Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

The shelter came back around Marek in pieces. Concrete replaced the black floor beneath his shoes, followed by broken chairs, torn curtains, and cracked windows, while the last fragments of Sareth’s hall disappeared from the walls. Something warm and metallic coated the back of Marek’s tongue when he swallowed, but Sareth was still standing near the entrance as though losing the hall had only inconvenienced him.

The six former detainees were slower to recover. Dario kept one hand against the back of a chair until the room stopped shifting. Nadia rubbed her arms as if she could still feel the stairwell around her, while Kellan stared at the floor for another second before finally looking up. Silas said nothing. Rafe had already moved closer to the entrance, and Eren was watching Sareth instead of anyone else.

The curiosity had disappeared from Sareth’s face, and Nadia noticed. ”I think he liked us more when he could blame all of us at once.”

Sareth did not react. Black lines were already spreading from his shadow again.

Rafe pointed toward a gap between two spreading lines. ”There.”

Rhovan moved at the same time. A narrow burst of gold crossed the floor, but his aura remained drawn tight around him instead of spreading through the shelter.

”No grand display?” Marek asked.

”I have no intention of giving him the same route twice.”

The light struck only where Rafe had pointed, forcing one black route aside before fading.

Rhovan kept his attention on Sareth. ”Dario, stop anything that gets past us. Eren, keep pushing his routes away. Nadia, make him question where the next attack is coming from. Kellan—”

”I know. Wait for Rafe.”

Rhovan looked almost disappointed that he had been denied the rest of the instruction. ”Good.”

”Marek?” Dario asked.

”I’ll keep my Cases small. If I try to take all of that at once, stop me.”

”You won’t get that far.”

They moved before Sareth could reshape the room around them. Rafe kept watching the floor instead of Sareth, shifting whenever the black lines began closing around their position and signaling Kellan toward whatever opening remained. Kellan followed without hesitation. He struck through the opening Rafe gave him, and Eren fixed a Libra boundary along the attack before Sareth could bend its course elsewhere.

Dario was already there when Sareth turned aside. He drove both hands into the Scorpius Astrant and forced him backward through the broken entrance, and the others followed them outside.

Debris from the shelter littered the road as the fight pushed farther outside. The remaining civilians stayed close to the entrance, but fewer eyes followed Rhovan now. He kept his aura close, sending out gold only when someone needed an opening.

Rafe shifted and pointed. ”Right.”

A moment later, Nadia sent his voice from the opposite side.

”Right.”

Sareth turned toward the second call, and Kellan came at him from the direction Rafe had actually marked.

Sareth caught Kellan’s strike, but Dario was already close enough to drive him back before he could recover. Sareth tried to turn toward the opening Eren had left behind, only to find the Libra boundary somewhere else. By then, Rafe had moved too.

They were no longer trying to overpower him. Every time Sareth adjusted to one of them, someone else forced him to change his attention.

Silas was the first to stop moving.

Near the ruined roadside shelter, a broken mirror had fallen against its bent frame. One long shard still caught enough light to reflect Sareth, except the road behind him was gone.

Silas crouched.

Marek noticed the change in his expression at the same moment Sareth did.

Silas lifted the shard and stared into it for several seconds. Whatever he saw there, he did not show the others. He simply turned the glass over and placed it face down on the pavement.

”What did you see?” Sareth asked.

Silas stood. ”Something you didn’t want seen.”

”Then show them.”

”No.”

Sareth did not answer.

Silas stepped away from the mirror shard. Marek understood enough from that alone. Whatever Silas had found, he had decided that discovering it did not make it theirs to see.

Something in Sareth’s expression hardened at Silas’s refusal in a way Marek had not seen when the black hall broke.

Kellan came at Sareth again. Rafe’s voice called from behind him just before the strike reached him, and Sareth turned toward it on instinct. That hesitation was enough for Kellan to drive him backward, straight into Dario.

Rhovan crossed the remaining distance without gold and drove a fist into Sareth’s chest.

The impact carried Sareth several meters across the road before he caught himself and stopped the slide.

Rhovan flexed his hand once. ”Still functional.”

Marek glanced past him. Sareth was already pushing himself back to his feet.

Across the road, Sareth’s expression tightened. His shadow spread over the broken pavement around him, and older images began surfacing inside it. They were no longer the memories of the six. Marek saw a courtroom emptied before a verdict could be spoken, a body recorded under the wrong name, pages torn from a confession, and a promise left behind by someone who never returned to fulfill it.

One image gradually swallowed the others.

A black hall rose over the road with twelve occupied seats and a thirteenth place left empty. Someone knelt before them and tried to speak, but no sound reached Marek. The person’s mouth kept moving while those seated above remained still.

Another figure stood nearby.

Sareth.

He looked younger in the memory. The Scorpius Mark along his skin was untouched by the black defect Marek knew now.

For several seconds, Sareth watched the scene with them.

”This was the first truth I watched people refuse,” he said.

Marek watched the kneeling figure instead. ”Was it yours?”

Sareth’s attention shifted to him. ”It needed a witness.”

”That’s not what I asked. Did it belong to you?”

The old hall trembled. Black lines rose from the floor around the kneeling figure and stretched toward Sareth, but they stopped before reaching him. More followed, only to end in the same empty space between them.

Sareth had found the truth. He had witnessed what others refused to hear and kept looking when the hall itself seemed determined to bury it.

But that still did not make it his.

Marek felt the difference almost immediately. Scorpius had allowed Sareth to find what was hidden. Black Errancy had kept that connection from closing afterward. Everything beyond that had been Sareth’s choice. He had carried the truth for so long that somewhere along the way, carrying it had become the same thing as claiming it.

A dull ache spread beneath Marek’s Mark.

He was not going after Sareth or the truth inside the hall. The problem was narrower than either of them. Sareth had decided that because nobody else would carry what happened, he had the right to keep it open forever.

Sareth looked at Marek.

The hall vanished.

Marek barely raised one hand before Sareth crossed the distance between them. His Case had not even opened when Rhovan stepped into the path of the strike.

Gold light burst across the road.

Rhovan stayed on his feet for another second, one hand already moving toward his side before his knees gave way.

Marek caught him before his head struck the pavement.

Blood soaked through Rhovan’s coat and spread hot across Marek’s hand as he pressed down on the wound. Dario was already running toward them.

Rhovan opened his eyes and caught Marek staring at the blood. ”Do not make that face.”

”You’re bleeding badly.”

”Temporary.”

Marek pressed harder against the wound. ”Don’t talk.”

Rhovan tried to draw a deeper breath and stopped halfway through it.

Something shifted beneath Marek’s palm.

A few thin black lines clung to the edges of the injury. They had not spread beyond it. When Sareth’s shadow stretched across the road several meters away, the lines pulled toward him.

Marek’s Mark reacted immediately, but he refused to make the wound his subject.

The wound belonged to Rhovan. Whatever Sareth had left inside it was another problem, and Sareth himself remained separate from both.

Marek already knew exactly what not to contain.