghosts I carried.
The highway stretched north through Pennsylvania darkness. Towns appeared and disappeared, brief clusters of light against the storm. By the time we hit the Massachusetts border, the snow was coming down hard enough that the wipers struggled to keep pace. The world reduced to a tunnel of white and the occasional red glow of taillights ahead. My hands ached from gripping the wheel. My marks burned in rotating cycles, each one reminding me of debts unpaid and choices that kept compounding.
The road to Salem stretched ahead in a long, silent corridor of snow and shadow.
As the Jeep approached the seam between worlds, reality began to waver. The pavement cracked.
Through the translucent membrane between realms, I caught a glimpse of Eizek. He walked across a floating bridge made of script and shadow, moving through an adjacent layer of existence. His silhouette was composed entirely of darkness and flowing ink. He did not speak. He only looked at me for a heartbeat before the pathway folded him out of view, confirming he was en route through means that had nothing to do with roads or mortal travel.
Reality blinked.
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