He can’t be detected, that is the plan. They have to find out what are Marked from the Empire doing so far from their borders, from the war. It has taken them months finding them, their magical trail almost non-existent. They knew they were here but not exactly where, or what they are doing, but they’re about to find out. Rakan can’t believe it has even taken them so long to detect that something weird is happening here, the magical signal in the area so low it’s almost undetectable, but too suspiciously low once they looked at it.

Maybe it’s some kind of secret weapon, maybe that’s why the Empire’s Marked are starting to visit this place. For the last year the resistance inside and out of the Empire has only grown stronger so maybe they are planning a counterattack.

Rakan tries to keep walking forward without bumping into anyone, an almost impossible feat, seeing as today’s market day and the streets are packed with stands and people trying to buy the best goods. He saw two Marked turning a corner a few meters away some minutes ago but he can’t quite get to them with all the people. He hopes at least Kylem can reach them, lurking in the shadows like he always is, even when there’s nothing more suspicious than that. If you want to hide yourself, there is no better way than in plain sight in Rakan’s opinion.

It’s difficult to breathe here, the air humid and hot and something else, they had noticed it the moment they arrived, something that made magic weaker and Kylem and Rakan weaker with it, accustomed to live with magic flowing around them freely. Here it is trapped and dulled.

He is so focused on finding the Marked again once he has turned the corner that he doesn’t pay attention to where he is walking. He lets out a small exclamation when he sees them, not wasting a second to start chasing them again and subsequently crashing into a girl in front of him that he hadn’t seen.

The girl staggers and Rakan reaches out to grab her shoulders to steady her reflexively, not even looking down at her. The Marked have turned into an alley. He is preparing to continue his way when he feels the girl pushing him away, he had not even realised that he was still holding her, he felt… normal.

The moment he looks at the girl to apologize she is already eye rolling at him and walking away, too fast for him to say something to her. Too fast for him to have time to understand how he felt when he grabbed her, too fast for the colour of her eyes to dawn on him. By the time it has, she is already gone.

He starts moving again, with more urgency now. He doesn’t care about having to push people away, the Marked can’t even see him right now. Just as he was reaching the alley the two men went into, he hears Kylem’s voice in his head.

What the hell are you doing? He sounds a bit pissed, go figure why. Rakan lets out a sigh of relief, Kylem must be close if the mental link is working with the magic like this, and continues moving towards the alley.

Where have they gone? He asks, he hadn’t imagined the alleys to be this of a maze.

To your left, what were you doing to lose them?

I bumped into a girl.

That is in no way reason enough.

But she… she felt weird, like she was familiar and her eyes… wait. Waitwaitwait, I think it was her.He can almost feel the confusion coming from Kylem Mei. I think she is here.

Rak…

I know, shut up, but think about it. The Empire so away from the borders? The magic so dulled?

Turn to your left. What exactly did you feel?

I bumped into her and magic just… felt normal and her eyes, how many people do you know with golden eyes? Rakan starts to hear the bustle of the people in the street again, he is almost sure the Marked know that they are being followed and are trying to lose them.

And you think that they would let her just go around free like that and not like- Kylem stops but Rakan knows exactly what he was going to say. Rakan can almost see Kylem holding himself and sighing before he continues. We’ll try to look into it once we are done with these two okay? For now we have to take them out, I think they know we are here and we can’t have them telling the Empire about it.

Okay Rakan agrees where are you anyway?

On the roofs Rakan looks up, startled to see Kylem looking down at him from the edge of the next building over.

You are on the roofs without me?! This is treason. He tries to convey all the betrayal he is feeling through his gaze but Kylem only smiles and jumps to the next building.

Shut up and go to your right.

Go to the market, come back home, start preparing lunch. Always the same routine, maybe safe for the days that the market comes to the village, sometimes bringing musicians or actors that perform in front of the people in the main square, sometimes weird foreigners like the boy Meira had bumped into that morning. He was a Marked, rare in this part of the region because of the lack of magic, but not completely unheard of. Marked people didn’t really stay here for long, the ones that travelled got frustrated because they couldn’t perform their tricks in front of people for money, the few that were born here eventually leaving so they could develop their powers further.

Meira didn’t judge them, she was Marked as well, and she wished she could leave to develop her powers, but she wasn’t permitted to. Her aunt, the one that took care of her since her parents died in an accident in which she lost her memory, was too afraid by the tales of the travellers to let her go. She had heard of the tales too, that the marked children of the Empire were taken against their will, turned into heartless soldiers, but it didn’t frighten her, the Empire and the war were too far to really care about it, she just had to stay away, she had better things to be concerned about. Like the noises coming from the alley just a few houses away from her home.

