Checkpoint Ash

The guards didn't look at the man once he stopped screaming.

They waited until his body stopped convulsing, then lifted him between them like cargo, dragging him out of the transport chamber without urgency. One adjusted a dial on the collar; the other scanned a symbol burned into his wrist. Neither said a word.

Then they were gone.

Dareth's legs twitched. His back ached from tension. His collar had grown warmer, not uncomfortably so, but enough to notice.

"Next," came the command.

A girl was taken this time. She didn't scream. She simply shook, knees knocking together as she walked. Her skin had the waxy look of someone already halfway out of herself.

The pale boy leaned toward Dareth, his voice just above a whisper.

"They're not trying to kill you. They want to see what you'll do when it feels like dying. That's the point of the Slot."

Dareth didn't speak, but his throat tightened. He didn't know what the Slot was.

The guards returned. Another name. Another prisoner gone.

Then, finally:

"Prisoner 022. Step forward."

Dareth stood.

His chains were detached from the bench, but not from his wrists. The guards guided him out with hard grips on his shoulders, leading him down a corridor lined with dull red lights. The air smelled of sterilized metal and scorched bone.

At the far end stood a circular archway flanked by stone pylons carved with strange runes Between them shimmered a faint distortion, like heat above a forge, only it was cold. Bitterly cold.

"The Slot," one guard said flatly. "Walk through. Do not stop. Do not speak."

Dareth nodded once. His skin crawled.

He stepped into the arch.

The moment he crossed the threshold, it hit him.

Not pain. Not sound. But something else entirely.

His mark went silent, like it had never existed. The pressure inside him vanished. The heartbeat that wasn't his disappeared. For the first time since the Pulse, he felt utterly alone.

And then it came back.

Not gently.

A single flare, blinding and internal, like someone striking flint inside his lungs. His knees buckled. He gasped, choked, but didn't fall.

The Slot flared white, then went dark.

Alarms didn't sound. But the guards stepped back.

A third figure had appeared: tall, robed in layered a strange pale cloth, with a face hidden behind a veil of thin mesh. Smoke hissed from vents along its sleeves.

It raised a gloved hand. Pointed at Dareth.

Then said, in a voice dry as dust:

"This one isn't done bleeding yet."

The....thing, didn't speak again.

It turned, sleeves hissing with faint pressure, and motioned for the guards to proceed. They obeyed without a word, gripping Dareth by the arms and guiding him down another corridor, this one narrower, colder.

The walls changed. Stone gave way to fossil composite, veined with dull amber lines that pulsed faintly. The temperature dropped with every step. Dareth's breath came out in thin white streams.

He tried to steady himself. Whatever had happened inside that arch, the Slot, the boy had called it, still lingered. He didn't just feel pain. He felt emptied.

The guards brought him into a chamber made entirely of curved glass and metal plating. There were no seams. No corners. Just a smooth hollow, lit by pale lanterns affixed to the walls. A table sat in the center, ringed by strange equipment. On the far end, the thing waited.

Dareth was pushed into a metal chair.

Bindings locked around his wrists, ankles, and chest.

The 'man' stepped forward.

Its veil was made of hundreds of thin slivers, woven like chainmail. Beneath it, Dareth could barely make out the glint of metal eyes, or maybe glass. The voice, when it came, was neither masculine nor feminine.

"You are marked by an unclassified Sigil. Origin undocumented. Resonance unstable. This makes you valuable."

Dareth didn't speak.

"Many unregistered bearers do not survive the transition from Kindling to Burning. Those that do, we collect. Study. Map. Some are refined. Others… are deemed redundant."

The word hung in the air like frost.

"We will now assess your compatibility for deployment."

A hatch in the wall opened, and something slid forth, a thin tendril of bone, ending in a needle-point no longer than a finger. It hovered beside his temple, pulsing softly.

"This will extract a memory fragment from your encounter with the fossil."

Dareth's breath caught. "You mean the Pulse?"

"No," the Auditor said. "We mean the moment your soul was altered."

The needle plunged into the side of his head.

It didn't pierce skin. It didn't need to. It slid through thought like it belonged there.

Suddenly he was back beneath the earth, surrounded by ribs that curled like they wanted to hold him forever. He saw the shard again, burning softly in the dark. Heard a breath that came from no lungs.

Then another vision.

A field of ash. A shape like a mountain with bones. Eyes that burned without fire.

And his name, spoken not aloud.

He came back to himself gasping, body slick with sweat.

The Auditor was already noting something on a plate etched with fossil script.

"Conclusion: Sigil remains in flux. Phase: unstable Kindling. Trajectory: unknown."

Dareth slumped in the chair, every breath like lifting stone.

"Mark him for transfer. Spirehold will decide what to do with him."

------------

The floor shifted beneath Dareth's feet with a constant mechanical hum.

He stood in a narrow transport cage, just large enough to hold one person upright, bolted into the back of a larger rail platform. Around him, armored walls glowed with low amber runes, pulsing in time with the restraints wrapped around his wrists and collar. Each pulse sent a dull warmth through his body.

The train, if it could even be called that, moved underground, deeper than Dareth had ever imagined places could go. The windowless corridor of stone gave way to metal, then fossil-lined tunnel walls. Shapes appeared in the stone occasionally, riblike curves, almost decorative if they hadn't felt so alive.

No one spoke to him. The two guards stationed behind him wore the same faceless bone-etched armor as before. They didn't make eye contact. They didn't need to.

Finally, the transport eased to a halt.

The cell walls hissed apart. Cold air spilled in, thick with the scent of salt and something sharp, like scorched bone. One guard stepped forward, tapping a plate to Dareth's collar. It clicked softly, releasing his arms but keeping the neck band secured. The other gestured for him to step out.

He obeyed.

The corridor ahead was wide, but claustrophobic. The ceiling curved inward. Soft, organic lines ran through the fossil-metal walls like veins, all glowing faintly. They passed a sign carved directly into the wall:

DEEP-QUARTER 6: OBSERVATION HOLD — UNSTABLES

Dareth's stomach twisted.

Unstables.

The guard tapped a rune on the wall, and a translucent cell door hissed open. Inside was a room no bigger than a trader's stall, cot, basin, a small viewport barely wider than a hand. The walls weren't made of glass, exactly. More like fossil smoothed until it turned clear. He could see the outlines of other cells on either side, blurred by layers of distortion.

"Inside," the guard said.

Dareth stepped in. The door sealed shut with a low tone.

Silence fell. He sat slowly on the cot. The stone was warm beneath him.

After several minutes, he heard it.

Tap.

Tap. Tap.

He turned.

Beyond the distorted barrier to his left, a figure sat cross-legged. Bare arms. Pale hair. Stillness like a held breath.

The pale boy.

His hands were folded. He looked directly at Dareth.

Like he'd been waiting.

Dareth stood and approached the barrier.

The boy lifted one finger and pointed upward.

Dareth followed the gesture.

Scratched into the upper edge of the wall, faint, almost invisible, was a message.

"Not all doors close."

Dareth turned back to the glass.

But the boy was already gone.