The Red Mark

CONTENT WARNING

This story contains dark themes, violence, trauma, religious cult elements, captivity, and morally grey characters. Reader discretion is advised.

I was born inside a cult that taught me fear was holy and obedience was salvation.

I believed them until the night the Blood King destroyed everything I knew and claimed me as his own.

They called him a monster.

They were wrong.

Monsters kill you.

He keeps you.

Chapter I

Liana Pov

The first time I saw him, he walked through holy blood like it was rain.

We were still chanting when the shooting started.

Low voices. Bare feet. Cold stone.

My world had always been small—four walls of carved rock, a courtyard with a cracked fountain, and the mountains pressing in from every side like the ribs of some ancient beast holding us inside its chest.

Tonight, those ribs felt too tight.

“Liana.” Mother Elara’s fingers pressed into my shoulder, guiding me toward the center of the hall. “Stand still. Do not tremble. The Mark must not flare.”

“I’m not trembling,” I lied.

My hands were steady. My heart wasn’t.

Candles burned in a circle around me, their flames thin and tall, coated in the faint scent of herbs and old wax. The air was heavy with incense and the metallic whisper of fresh blood. The others knelt beyond the circle, white robes brushing the stone floor, foreheads to the ground. They looked like fallen feathers.

I was the only one standing.

I always was.

“Repeat the creed,” Mother Elara said quietly. “Louder this time. The walls listen.”

I swallowed.

“Our bodies are vessels,” I recited, voice obedient, familiar words scraping my throat. “Our blood is borrowed. Our breaths are offerings. We are the chosen keepers of the Mark, the last gate between this world and the hunger beneath it.”

“And the Mark?” she prompted.

The skin on my left shoulder prickled as if it heard her.

“The Mark is not a curse,” I said. “The Mark is the seal.”

Mother Elara’s gaze softened, but not with affection. With reverence. With fear.

Her thumbs brushed the edge of the cloth wrapped around my shoulder, where the bandage hid the thing that had rewritten my life the night it appeared. A twisted, intricate symbol burned into my flesh without heat, without knife, without ink. I’d woken screaming, the air thick with the scent of smoke that wasn’t there.

They said it was a blessing.

They started locking my door after that.

“Good.” She stepped back, her prayer beads clinking softly around her wrist. “Tonight the world outside howls. We do not open the gates when wolves are near.”

Outside.

We never said the word out loud without something sour curling underneath it.

Outside was where the Apostates lived. The Blind. The Sleepers. The ones who had turned their faces away from the depth below and filled their ears with noise. That’s what I’d been told since I learned to walk.

They are lost, the Elders said. We are saved.

Saved didn’t feel like this.

Saved didn’t feel like a locked door, or whispered meetings, or the way everyone stopped talking when I entered the room.

Saved didn’t feel like being watched even when I was alone.

The wind howled beyond the stone walls, a low animal sound dragging along the edges of the hall. The candles shook. Shadows shook with them.

“Mother,” I said before I could stop myself. “Why tonight?”

She frowned. “What?”

“Why this ritual now?” I asked. “We only perform the Full Binding when—”

“When the hunger stirs,” a deeper voice finished for me.

High Priest Coren stepped from the far end of the hall, his red sash dragging over the stone, his lined face carved with the same tired severity he always wore. His eyes found mine, cool and flat.

“The signs are clear,” he continued. “The ground shook yesterday. Two birds fell dead at the gate. The sky bled red at dawn. We do not ignore omens, child.”

“It was just a storm,” I whispered.

His hand cracked across my cheek before I could blink.

The slap echoed. My head snapped to the side, a flash of white behind my eyes. My skin burned, but I didn’t lift a hand to touch it. The Mark’s heat rose under the bandage, like it wanted to answer.

Mother Elara’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t intervene.

“Your tongue grows bold,” Coren said. “Doubt is a crack, Liana. Through cracks, things seep.”

I stared at the floor, teeth pressing into the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

“Yes, High Priest,” I said.

He studied me for a moment longer, then turned away.

“Begin the Binding,” he ordered.

“We must strengthen the seal before the Outside finds us.”