It’s not the best part of the city and the bustle of the market was left far away now, fights are not that infrequent here, she doesn’t even know why she is turning to the alley and peeking around the corner. She knows these streets, there is a small square behind this house, only two exits, a good place to have a fight and oh, that is the foreigner, the Marked from before.

It’s not so obvious in everyone that they are Marked but this boy has his Mark on his face just below his right eye, and it really contrasts with his dark skin, the most Meira has ever seen, it must mean he is strong. He is fighting with someone that looks like he is from the Empire, and there is another pair not far from them, also fighting. They shouldn’t be here, this place is too far from Hexia.

Meira keeps watching. This is not a normal fight. The marked boy and the one that looks like is with him look young, around Meira’s age or maybe a bit older so in their early twenties. The other boy reaches out to stop an attack from the man of the Empire and she sees it, a Mark too, on the boy’s palm and climbing up his forearm. The boys look like they are easily winning, rapidly reducing their opponents to the ground until the first boy does something. It’s a flick with his wrist, the movement almost undetectable but the confused face of the boy looking at his hand the next moment says everything. Meira has seen it before, the confused look of a Marked when their power doesn’t work like they want it to here.

Something goes wrong then, the air shifts and two shadows start materialising in a corner, they look almost human but not quite, they are embodied darkness and Meira would be lying if she said a shiver didn’t go down her spine. The Empire soldier that the first Marked boy has pinned to the ground says something, too low for Meira to hear it but the two boys react to the word, the one pinning the soldier knocking his head to the ground so he goes unconscious.

This is not a normal fight, and you don’t have to know who these people are to know that it’s dangerous to stay here. Meira doesn’t even know why she stayed this long. She looks around one last time, and locks eyes with the boy from that morning, the boy looks about ready to go to her so that’s her cue to leave, she turns around and starts running.

She is not even three steps away from the small square when she hears a shout. “Rakan!” She stops dead in her tracks. Her heart is going a million beats per second, this is dangerous and she has to leave but she can’t. The boy, with the mark on his face and his tanned skin. The shout. She can’t leave them. They are probably rebels and the Empire has come for them and she shouldn’t get into their business but they are alone, powerless against those shadows. And she doesn’t know why but her chest is hurting and she can’t leave them.

She turns back around and goes back to the square. The pale boy is pinned against the wall by one of the shadows but he seems to be doing well enough alone, the other soldier unconscious at his feet. The other one, the tanned one from this morning, is on the floor, closer to Meira than he was before. He probably did run to her and got attacked from the back, now the other shadow is getting closer to him and its arm just… stretches into something sharp that pierces through the boy’s shoulder.

Meira runs to them, almost stepping on top of the boy to get to the shadow and punches it on what would be its chest. Or tries to punch it because her hand goes right through it. Everything stops for a second, what do you do to something you can’t touch? She feels the boy’s hand on her leg and can almost hear him telling her to run but she won’t, not now. The boys can’t use their power but she has lived here all her life, she is used to it.

She feels the boy tightening the grip on her leg when the light starts to appear and then the flinch, also on her part when the shadow just.., bursts. She almost expects something to hit her but it’s a shadow, and it bursts and dissolves, just leaving a black print on the floor, as if nothing was there.

“Here!” Meira turns towards the shout from the other boy, still with the other shadow. She hadn’t realised that she had stayed still after killing(?) the other shadow. She doesn’t know how he does it but the boy pushes the shadow towards her, she braces herself, extending her arms, and calls her light the second the shadow touches her fingers, the shadow disappearing just like the first one.

Everything happens too fast then, the next second the pale boy is kneeling on the ground with the other boy, searching on his clothes.

“You have the pearl right?” he is asking.

“Yeah yeah, calm down Kylem it’s right here” the tanned boy gets something from his pants and holds it out to the pale boy, Kylem.

They turn towards Meira then, so in sync that it’s almost scary but their expressions are completely opposite, Kylem is looking at her seriously, like he is thinking about something while the other boy is smiling at her.

“You” Kylem says “come here” Meira takes a step forward before she stops, looking sideways at the soldiers on the ground “they are not going to get up again if that’s what you are concerned about” she looks at the boys again surprised. These two boys have killed two soldiers from the Empire and she has helped them “I don’t care what you are thinking right now but Rakan is injured and we need you to get home so come here”

“Kylem” Rakan protests.

This boy, Rakan, she has to help him, she doesn’t know why but she needs to. She gets closer to them and kneels. Rakan is half sitting on the floor, looking at her expectantly while his shoulder bleeds out, she reaches out to him but before she can get to him Kylem lets out an “at last” before he grabs both of them.

Meira doesn’t know what happens next but she feels dizzy and all her strength being sucked out of her before she hears surprised voices and someone grabbing her before everything goes to black.