The black lines were already burning across Eli's wrist before he knew he had pushed too hard. He crouched in the woods, one hand full of hazelnuts, the other pressed to a rabbit that would not stop bleeding. He had reached for shadow magic to numb its wound. Stupid. His sickness answered the way it always did. Dark lines crawled up his arm like cracks in ice. He dropped the rabbit and gasped. He never felt the danger coming until the pain was already there. That blind spot had once dropped him mid-fight, and he had woken alone on the ground, tasting blood, finishing that fight with no one at his side. Eli sat until the lines faded. His skin looked normal again, but his hands still shook. Twenty-three years old, a shadow-mage who couldn't trust his own body. He needed to learn the warning signs. He needed to know how far he could push before his blood turned to fire. Alone in these woods, no one would teach him that. He gathered his nuts and stood. That was when he saw the pine. It rose taller than the trees around it. A paper poster hung stapled to its trunk, curled at the corners from rain. Eli stepped close and read the black letters. Cotton Hollow Guild. Now seeking new adventurers. All experience levels welcome. Inquire at the Cotton Hollow Guild Hall. He read it twice. A guild meant fighters. Fighters meant people who used their bodies hard and lived. Maybe someone there had seen a sickness like his. Maybe someone could teach him to feel the edge before he crossed it. "They might have people who train magic," Eli said out loud. His voice sounded strange in the empty woods. He pressed his thumb over his wrist, where the lines had burned minutes ago. "If I learn the signs, I stop waking up on the ground." He pulled the poster free and folded it into his coat. His right hand did it first, the same hand that reached for his right dagger in a tight spot. Old habit. He turned the fold over and thought about the road ahead. He did not know where the guildhall stood. He did not know if strangers would take a small man with red eyes and cursed skin. He knew the curse spreading through this region made everyone wary of anything marked. His lines could look like that curse to frightened eyes. He decided anyway. "I'll pack food. I leave in a few days." Eli walked home with the poster against his chest. For the first time, his goal had a place to go. He would find the guild. He would find someone who understood what made his sickness flare. He would learn to read his own limit before it read him. Behind him, the rabbit lay still in the leaves. He had not saved it. He turned his mind forward instead, toward the hollow, and started planning what to carry.