The Elders rose from their kneeling positions and formed a circle around the candles. Their voices lifted like smoke, layered and low, chanting words I knew by heart but never understood.

Beneath my feet, the stone vibrated faintly.

I told myself it was in my head.

I told myself lots of things.

Mother Elara touched my chin, gently pushing my face forward, making sure my gaze stayed on the altar at the far end of the hall. A slab of stone stained dark where sacrifices had bled out over the years. Tonight, no animal lay bound there.

Tonight, the altar was empty.

I was not naïve. I noticed the missing knives. The heavy bowl of water glinting with something thick and dark at the edges. The extra ropes coiled near the base.

“Do I die tonight?” I asked.

The question slipped out quiet, flat.

Elara’s hand flinched.

“No,” she said. “You serve. The Mark must be fed, not broken. As long as it lives on your skin, you live.”

That should have been comforting.

It wasn’t.

The chanting grew louder. The air thickened. My chest felt tight, my breaths dragging as if I inhaled smoke instead of oxygen.

Something in the stone shifted.

A low groan ran through the floor, subtle but steady. Dust drifted down from the old ceiling, dancing in the candlelight. One of the younger acolytes looked up, eyes wide, lips trembling around the words of the prayer.

“Focus,” Coren snapped. “The deep stirs. Hold the seal.”

I tried.

I did.

I let the words spill from my mouth, ancient and heavy, my voice merging with the others until it no longer sounded like my own.

But under the rhythm of the chant, there was another sound.

A distant thud.

Then another.

Then a scream.

It cut through the ritual like a blade, sharp and panicked, echoing down the corridor beyond the hall.

Everyone froze.

The chanting shattered. Silence crashed over us, thick and suffocating. I felt my heartbeat in my throat.

“That came from the gate,” one of the Elders whispered.

Coren’s jaw clenched. “No one moves,” he hissed. “Continue.”

The scream came again, louder this time. Choked off halfway through.

Gunshots followed.

I didn’t know the sound then. Not really. We trained with old blades, with rope, with bare hands. The world Outside might as well have been a storybook.

But the sound of metal rage ripping through air is something you recognize even if you’ve never heard it before.

Mother Elara’s hand tightened on my shoulder, nails digging into my skin.

“Stay,” she breathed.

My instincts screamed the opposite.

The heavy wooden doors at the far end of the hall shook, once, twice—then exploded inward in a rain of splinters.

The candles went out in a rush, plunging us into near-darkness. Only the faint light of torches from the corridor framed the silhouettes stepping inside.

Tall. Armed. Dressed in black.

The Outside had found us.

Panic tore through the cult like a physical thing.

Someone sobbed. Someone started praying louder. A figure bolted toward a side door and dropped instantly, body jerking as another shot cracked.

I couldn’t breathe.

Men spread into the hall with practiced ease, guns sweeping the room, boots echoing against the stone. Their faces were half-shadowed, but they moved like they owned the ground they walked on.

“Down on your knees!” one of them barked in a language I recognized from old contraband radio whispers: English.

We spoke Old Tongue in here. The irony didn’t escape me.

Coren lifted his hands, stepping forward, lips already shaping a blessing—or a curse.

He didn’t get to finish.

A bullet took him in the chest.

The sound was obscene. His body jerked, then crumpled, red blooming over his front like a grotesque flower. For a moment he just stared down at the spreading stain, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

“Oh,” he said softly.

Then he fell.

People screamed in earnest now.

Mother Elara pulled me back, trying to push me behind her, but the circle of men was already closing. The air reeked of gunpowder and fear. Someone grabbed my arm in the chaos; I yanked away without thinking, nails scratching skin, and stumbled against the altar.

Pain flared in my shoulder as I hit the stone. The bandage slipped.

And the Mark woke up.

Heat surged beneath my skin, bright and sharp, like fingers of lava scratching from the inside. I hissed, curling in on myself as the symbol burned against the air, pulsing faintly red through the torn cloth.

One of the men swore. “What the—?”

“Don’t touch her!” Elara shouted, stepping in front of me, her frail body suddenly a shield.

A hand cracked across her face.

I lunged instinctively. Something hard slammed into my stomach, knocking the breath out of me. I collapsed to my knees, choking.

