Seltiqz

“When the sun died, the world didn’t end. It changed.”

Kael Serrin is one of the last survivors of a world swallowed by twilight. When humanity fled into bunkers and shadows, something else came through: The Rift—a cosmic wound that spills horrors into the world and leaves only monsters in its wake.

Those who survive the Rift’s touch are changed. Marked. Cursed.

Kael wakes to find the Mark of Dusk burned into his flesh and a new power whispering in his mind. Now taken to a brutal facility known as the Riftline, he’s forced into a lethal training program with others like him—test subjects turned weapons in the war against the Hollowborn.

But power comes at a price.

The Mark feeds on memory, emotion, even time—and the more Kael uses it, the more something inside him begins to awaken.

He doesn’t know who to trust.
He doesn’t know if he’ll survive.
He only knows one thing:

He has to get back to his sister—even if it means becoming the very monster the world fears.

Duskbound:Zero

The core in Kael's hand pulsed wetly, its dark surface slick with something that wasn't quite liquid. The numbness had reached his elbow now, his fingers stiff and unresponsive like frozen meat.

"You hear it too, don't you?" the whisper murmured—not in his mind this time, but through his own vocal cords. Kael's lips moved without his permission, forming words in a language that made Lyss recoil.

"That's Old Speech," she breathed. "The Hollowborn only use it for—"

Not metaphorically. The fleshy tissue lining the corridor convulsed, releasing a shriek that vibrated through Kael's teeth. The starving Hollowborn froze mid-feeding, their elongated heads snapping toward the sound.

One dropped its half-consumed core. "It wakes," it rasped—not in Nia's voice anymore, but in a chorus of overlapping tones that included Commander Dain's.

Veyra's Bloodecho flared as she grabbed Kael's numb arm. "We need to move. Now."

Because the whisper had finally shown him why it knew that lullaby.

MEMORY FRAGMENT (COST: THE SMELL OF NIA'S HAIR)

A containment cell deeper than the others.

A woman floating in black fluid, her skin threaded with obsidian veins.

Not Dain. Older. Thinner.

The Mark on her throat pulses as she sings to the thing growing inside her ribcage.

"Again," says a voice from the observation deck.

The woman's eyes snap open—

—and she screams in Kael's voice—

The vision shattered as the floor buckled. Something vast shifted beneath them, sending cracks racing up the walls. The starving Hollowborn didn't flee—they knelt, their distended arms raised in worship.

Lyss yanked Kael backward. "That's no Hollowborn," she gasped. "They're feeding it. The cores, the Marked... we're all part of the—"

A tendril thicker than a man's torso lashed down, snatching the nearest Hollowborn into the dark. The sound of rending flesh echoed through the chamber, followed by a wet, rhythmic pulsing.

"The First Hunger," the whisper said through Kael's mouth. "They tried to weaponize it. But you can't cage what made the Rift."

Veyra's fist connected with Kael's jaw. "Fight it, you coward! That thing's using your Mark like an antenna!"

The pain cleared his head for three precious seconds—long enough to see the truth.

The way the Riftline breathed.

They were in a feeding ground.

And the thing beneath them had just opened its eyes.