Novels by Mark

The sky hadn’t stopped bleeding since Jin vanished.Kai stood rooted in the academy courtyard, breath sharp, chest rising and falling like he’d just outrun the end of the world. Soulbrand hummed in his palm, the blade still pulsing from the energy that had clashed with Jin’s corrupted flame. His knuckles were white from gripping it too tightly.Jin’s final words still echoed in his mind.“Join me, or watch your world burn.”Was that a threat or a prophecy?Behind him, Seria leaned against a pillar, one hand pressed to her ribs where her robes were still scorched. Her face was pale, but her voice steady. “It’s not over. That… wasn’t even the worst of him.”“He’s not Jin anymore,” Kai muttered. “Not really.”“Then who is he?”Kai didn’t answer. Because deep down, he was starting to wonder the same thing about himself.By dawn, the city of Ironvale was no longer Ironvale.It was a graveyard gasping through fire and ash.Blacksteel Academy had gone into lockdown, but the walls couldn’t ke

Kai hadn’t spoken since Seria’s vision.He hadn’t touched the Soulbrand either.It lay wrapped in cloth beside his bed at Blacksteel, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. Sometimes at night, he heard it hum low, mournful, like it was remembering something he hadn’t done yet.The vision haunted him.His laughter.The corpses.The flames.Riven had warned him not to dwell on it. “Visions of the Veil aren’t prophecies, they’re warnings,” the old man said. “They show roads, not destinations.”But Kai couldn’t ignore what he saw in his own eyes that day.Something inside him was changing.And the world was changing with it.It started with the ground trembling beneath Ironvale.At first, people thought it was an earthquake. But then the sky cracked.A line of jagged black tore through the clouds over the slums like someone had clawed the heavens open. Screams erupted. Birds dropped midflight. Magic flared unstable.And then they came.Creatures that didn’t belong in this world twisted beasts

“Kai.”Her voice was soft,too soft.He froze at the threshold of the ruins, eyes locked on the figure kneeling beside the black-glass pool. She wasn’t a memory.She was real.Her silver-white robes shimmered like faded starlight. Her hair was shorter than he remembered. And her eyes,gray, distant, detached,looked through him like he was a story someone else had told her.He took one step forward.Then another.“…It’s me,” he said, voice barely more than breath. “Kai.”No flicker.No warmth.No recognition.Just silence.She looked at him like he was a dream she wasn’t sure she wanted to remember.He knelt beside her, trembling, heart pounding against his ribs. His hand hovered inches from her shoulder, terrified it would pass right through.“I used to wait by the door,” he said, forcing the words through his throat. “Every night after the fire. I thought maybe… maybe you’d survived. That you’d find a way back to me.”Her lips parted slightly. A breath. Nothing more.Then,“…The door,”

Kai opened his eyes to darkness.Not the kind that came with night or shadows. This was weight. This was a silence that pressed against the skull, dense, suffocating. The kind of dark that breathed.He sat up slowly, his muscles aching. His mouth tasted like ash and metal. No sign of the candlelit chamber. No sign of Seria. Just cold stone beneath him and a strange pulse in the air, steady like a heartbeat.He wasn’t alone.“Kai,” came the voice. Smooth. Too smooth. Familiar. Wrong.He stood. “Who’s there?”A faint light glowed behind him. He turned and the voice was suddenly behind him again.“You saved her. Now who will save you?”He lunged toward the sound but a hand shot out of the black and grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t solid. It felt like fog and ice and bone all at once.Then “Enough,” barked a voice. Rough. Grounded. Real.The darkness peeled away like smoke blown from a flame. Kai blinked as shapes formed. Bookshelves. Braziers. Carved runes.Riven.The old man stood before h

Kai burst into Seria’s room, chest heaving, fingers curled tight around the warning note.Empty.No sign of a struggle. No blood. No overturned furniture.Just stillness.And a glowing glyph on the floor , soft, silver, pulsing like a held breath.“Seria?” he whispered.No answer.He crouched slowly, fingers hovering over the strange rune. It thrummed, a faint buzz rising into his bones. The second his skin touched it,FLASH.The room disappeared.He blinked.Now standing inside a circular chamber lit by floating candles, he spun around. Shelves lined with old books and glass vials stretched toward the domed ceiling. Shadows curled along the edges, curling like smoke.And then,Footsteps.She stepped out from behind a bookshelf.Seria.Alive.But her face was wrong. Pale. Ashen. Her lips trembled, and her eyes,red, wet, hollow.“Kai…” Her voice cracked. “You came.”His breath caught. “You’re safe…”Relief hit him,sharp, fast,but it didn’t last.She wasn’t looking at him.Not directly.

The tunnel collapsed behind them in a roar of stone and fire.Kai and Seria were flung into the forest clearing, landing hard as a shockwave rippled through the trees. Leaves scattered into the air like birds taking flight, and dirt rained from the sky.Kai choked, coughing violently as the air turned to ash in his lungs. “Seria… you okay?”Seria nodded, shaky and pale. “That… that wasn’t just magic. That thing… it wore your face, Kai.”He didn’t answer.His eyes stayed fixed on his trembling hands,fingers curled, knuckles white, veins faintly pulsing.Not from fear.From something deeper. Rage. Shame. Power.He’d felt the pull again. Deep in the ruins,when the shadow whispered, when the air turned black. It had called to him. Tempted him.And he’d run.Just like his mother had all those years ago.“I could’ve stopped it,” he muttered.“No,” Seria said gently. “You chose not to lose yourself.”He turned away.But the worst part wasn’t the shadow.It was what it meant: Jin knew. Faen k