“Stay down,” a voice growled above me. “Or next one goes between your eyes.”

The world narrowed to gasps and the copper taste in my mouth. The cultists were being herded into the center of the hall, forced to kneel. Some obeyed silently. Some sobbed. Some whispered prayers to the deep.

No one tried to run.

Where would we go?

My vision blurred around the edges. Sound faded in and out—orders, curses, muffled cries—until another presence stepped through the ruined doorway and everything inside me went cold.

I didn’t see him at first.

I felt him.

The hall seemed to contract, the air thickening, bodies subconsciously pulling out of his way before he even reached them. Authority clung to him like a second skin—unhurried, heavy, unarguable.

Boots. The soft scrape of soles over stone. The faint leather creak of a tailored coat.

He stopped just inside the circle of fallen candles.

“Report,” he said.

The word was quiet, but it settled over the room with more weight than the gunshots.

One of the men snapped to attention. “Perimeter secure. No signals out. Target group contained. Moderate resistance. The priest reached for a weapon. Neutralized.”

Neutralized.

That’s what they called Coren’s body bleeding out on the floor.

“And the girl?” the man asked. The one with the voice made for obedience.

They shifted, clearing his view.

My view.

That’s when I saw him.

He was taller than most of the men around him, shoulders filling out the black coat he wore like the uniform of a king. His hair was dark, cut short on the sides, longer on top, pushed back with careless precision. There was a small scar near his lip, pale against olive skin, and his jaw was shadowed with stubble, like he hadn’t slept properly in days.

His eyes—

I had never seen eyes like that.

Cold. Sharp. A dark, flat brown that somehow managed to look like polished glass over something feral. They were scanning the crowd, emotionless, until they landed on me.

They stopped.

I felt the weight of his gaze like fingers around my throat. Not squeezing. Not yet. Just measuring how hard he might need to.

“What the hell is this place?” one of the men muttered behind him.

“A nest of lunatics,” another said. “Look at the robes. Looks like a damn sacrifice party.”

They laughed, low and mean.

He didn’t.

He stepped forward slowly, eyes never leaving mine, as if the rest of the hall had faded into the background. I wanted to look away. I couldn’t.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

His voice was calm. Too calm. Like he was bored. Like this was an errand he’d rather not be running.

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat.

Elara tried to move between us again. “Leave her,” she whispered. “Take anything else you want, but the bearer belongs to—”

A gun clicked beside her head.

“Careful,” a man warned. “Boss asked the girl a question.”

Boss.

My stomach dipped.

“I asked for a name, not a sermon,” the leader said. His gaze flicked to Mother Elara just long enough to silence her, then returned to me. “Do you have one?”

My legs shook when I tried to rise, so I stayed kneeling, fingers curling against the stone to keep from collapsing completely.

“Liana,” I said. My voice sounded small in my own ears. Thin and cracked. “My name is Liana.”

He rolled it around his tongue once, as if tasting it.

“Liana,” he repeated. “How old are you, Liana?”

“Twenty,” I lied automatically.

Nineteen felt too fragile to say aloud.

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite anything.

“You know who I am?” he asked.

I’d heard stories.

Pieces of whispered radio static stolen from broken machines the Elders couldn’t fully destroy. Hushed conversations in corridors when they thought I was sleeping. Warnings about men whose names were not names at all, but titles. Crowns. Threats.

The Blood King, one rumor had called him.

The Red Serpent, another.

The man who burnt cities just to watch the smoke.

“No,” I said.

Something like amusement flashed in his eyes. There and gone.

“Good,” he murmured. “Fair enough. You’re nobody to me yet either.”

He crouched down to my level in one fluid motion, elbows resting loosely on his knees, bringing his face close enough that I could see the faint ring of a lighter gold around his irises.

My pulse stuttered.

Up close, he smelled faintly of smoke and clean soap. No cologne. No pretense. Just expensive fabric and danger.

“It’s simple, Liana,” he said softly. “This place belongs to me now. Everything in it is mine. The only thing I need to decide…” His gaze dropped to my shoulder, where the bandage had slipped further, the edges stained dark. “...is what you are.”

His eyes narrowed.

