Dirt, damp and cold. A drop of blood warmed her back, and she was almost grateful for it.
A cool breeze sheered across her like a blade of ice. The constant sound of: Clip clop, clip clop,
clip clop... A horse? It must have been. Then she felt the rolling of wheels over hardened mud.
Her hand fell below, and she realised she was lying down. It must have been wood. Damp planks,
stained with blood and rain. The cool night air - lit only by the half-moon and its sister - captured
her breath as clouds of mist.
There was only so much she could do to keep her grasp on consciousness. She focused as best
she could on the thousand stars above. But with each came a thousand images, framed paintings
of impossible events, that all flooded her mind. Dreams between breaths of awareness, each
more fevered and foolish than the last.
The stars morphed into a blacksmith forging a heart-quenched dagger; into pointed teeth sunk
into corrupted flesh; into great dragons and little dragon riders; into knights, black and blue; into
cities of flame and walls made pyres. She dreamt of starless skies and godless heavens.
Then the wagon skipped over a rock, and she was awake yet again. Ashtik drew on what little will
remained within her to roll her head awkwardly aside.
There was the girl. Steel eyes welled with tears. Beautiful white hair flowing to her hips and the
same shared deeply tan skin gifted from their mother.
Evara. Her baby sister. Her world.
"Ev...?" Ashtik meekly called. It was all she could manage; something had sapped her strength
and her voice. The young girl dove from the carriage into the dirt at Ash's side. A great splash of
hardened mud sullied her pristine dress, but for once she didn't seem to care.
Don't move, Ash," her sister ordered, her voice dripping with worry.
"What-" Ash tried to say. "-What happened?"
"Something struck you," Evara timidly replied.
"Something?"
"I know not what it was. A... starlight wisp? " Evara suggested.
Her attention fell from Ash's gaze and towards her wound. She removed the bandage for a
moment and Ash caught a glimpse of the blood-stained cloth that had been used. Evara's face
drained of colour once it was removed, though she didn't speak.
"What is it?" Ash asked. Her response was not in words but in action.
Her steel eyes erupted into golden flame. Evara's hands outshone the stars as she focused on
Ashtik's wounds. She seemed to exert a frantic effort into her magics, though relief yet eluded
them both once she finished. She erupted yet again and placed even greater agony into the
wound.
"Stop," Ash weakly demanded, knowing full well what would come next if she didn't.
Evara collapsed atop of Ash. It was expected, the common result of her using her power, though
what she had been so intent on healing illuded Ash. Though she was fatigued, she felt uninjured.
Had the blood not been so obviously pooled around her, she'd have doubted she had so much as
a scratch on her body.
Ash gathered herself and sat against the rolling cart, cradling the newly sleeping Evara in her
arms.... And then she understood.
It swirled within her. It ebbed and flowed through every vein and artery. It saturated her skin and burned away all impurities. Where blood ought to have gushed, a strange mound of black and
purple veins erupted.
They spread like an infection, rapidly swarming her skin as though searching for something.
Evara tried to clean the wound, though it had no effect. Then it seemed she had attempted to
cauterise where the flesh had been sundered. Despite the burns around the purple mound, the
severed flesh refused to be re-fused.
The shard had parted the skies, split light into new and impossible colours... and it had torn
muscle and bone to shreds. It didn't hurt, though. It didn't even bleed anymore. Tentacles and
tendrils of purple corruption spread across her like a cancer. From the shard above her heart, it
crept along. The furthest of its vile feelers made its way down her belly and across her legs.
Another rushed her throat until it found her head, and all stored within it. Her entire body must
have been consumed in putrid death before it stopped. Once its spread had found every inch of
her, it began to consolidate.
She saw it cede her legs and felt it loosen around her neck. It drew the corruption from her
extremities and pushed deep into her left hand. The purple deepened in her palm to an abyssal
black as it seemed to retreat from the rest of her body.
Even the shard seemed to drain. Where purple and black tentacled veins had sprawled from the
embedded black steel, nothing remained. Not the shard, nor a scar where her flesh had been so
violently torn asunder. Perfect smooth skin had been restored, even down to her tan lines and
freckles.
"How do you feel?" Evara sleepily asked, her head still cradled within Ash's arms. There was no
honest answer for the fearful girl, so Ash wiped her little tears away and lied.
"I'm well. Don't worry." She stroked a stray hair from her little sister's face, and then her heart
sank to her belly, and fear gripped her.
She saw her hand, and the deathly mark it bore.
"What the fuck?" She gasped. She threw her hand as far from her face as it would go. She slid
further from it, as though it weren't attached to her. The panic denied her breath as her eyes
affixed to the swirling black blaze that lay just beneath the surface of her skin. The deeper she
gazed, the deeper the mark seemed to be.
At a glance, it seemed to rest atop the skin like a tattoo; lock your gaze to it and you might find a
well of abyss deeper than her hand could physically allow.
"What is that?" She cried. Ash clawed at the blackened skin as if to dig the mark out. She'd have
torn the flesh away with a blade, if she had one to hand.
"Calm yourself," Evara said, though her tone suggested she was just as panicked. "We're nearly
home. The Elder will know what to do."
The words froze in her like tears in a snowstorm. She focused on them; on the little voice that
spoke them. It gave her a measure of strength, though it didn't break her abominable leer. Her
gaze never quivered from her hand. It remained outstretched as she stood, and as Evara guided
her along the forest floor.