Cain Nightwing's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The tattoo on Cain's forearm burned again, and he still did not know if it wanted to save him or kill him. He stopped on the path and clenched his fist. The black ink glowed hot under his skin, the same as every time he neared this hollow. He had worn these marks since birth. No one had ever told him what they meant. Now one of them was talking, and he could not read the words. Cain was tall, tanned, and built for fighting. His dark wings shifted behind him as the pain climbed his arm. He pressed his palm over the mark to smother the light. It burned brighter instead. Something ahead was calling the ink out of his flesh. A small fox trotted from the brush and stopped in his path. It had a dark spot ringing one eye. It looked at his arm, then up the trail, then back at his arm. It yipped once and ran three steps toward the hollow, then waited. "You want me to follow that," Cain said. The fox flicked its tail and went on. He followed. The trees opened, and he saw the cave. Its mouth gaped in the rock. Green and gold veins ran across the stone, and they brightened as he came closer, pulsing in time with the fire in his arm. The tattoo flared white. Cain fell to one knee, gasping. "You feel the pull." The voice was dry as old paper. Cain looked up. A robed skeleton stood at the cave mouth, face bare above a dark cape, bone fingers folded. Cain knew this one. The prophet had spoken to him in dreams and never once given a straight answer. The fox curled at the skeleton's feet like it belonged there. "Siridian." Cain forced himself upright. "Make it stop." "I cannot," Siridian said. "The mark is not sick. It is awake. This place woke it." A bone hand lifted toward the glowing stone. "The one who cut these marks into you stood here. The stone remembers the same hand." Cain stared at the light in his skin, then at the light in the rock. They matched. "Then it beckons. It isn't warning me." "It does both," Siridian said. "It calls you toward the truth. It burns because the truth will cost you." Cain looked into the dark cave. The pain in his arm eased to a steady pull, like a hand closing around his wrist. He could turn back and live not knowing. He had done that his whole life. He was done. "Then I go in," he said. Siridian stepped aside. "Guide yourself well. I can only walk behind." Cain crossed into the mouth of the cave. The tattoo stopped burning the moment he entered. It settled into a low, warm hum, guiding him deeper. Behind him, the fox followed, and the prophet came last. The truth about his marks waited somewhere in that dark, and now nothing stood between Cain and it.