He lifted his hand, slow enough that I could have pulled away if I wanted. I didn’t move. His fingers brushed the cloth, tugging it down just enough to reveal the full shape of the Mark.

The symbol glowed faintly, as if responding to his attention. A spiral of intersecting lines and curves, wrong and beautiful, like something that would make you sick if you stared too long.

He stared.

The room held its breath.

“What does it mean?” one of the men asked behind him.

The leader didn’t answer.

Instead, very slowly, he reached out and pressed the pad of his thumb lightly against the Mark.

Pain tore through me.

I gasped, the sound ripped from my lungs as heat exploded across my skin, radiating out from his touch like a shockwave. The symbol burned brighter, the lines pulsing red beneath his thumb.

For a heartbeat, the world went white.

I smelled stone dust and smoke, heard distant roaring that wasn’t the wind, saw something vast and ancient turning in the dark.

Then it was gone.

I sagged, collapsing fully to my knees. My hands shook. My breaths came in harsh, shallow pulls.

He removed his thumb, staring at the faint scorch on his skin as if it amused him.

“I’ll be damned,” he murmured.

He stood in one fluid motion, the decision already made in the set of his shoulders.

“Boss?” one of the men asked carefully. “What do you want to do with them?”

The cult.

My people.

What was left of them.

The leader—my captor, my executioner, whatever he was—didn’t look at them when he spoke.

“Kill everyone who tries to resist,” he said calmly. “Separate those under sixteen. Call the trucks. Clear the place.”

“And her?” The man jerked his chin toward me.

He finally looked down again, eyes skimming my face, my shoulder, the Mark still faintly glowing through the torn cloth.

His gaze hardened with something I couldn’t read.

“Bring her to the car,” he said. “She’s coming with us.”

Mother Elara lunged.

She didn’t scream this time. She just moved, sudden and desperate, fingers reaching for my wrist.

“Liana!” she gasped. “You can’t—”

The shot was so close it made my vision jump.

For a moment I didn’t understand why she was lying on the floor.

Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, unblinking. Blood crept beneath her head in a slow, dark halo.

My throat strangled around a sound I didn’t recognize.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no—”

Rough hands grabbed my arms, hauling me to my feet. My legs barely remembered how to work. The room spun, faces blurring into smears of black and red.

I twisted instinctively, teeth bared, Mark flaring hot enough to hurt, but a hand clamped over my mouth, cutting off the sound.

“Don’t make it worse,” a man hissed into my ear. “You’re lucky he wants you alive.”

Lucky.

The leader turned away without looking back, already issuing more orders as if nothing significant had happened at all.

As if my world hadn’t just ended at his feet.

They dragged me through the ruined doors, past bodies and shattered idols and the heavy iron gate that had always been a boundary, never a path.

The night outside was colder than anything I’d ever felt, sharp and real and vast. The mountains loomed higher than I’d imagined. The wind cut through my thin robe like knives.

I tilted my head back just once, taking one final look at the compound where I’d spent my entire life.

Smoke was already curling from one of the roofs.

I didn’t pray.

The deep had never answered me anyway.

They shoved me into the back of a black SUV, hands still bound, Mark throbbing under the rough fabric. The door slammed shut, sealing me in darkness.

The engine rumbled to life.

Outside, orders were shouted. Boots pounded. Shots echoed distantly, muffled by the thick metal.

The other door opened.

He slid in beside me, unhurried, the leather squeaking under his weight. For a moment, he didn’t say anything—just watched me, as if taking inventory of the damage.

I stared back, my voice scraped raw.

“You killed them,” I whispered.

“Some of them,” he corrected mildly. “You’re still breathing.”

“Why?” My throat ached. “Why me?”

His gaze dropped briefly to my shoulder, where the Mark burned like a silent accusation.

“Because I don’t like leaving weapons lying around,” he said. “And whatever that thing is on your skin…”

His eyes met mine again, something dark and hungry flickering behind the glass-calm surface.

“...it belongs to me now.”

The car rolled forward, away from the only world I’d ever known.

Behind us, the compound disappeared into the night.

Ahead of us, the Blood King’s empire waited.

And I realized, with a clarity that stole what was left of my breath, that my life wasn’t over.

It was simply no longer mine.