Alka's POV

The ground crunched under her feet, a melody of ash and gravel. Alka walked, her gaze fixed on the space between the shoulders of the soldier in front of her. Not a hint of hesitation, not a glance backward. Just the cold in her veins and the searing memory of the warm gemstone in her palm. The kind of choice you can't undo.

Now, she belonged to Pilaf's convoy. The red and gold banner snapped in the wind, tearing with each gust that swept through the dead forest. Those trees with black trunks, their branches twisted toward the sky like fingers imploring an absent god. She kept pace. Not too fast, not too slow. Invisible in the ranks.

But inside her, the new stigma pulsed.

A second heart, foreign, lodged just above her collarbone. A dull beat that rhythmned her thoughts, a murmur in the back of her skull, supple and sinuous, teaching her to listen to what others weren't saying.

She could feel their thoughts—not the words, but the outlines, the raw emotions.

The acidic fear of Captain Varek, a large man whose scarred face spoke of brutality, but whose mind constantly smelled of sour milk.

The doubt of the young soldier marching to her right, Elian, his fingers clenched on the shaft of his spear, thinking of his sick sister in the outskirts of Pilaf.

The cruel idleness of the Mastiff they dragged chained at the rear of the convoy, a creature of darkness whose only thought was a thick, avid tongue.

And when she concentrated, she saw. Fragments: the wrinkled face of a mother, the smell of toasted bread, the sharp sensation of a blade entering flesh. Shards of lives that weren't her own. She had learned to slip her hand in. To twist them a little.

A reflex. A morbid curiosity at first. Then a tool for survival.

"Contact!" a voice shouted from the front.

The convoy froze in a clatter of weapons and armor. Broken shapes emerged from the thickets of thorns, drawn by the convoy's spiritual essence. Lurkers. Their eyes glowed with a vacant yellow light.

Alka didn't need to draw her dagger. She closed her eyes. The stigma on her collarbone grew burning hot. She felt the primary mind of the first Lurker – a simple ball of hunger and aggression. She plunged into it.

It wasn't like talking. It was like throwing a stone into a stagnant pond and shaping the resulting ripples. She took the sensation of hunger and twisted it, instilling an image: the Lurker's own shadow, detaching from the ground to turn against it, more real, more fleshy, more desirable than its own flesh.

The Lurker stopped dead. A raw groan scratched its throat. It began clawing at the air, spinning around, chasing its own hallucinated reflection. Then it fled, screaming, crashing into the black trunks.

She did the same with a second one, injecting it with a visceral, ancestral fear, that of the hunted prey. The creature curled up, trembling like a leaf, incapable of any movement.

The Pilaf soldiers dispatched the other Lurkers with brutal efficiency. When it was over, Captain Varek turned to her, his gaze heavy as a maul.

"Another one who lost its mind," he grumbled, glancing at the Lurker still whimpering on the ground. His mind was a bulwark of suspicion, but Alka sensed a note of pragmatic satisfaction. "You're good for something, Awakened Rika."

She lowered her head, feigning submission. "I do what I can for the convoy, Captain."

That was the game. The soldiers… them, she made docile. Not all, not all the time. Just enough. A mental nudge for Elian to offer her his water ration without knowing why. A whisper in Varek's mind to associate her presence with utility, not threat. Just another girl, marked, loyal, efficient. That's how you survive.

At night, around the fire struggling against the sticky darkness of the forest, she felt the communication crystal vibrate against her skin. Gaël. She moved away under the pretext of checking the traps nearby.

Sheltered from view, the encrypted message formed in her palm. Simple words, clipped, emotionless, as always.

*Report.*

*Situation?*

*Progress on the hero's germ?*

The lie had become routine, a mantra reinforcing her new reality. She replied, her fingers tracing the luminous runes in the cold air:

*Mission compromised by Dylan. He attempted to divert the gem. I neutralized him. Gem secured. Pilaf infiltration successful. Awaiting new directives.*

A half-truth. The kind that turns into fact with enough silence and repetition. Dylan, hunted, tracked, probably dead in this cursed forest. She banished the image of his gaze, the moment the blade had struck. It wasn't betrayal. It was necessity. She repeated it until she believed it.

