They called it The Dimming.
No one knew exactly when it started—only that one day, the sun stopped rising properly. The light didn't vanish, not entirely. It just... faded. Like a candle drowning in wax. The sky turned the color of a bruise, and the shadows grew teeth.
Then the Hollows came.
At first, they looked almost human. From a distance, you could mistake them for survivors—starving, desperate things shuffling through the ruins. Up close, you saw the truth. Their limbs stretched too far. Their faces cracked like dried clay. Their mouths didn't open—they split, peeling apart like fruit rinds to reveal rows of needle teeth. They didn't speak. They didn't scream.
They just took.
Warmth. Sound. Flesh.
The world burned in less than a year.
When the cities fell, the ones who survived fled underground. Metro tunnels. Basements. Government bunkers built for wars no one remembered. That's where they found us.
The Duskbound.
We thought they were soldiers at first. Maybe scientists. Something official.
We were wrong.
They wore masks—smooth, matte black, with a single red slit where eyes should've been. No names. No ranks. They moved in perfect silence, taking what they wanted. Food. Weapons.
"Testing," they called it.
It wasn't voluntary.
They came to our bunker on the third night of the new moon. Floodlights. Guns. They didn't knock. A girl named Maren—twelve years old, her hair still in sleep braids—tried to run.
"Subject attempting escape. Neutralize."
They shot her in the leg and dragged her off screaming.
Me? I was seventeen, and I stayed quiet.
Until the Mark appeared.
It started with heat. My arm burned like I'd dipped it in molten lead. I woke gasping, my sister Nia staring at me from the other cot, her eyes wide with terror. My skin glowed—a black eclipse spreading across my forearm like ink spilled on fire. I clawed at it. I screamed.
That's when the Duskbound returned.
No words. No emotion.
"Subject exhibiting Mark manifestation. Administer suppressants."
Just a needle to the neck—and darkness.
I woke in a transport cage with four others. No windows. Just flickering red lights and the stink of fear. The boy across from me rocked back and forth, whispering,
"It's not real, it's not real."
The woman next to him had a Mark like a twisted vine creeping up her neck.
Then the voice crackled over the intercom:
"Five Marked subjects. Classify and assign. Bring them to the Riftline."
That was the first time I heard the word.
Riftline.
They weren't here to protect us.
They were using us.
We were weapons.
And me?
I didn't care what they wanted.
I only cared about one thing:
Getting back to Nia.
Even if it meant becoming the monster the world feared.