Tae's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The glowing lines still wrapped Tae's wrist. He looked at them, then at the woman who had put them there. She stood in his living room like she owned it. Copper hair. Marks of light down her arms and face. Power came off her in a cold pressure that filled the glass room. Tae had felt gods weaker than this. He did not care. He wanted his couch back. He laughed. The sound was flat, almost bored. "You think a mark holds me?" he said. "I have carried worse and dropped it." "That mark is older than your patience," the woman said. "It answers to the thing eating the realms. Not to you." Tae stepped toward her. He raised his marked arm and spoke like a man ending an argument. "Be gone," he said. "The mark leaves my body. I say so, and it is so." Heat flared up his arm. The lines burned brighter, then peeled off his skin like water shaken from a hand. They floated free, spinning in the air. Tae smiled. For the first time in the room, he looked awake. The woman's face did not fall. It sharpened. "You broke it," she said. "You should not have been able to." "I do what I want," Tae said. "Now leave." The floating mark did not fade. It gathered into a tight knot of light and shot toward the wide window. The glass rang. Cracks spread across it in a spinning pattern. Then the window went dark, and something on the far side began to press through. "You freed yourself," the woman said. "So the mark went home. It just told the thing where you are." Tae looked at the darkness bleeding through his glass wall. "Where I live." "Where you live," she agreed. She reached into her belt and drew out a small round core. It glowed white and blue in her palm, bright as a trapped star. "This is the only thing that has ever hurt it. I brought it for you. I did not expect to need it this soon." A sound came through the wall. Not a voice. A pull, like the room itself was being drawn thin. The city lights below flickered and died, floor by floor, coming up toward the penthouse. Tae had wanted quiet. He had broken the mark to get it. Instead he had called the one thing that fed on the strong straight to his door. He looked at his dead game screen. He looked at the darkness swallowing his home. He held out his hand for the glowing core. "Give it here," he said. "It's already in my house. I'm not moving." The woman placed the core in his palm. It was warm, and it hummed against his skin. The glass wall shattered inward, and the dark came into the room.