She did it to save her own skin, yes. But also to keep a thread to Martissant. Because if Pilaf ever decided to "recycle" her—that clean word for such absolute horror—she could always present herself as a useful pawn for the other side. She was playing on two chessboards, a piece dreaming of being queen. But after playing two faces for so long, she sometimes felt her own reflection cracking in the mirror. Which one still bore her true name? Alka? The spy? The Awakened Rika of Pilaf?

Every evening, she pushed further. She moved away from the camp, sitting cross-legged at the foot of a charred tree. Her stigma glowed with a pale light, a spiral of silver veins climbing towards her temple, like roots of light. It was an artificial stigma, grafted from the hero's gem—a relic so ancient and powerful it should never have existed.

She had learned to feed it. Not through training, but by absorbing the mental residue of dying creatures or dead soldiers. The fragments of fear from a dying Lurker, the last memory of love from a fallen soldier, the echo of sharp pain. Anything that resembled a dying thought. She fed on it, and the stigma grew in finesse, in voracity.

But she also felt this power consuming her.

Every mental intrusion left her a little emptier, a little more foreign to herself. As if her mind was crumbling from expanding, from mingling with the dregs of others. Sometimes, upon waking, she struggled to remember the intonation of her own voice.

And yet, she wanted more. She needed it. Because an artificial stigma doesn't grow. It remains frozen, sterile, like a perfect but limited tool. To evolve, you must engrave another. And the second would be tinged by the first—an imperfect symmetry, a distorted reflection. Two stigmas. Two mirrors reflecting the infinite possibilities back at each other. Total power over minds—those of others, and her own, to finally seal the cracks in her soul.

She dreamed of it at night, her eyes open to the dead canopy.

Suddenly, a muffled cry followed by the sound of a struggle made her start. She sprang to her feet, smothering the glow of her stigma. She slipped between the trees, silent as a shadow.

About fifty meters from the camp, she saw Elian, the young soldier, struggling with one of the Mastiffs. The creature's chain had broken. The beast, massive and muscular, had pinned Elian against a rock, its fangs dangling a few centimeters from his throat. The boy's spear lay on the ground.

Elian's fear was palpable, a mental tidal wave that hit Alka head-on. It was a pure, raw emotion, much easier to grasp than the complex thoughts of humans.

Instinctively, Alka dove.

Her mind struck that of the Mastiff. It was a pit of darkness, of primal urges. No fear to exploit, no memories to twist. Just a simple will: bite, tear, absorb.

She couldn't trick it. So, she made the only choice possible. She struck.

It wasn't a nudge, or a suggestion. It was a mental sledgehammer blow, concentrated, brutal. She projected all the force of her stigma, all the energy she had siphoned, into the rudimentary mind of the beast.

The Mastiff froze. A horribly human gurgle came from its maw. Its yellow eyes rolled back in their sockets, showing the whites. Then it collapsed, inert, black drool dripping from its jowls.

Elian, trembling, panting, stared at the creature, then raised his eyes to Alka emerging from the shadows. His gaze was full of a new terror, mixed with absolute incomprehension.

"What... what did you do?" he stammered.

Alka felt her own heart pounding. Her stigma throbbed, painful. She had emptied her reserves. And she had been seen. Not sowing confusion, but killing with a mere glance.

She bent down, picked up Elian's spear, and handed it to him.

"I saved your life, soldier," she said, her voice surprisingly calm. "The chain was weak. You should have the shackles checked."

She held his gaze. She couldn't manipulate him now, she was too weak. But she could act the part. The loyal Marked One. The useful Awakened.

Elian hesitated, his hand gripping the spear like a lifeline. His fear hadn't dissipated, but it had changed in nature. It was no longer directed at the beast, but at her. At this incomprehensible power.

"Yes…" he finally murmured, lowering his eyes. "Thank you."

He got up and ran back towards the camp, without a backward glance.

Alka remained alone, facing the Mastiff's corpse. Her body was exhausted, but her mind vibrated with a morbid excitement. She had felt the power. The real kind. The kind that breaks, that annihilates.

She raised her eyes to the night sky, veiled by the skeletal branches. The first stigma was just a beginning. A sketch. She had to engrave a second one. She needed that symmetry, that multiplied power. No matter the cost. No matter the crumbling.

The chessboard was set. She was ready to sacrifice all her pieces to become the queen.

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