The Sigil Beneath

"One mark chains you. Two marks own you."

The Cross Safehouse.

By morning, they reached a house shaped like a home, but it had no intention of being one.

The air clung like wet cloth when they arrived at Victor Cross's personal safehouse—a place built to resist pressure but now quietly folding under it.

Cold. Warped. Corrupted. The walls seemed to hum with something that didn't want to leave.

Lucas's 1969 Dodge Charger R/T growled into the lot, matte black, a beast that didn't belong on these quiet streets.

Victor was already waiting. Guards flanked him. A sharp spread, disciplined, but their eyes betrayed the strain.

Victor thanked both of them for coming.

Lucas: (motioning casually to Jack)

"Victor Cross. Jack Harrow."

Victor offered a nod. Jack's grin sharpened.

Time bent here. Clocks stuttered. Paintings on the walls seemed to shift when no one was looking.

—

Caleb sat behind reinforced glass.

His head hung low, but his eyes… those were wide awake.

The sound of approaching footsteps. He jerked his head up, scanning. Victor first. Caleb's stare pierced him, cataloging, dismissing.

Then Jack.

Caleb's breath hitched. His teeth bared into a violent grin, sharp and jagged. His eyes flushed red, and his breath turned ragged, animal.

He roared—loud, frenzied, as if trying to tear through the glass.

Then he saw him.

Lucas Cain.

Black overcoat, black shirt, black pants. A lit cigar in one hand, the other resting in his pocket like he didn't owe the world a single explanation.

Lucas locked eyes with him.

Caleb whimpered.

His breathing steadied.

The grinding of his teeth stopped.

The room thickened with silence.

Jack: (tilting his head, muttering with a faint laugh)

"Goddamn, Cain. What did you do to this poor soul, you monster?"

Lucas ignored him. The only answer was the lazy exhale of smoke.

Jack stepped forward, approaching the glass calmly.

Jack: (soft, like a priest about to crack open a grave)

"Lets see what is wrong with the little cross"

He placed two fingers gently against Caleb's forehead and whispered—ancient, broken syllables. A low, dead language that didn't survive the last sun.

Jack: (chanting softly)

"Sic me vocas, sic me regis. Aperi signum. Ostende dominum tuum."

(Translation: You call me, you command me. Open the sigil. Reveal your master.)

The sigil flared to life beneath Caleb's skin. Twisting lines. Alien, hungry, shifting in ways the human eye wasn't made to follow.

Jack: (grimly, to Lucas)

"Iseret's mark. No mistake."

The sigil beneath Caleb's skin pulsed again—alive, shifting.

Jack: (low, focused)

"Yeah. No mistake. Iseret's mark."

One of the guards stumbled backward, pressing his hand to his mouth, blood seeping through his fingers. His other hand clawed at his chest as if something writhed beneath the skin.

No one addressed it, but Jack "Some folks just ain't wired for the heavy air, bless their hearts."

Jack's fingers lingered a heartbeat longer, the ancient words slipping through his teeth. Soft, cold, final. The sigil shimmered. Weak. Fading. But something else stirred beneath it.

The sigil shimmered. Faint. Weak.

Jack: ( eyes closed and frowning)

"Now this is interesting." with his eyes closed, Jack tilted his head to Victor. "Someone else holds the leash of your beloved brother."

Caleb's head tilted—just a little too slow to be natural. A smile bloomed on his face was wide, jagged, wrong… as if his muscles were working off a delayed signal.

Jack: (eyes snapped open, instinctively stepping back)

"Cain."

Lucas's posture shifted.

Subtle.

But Jack noticed.

A second sigil began to burn to life under Caleb's skin.

Slower. Sharper.

More deliberate.

The lines were sharp. Elegant. Meant for a purpose only one person could have written.

Jack didn't speak immediately.

The guards looked on, unsure if the air itself had thickened or if the walls had simply started to press closer.

Lucas's voice finally cut through.

Lucas: (flat, cold)

"That's not Iseret."

Jack didn't need to answer. The shape answered for him.

Victor leaned in, tension starting to crack the careful posture he'd brought into the room.

Jack: (watching the shape solidify)

"No. It's a whole lot worse."

The second sigil didn't just burn. It moved under the skin, writhing like it was testing the space it had claimed.

The symbol fully formed—a second brand, curling over Caleb's ribs, laced in brutal, elegant lines.

Jack: (grim)

"Shit."

Victor: (tense, stepping closer)

"What? What now?"

Jack turned to him, voice heavy with something close to dread.

"This isn't possession."

(He glanced at Lucas, the weight settling in.)

"It's integration."

"Nobody does this," Jack muttered, like it tasted wrong in his mouth. "Not at least for a dead god. It's old forbidden work. Even the Mages don't touch this."

Victor's mouth opened, but no sound followed.

His throat locked. His right hand twitched. Sharp, sudden—like it belonged to someone else. He buried it in his coat pocket, but it still trembled. His breath dragged in, shallow, and didn't leave. His shoulders shifted, a barely visible sag in the armor he wore so well. His right hand curled into a fist… but not to fight.

He didn't. He just stared at Caleb, at what Caleb had become, and held the silence like a man gripping the edge of a cliff.

Jack: (slowly, deliberately)

"A possession burns out the body. It takes control. It uses the possessed.

But integration… it builds. It makes space. It plants roots."

Jack's gaze drifted back to Caleb, whose grin hadn't faltered.

Jack: (to Lucas)

"That second mark—it's a Nightsworn's sigil. The kind of power that makes a Marked."

Lucas: (deadly calm)

"You know who it is."

Jack: (quiet, sharp)

"Yeah… I know who it is. Vanessa Rider."

Victor: (sharply)

"She did this to Caleb?"

Jack:

"She didn't just curse him, Victor."

(Stepping back, folding the weight of this revelation into his pocket like a loaded gun.)

"She made him a node. An anchor."

Lucas: (eyes narrowing)

"For Iseret."

Jack:

"Yeah. Through him—"

(A beat.)

"—she can be."

The silence pressed in. Even the clocks stopped pretending.

Jack: (laughing at the scale of it)

"Was supposed to be a disappearance case, eh? A search. A wealthy kid in the wrong place."

(He tilted his head, that familiar grin flickering back.)

"Well, now it's a resurrection plot. A bid to bring back dead gods."

Lucas: (flat)

"That escalated quickly."

Jack: (softly)

"That's the game."

Somewhere behind them, the guard still hadn't stopped shaking. They passed the still-shaking guard, Lucas flicked ash from his cigar near the man's boots. "You're lucky you survived that. Most don't."

The room exhaled, as if pleased.

The boy kept smiling.

End of Chapter 10.