Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

Still the same.

Seven missed calls from Mara appeared beneath the date displayed. Marek called her. The call failed. He tried again. Nothing.

He opened their family’s group chat. Mara’s final message had been sent three minutes earlier.

”Do not forget the noodles.”

Marek typed, ”Are you home?”

He pressed send. The message remained pending.

His fingers tightened around the phone. He was about to call his mother when someone screamed from the opposite side of the laboratory.

A young research assistant named Elia stood beside the sample storage room. She had been one of the people who supervised the toilet experiment. Earlier, she had been the only one who did not laugh when the machine asked Marek to describe the consistency of his sample.

Now, her hands were pressed against her abdomen.

Professor Halden moved first. ”Elia!”

She collapsed before he reached her.

Marek put the phone in his pocket and crossed the laboratory. By the time he knelt beside her, blood had already reached the corner of her mouth.

There was no wound across her abdomen. No broken glass was nearby, and nothing had torn or punctured her clothes. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Her skin had begun turning pale.

”Internal bleeding,” Marek said.

Professor Halden crouched across from him. ”From what?”

”I do not know.”

”There is nothing on her.” Halden pushed her coat aside anyway. ”No entry, no bruising, nothing.”

Elia’s left hand slipped away from her abdomen. A red Mark curled around her wrist and extended along her forearm. Two curved shapes formed near its upper edge.

Should be Aries.

The Mark pulsed with her heartbeat. Something moved beneath the skin of her stomach. A red line traveled across her abdomen, stopped beneath her ribs, and struck outward.

Elia jerked. More blood entered her mouth.

Professor Halden reached for his phone. ”We need to bring her to the hospital.”

”The emergency line is not connecting.”

”We carry her downstairs.”

”She may not survive that long.”

Marek placed two fingers against the side of her neck. Her pulse was weakening. He did not know whether the Aries Mark had caused the injury or only marked it. Internal bleeding was easier to understand.

She was losing blood too quickly. Once her pressure dropped far enough, her organs would stop receiving enough oxygen. She would lose consciousness. If the bleeding continued after that, getting her downstairs would not solve anything.

Marek placed one hand against her abdomen.

The empty circle beneath his right collarbone became hot.

Then the sounds weakened. They did not stop. They moved farther away.

Professor Halden was still speaking. Marek could see his mouth moving, but the words stopped arriving. Someone shouted near the windows. An alarm continued somewhere behind him. Both remained distant.

Elia did not.

Her body became transparent beneath Marek’s hand.

Bones and organs appeared as dim outlines. Blood had collected inside her abdomen, and several vessels near her lower ribs were already damaged.

The red line remained visible among them.

It did not resemble anything Marek recognized from the human body. He could separate the blood vessels from the surrounding tissue and see where the damage had occurred. The red line belonged to none of them.

It resembled force given shape.

The line moved across Elia’s abdomen and struck the damaged tissue. Then it returned to its previous position.

Her Aries Mark pulsed. The movement repeated. Another blood vessel ruptured. Words appeared beside it. They were not displayed on any monitor.

[CONDITION DETECTED]

[INTERNAL RUPTURE]

[CAUSE: UNCONTROLLED FIRST MOTION]

[ISOLATION POSSIBLE]

Marek read the statements. Internal rupture was obvious. First Motion was not. Neither was isolation.

The red line moved again. Elia jerked beneath his hand, and her pulse weakened further.

Another message appeared.

[REMOVAL POSSIBLE.]

[SUITABLE VESSEL REQUIRED.]

Marek read the final line twice. Something had to take it, at least this was the way he understood what it meant. However, the words did not say what counted as a Vessel.

”How do I remove it?” he asked.

Professor Halden said something. Marek barely heard him.

The red force struck again.

Elia’s body reacted, but the force remained inside the same area. It did not spread through the laboratory. Each time the Aries Mark pulsed, the same movement repeated. That might have been the isolation the words referred to.

Marek could not test it.

Elia’s pulse continued falling.

The empty black circle beneath his right collarbone changed.

Nothing happened to his skin. The darkness simply became deeper, and Marek became aware of a space behind it.

That should not have been possible. The Mark occupied part of his shoulder. Whatever existed behind the black circle felt considerably larger than that.

It was empty.

Something had to receive the condition and hold it. With that said, removing danger did not mean the danger disappeared. He had learned that during his first year at the university. Poison removed from water still needed somewhere to be stored. Contaminated material taken from a patient still had to be sealed, labelled, and handled properly.

Moving a hazard did not destroy it.

Danger always went somewhere.

Marek looked at Elia. Her eyes were half-open but unfocused. Blood remained at the corner of her mouth, and her chest barely moved.

Seven missed calls from Mara were still inside his pocket. Her final message had been about noodles. He did not know what was happening outside the laboratory. He did not know why every device displayed Day 367. He did not understand his Mark or what had happened to the city.

None of that would change in the next minute.

But Elia would.

”Use me,” Marek said.

The red force stopped.

Professor Halden caught his wrist. ”Marek, what are you doing?”

”I do not know.”

It was true.

Marek had not given the Mark an instruction. He did not know enough about it to give one. He simply stopped resisting the empty space behind the black circle.

The red force left Elia.

Pain entered Marek’s palm. It traveled through his wrist and forearm before reaching the Mark beneath his collarbone.

One of the thirteen broken scales filled with dark-red light.

The sounds returned.

The alarm became loud again. Professor Halden’s voice returned with it, followed by the rest of the laboratory.

Marek lost his balance. Professor Halden caught him before his head struck the floor.

Elia gasped.

Her back arched once before settling against the tiles. She drew in one breath, then another. The blood at the corner of her mouth stopped spreading.

Professor Halden checked her pulse and remained there for several seconds.

”What did you do?” he asked.

Marek tried to answer.

Something struck inside his abdomen. His body tightened. The same force that had been moving inside Elia now moved beneath Marek’s ribs. Tissue tore somewhere along his side, and the pain forced the air from his lungs.

The dark-red scale tightened. The black circle pulled. The force left Marek’s abdomen and returned to the space behind his Mark.

The physical rupture remained for a moment before the Mark took that too.

Marek could still feel both inside the occupied scale.

The movement remained separate from the injury it had caused. Neither had disappeared. The force continued pressing against its confinement as though it were still trying to finish the movement that had begun inside Elia.

The scale was not healing him.

It was holding what had happened.

That distinction seemed important, but he could not think about it yet.

A faint point of light appeared between the occupied scale and the empty circle. It remained for less than a second before sinking beneath the black surface.

Marek did not notice.

Across the laboratory, every monitor flickered.

Day 367 disappeared.

New words replaced it.

[WORLD AWAKENING COMPLETE.]

[VEIL INTEGRITY: 0%.]

[WORLD DESIGNATION: EARTH.]

[CURRENT STATUS: NEWBORN WORLD.]

The screens went dark again.

One final message appeared.

[WELCOME TO THE PRIME CONTINUUM.]

No one inside the laboratory spoke.

Marek remained on the floor while the dark-red scale continued holding something that should have been inside Elia.

He understood one thing. He had not awakened as a healer.

He had become somewhere the wounded could send what was killing them.