The porridge still sat heavy in Sylas's stomach by the time he stepped into the village square.
The morning light was soft, golden, catching in the threads of drying linen hung across homes, glinting off the damp cobblestones. Vendors traded goods as usual bundles of herbs, smoked meats, bright fruit preserves. Children darted between carts, playing some game only they understood.
But every time Sylas moved, he felt eyes.
Not hostile. Not cruel.
Just uncertain eyes.
They flicked to his sleeve, where the mark sat hidden just beneath the fabric. Whispers passed like smoke.
"He was marked last night, wasn't he?"
"No one knows by what."
"Something... shifted. Didn't feel like any of the gods I've seen."
Sylas kept his head down, but the words clung to him, echoing what he already feared.
------------------------------
He found Elder Lira on the steps of the temple, her robes fluttering gently in the morning breeze, already instructing a group of young initiates. Her voice was calm, her tone commanding and still, the pillar of balance she had always been.
When she saw Sylas approaching, she dismissed the youths with a soft gesture and waited.
"You've come to ask," she said.
Sylas hesitated. "I've come to... not be alone."
That earned a small smile. "Fair enough."
They sat side by side on the stone steps. Sylas picked at a crack between the stones with his boot while she watched the sky.
"You're not the first to receive something unknown," she said. "But it has been... a long time."
Sylas looked at her sharply. "Then you've seen this before?"
She shook her head slowly. "Not exactly. Not in this form. But the feeling of it... the weight of being marked by something old, something forgotten? That I have seen."
A wind brushed over them. His sleeve shifted, and the faint flicker of the mark pulsed through the fabric. Still moving. Still restless.
Lira continued, "Even the gods do not know everything, Sylas. Especially now. The old powers stir in strange ways."
"That's not comforting."
"No," she agreed. "But it is truth."
Sylas's fingers tightened around his tunic. "They think I was a mistake. That something went wrong."
"They?" Lira echoed. "Do you mean the villagers? Or yourself?"
He looked away.
"You were marked," she said gently. "You were chosen. That is the only certainty. And now, your task is to live in a way that justifies it. Not to them, but to yourself."
------------------------------
The forge still clanged steadily near the center of the market, where the heat poured out in waves. Sylas found Eiran there, shirt off, arms dusted in soot as he drove a hammer into glowing metal.
His brother looked up when he approached, pausing only long enough to set the iron aside. The silence between them stretched.
"You okay?" Eiran finally asked.
Sylas shrugged. "Define okay."
Eiran nodded. "Fair."
They stood there for a long moment, the heat of the coals pressing between them like a question neither had asked aloud.
"I know you're trying to figure it all out," Eiran said. "But you don't have to do it for Father. Or for anyone."
Sylas glanced over.
"The mark is yours," Eiran added. "Not Father's. Not the village's. Yours."
Sylas didn't reply at first.
Then: "He wants me to earn it. Like I was handed a blade I didn't deserve."
"He thinks everyone has to be tested."
"I think I already was."
Eiran let out a quiet huff of agreement. "Then hold it like it's yours."
And just like that, his brother went back to hammering, the sound like a heartbeat against Sylas's ribs.
------------------------------
Corvina found him near the riverbank.
She was perched on the roots of a willow tree, skipping flat stones across the water, her braid swinging gently behind her. When she saw him, she didn't rise—just patted the space beside her.
Sylas sat, watching the ripples chase her last throw.
"They're afraid of you," she said plainly.
"I know."
She nodded. "Good. That means you haven't lied to yourself yet."
He looked at her, brow furrowed.
"I see it all the time," Corvina said. "People who are marked pretending they've figured it out. Like the mark gives them meaning. Like they're finished now."
"You're not?" he asked.
She raised her sleeve slightly. The raven-mark gleamed beneath her skin.
"This?" she said. "It's a start. That's all. It doesn't tell me who I am, it just tells me someone thought I might be worth the effort."
Sylas stared down at his arm, where the mark twisted again, settling for a moment into something like a paw print before it bled into smoke.
"It's not the mark that matters," Corvina said. "It's what you do next."
Sylas let that settle.
And for the first time, it didn't sting.
------------------------------
A memory tugged at him then of Elenya, the Deer-marked healer who had spoken during the preparations the night before.
"The gods may grant power, but it is humans who shape it."
"The gods give, but they do not define. That choice will always be yours."
Back then, he hadn't really heard her.
Now, it echoed.
He walked through the village in silence, not looking at anyone, not needing to.
He was walking toward something. He didn't know what.
But it was forward.
------------------------------
As the sun dipped low, casting the village in copper and orange, Sylas found himself at the edge of the square once more.
There, on the same bench from days past, sat the old man. The one without a mark. His eyes followed the clouds drifting overhead like he had nowhere better to be.
Sylas slowed as he approached.
The man didn't look at him. He just said, "Still worried they'll never understand you?"
Sylas stopped. "Should I not be?"
His gaze shifted now, sharp as a blade.
Sylas stood there, stunned.
Then, finally, he smiled.
Just a little.
------------------------------
That night, in the silence of his room, the coyote cub curled against his leg.
His mark flickered quietly beneath the sleeve.
Still shifting. Still laughing.
But Sylas no longer felt afraid of it.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he whispered into the dark: "Then I'll make my own path too."
And for the first time ever_
He meant it.