Angel Touched

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ANGEL TOUCHED

Copyright ©2025 Tracy Johnson

Published by Mac Paidin Publishing

macpaidinpublishing.com



All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Sunlight drifted through the hospital window, hitting my face like it was trying to remind me I was still alive. Just barely.

But it didn’t warm me. Not really. Not inside, where it counted. The heat on my cheek was yet another reminder that the world outside would go on without me.

The pediatric oncology lounge was the worst place in the world to pretend you were okay. The staff tried, I’ll give them that. With the cheerful cartoon animal posters plastered all over the walls. Paper cranes dangling from the acoustic ceiling tiles like the room was making wishes on our behalf. A bookshelf with donated paperbacks—some had creased spines and bent covers, with sentiments written inside in ballpoint pen. “Return to Kara,” one had said in looping letters. Yeah…Kara probably went home. Or Kara didn’t. The book didn’t say.

My hands were tucked under a fleece blanket across my lap, because my fingers chilled easily. I’d gotten good at counting seconds between beeps and hums, matching my breath to the machines. When I focused on that, I could pretend the rest of the room wasn’t full of other kids just like me; pretending not to be scared, and adults pretending not to be grieving.

I heard them before I saw them—teenagers, some of the girls were chattering way too loudly for a cancer ward. Giggling like they’d stepped into the wrong building and hadn’t noticed the smell of bleach and sickness yet.

It was annoying.

Not them, exactly. But the noise. Their bright, bubbly energy. The way it pressed against the walls like the world outside was trying to force its way in and fix us with enthusiasm. Visitors meant well, but most didn’t know how to look you in the eyes when you were dying. Their gazes slid off you like you were a mirror reflecting back something they didn’t want to see.

Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Nurse Susan leave her station. She had the kind of smile that always made you feel like you were the only patient in the building, even if she’d just sprinted three codes in a row. At first, I figured she was heading for another kid. Instead, she walked toward me—two girls trailing behind her—like little lost sheep. Fresh-faced, nervous, wearing matching sparkly grins that didn’t quite reach their eyes.

Great.

“Nathaniel,” Susan said, too cheerfully, “you have some visitors today.”

I turned my head slowly. Deliberately. If you move like you’re made of glass, sometimes people take the hint and leave you alone.

My eyes found theirs—one was blonde, the other had fuzzy, dark hair. They hovered at her side, uncomfortable, like they weren’t sure whether to introduce themselves or apologize. Their clothes were casual: jeans, sweaters, light jackets, because it was winter outside, and hospital air vents have no respect for seasons. Each one clutched a gift bag with tissue paper like it was a life preserver.

I stared at them.

Didn’t smile. Didn’t blink.

Just let the silence hang heavy in the air, hoping they’d get the message and back off.

No such luck.

They came closer anyway.

“Hi, Nathaniel,” the blonde one said. Her voice was warm, light, painfully sincere. “I’m Faith.”

Of course, she was.

She gestured to her friend. “And I’m Lynn,” the brunette added, smiling faintly, though it was clear she’d rather be anywhere else.

“We’d love to get to know you,” Faith said. “If that’s okay.”

I looked at Nurse Susan. She gave me the encouraging smile she always used—sweet, persistent, practiced. There was a line building at the entrance to the lounge behind the girls now—more teens pairing off with other patients. The whole scene felt like a school assignment labeled DO GOODERS in blocky letters.

I gave Susan a small nod because I didn’t have the energy to be the difficult kid today, and she retreated with a little squeeze to my shoulder that felt almost like a blessing.

The girls found chairs and dragged them over. The squeal of metal legs on linoleum made me flinch. I kept still, arms crossed in my lap, resting under the fleece blanket. The left one ached today—nerve damage from the chemo—but I wasn’t going to mention that. Let them figure their own way around this awkward encounter.

Lynn set her gift bag on the floor. I could see a thick paperback inside—gold title, dark blue cover—and a bag of jelly beans I couldn’t eat. My oncologist would wag a finger; my stomach had decided sugar was an enemy.

“Why?” I asked flatly.

Faith blinked. “Hmm?”

“Why do you want to get to know me?” My voice was intentionally cold. If I sounded brittle enough, maybe they’d get a clue and leave.

Lynn shifted in her seat, already regretting this service project. Faith, though—she didn’t look away. Her eyes were this clear light brown that caught the overhead fluorescents and captivated me.

“Well,” she said, “I can’t speak for Lynn, but I’m just… curious, I guess. I wanted to know your story. Why you’re here.”

A laugh wanted to burst out of my throat, but I swallowed it. Everyone knew why I was here. They just avoided saying it. Terminal. Stage over-and-out. Experimental this, palliative that. Words that strangers to this world wouldn’t understand.

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I deliberately stared past them, watching their church group mates break into pairs with the other patients. A volunteer in a pink and red-striped smock set up a board game at a table as if anyone in this room was interested in dice. My chest tightened at all the excitement across the room.

“So,” I said, still not looking at them, “this some kind of church thing?”

“Yes,” Faith nodded. “Youth activity.” Her voice brightened like that was supposed to mean something. “Are you LDS?”

I snorted and turned back to the window. On the other side of the glass, the winter sun bounced off a parking lot full of cars with snow-crusted bumpers. “I was,” I muttered. “Before.”

Before the bone scans. Before the bloodwork. Before the prayers fell on deaf ears, and I realized God wasn’t returning our calls. Before I found Mom quietly crying in the laundry room, so I wouldn’t hear. Before Dad brought the bishop over and they laid hands on my head and said beautiful, careful words that floated right through me.

I’d been baptized when I was eight, sure. But that was a lifetime ago. The boy who climbed into that font and the kid in this wheelchair today aren’t even the same species.

Faith and Lynn exchanged a look. They didn’t speak for a second. I could feel it like a vibration in the air between them—an unspoken Are we making this worse? (You think?) We can leave. (We can try.)

“Hey,” Lynn offered gently, “just because we’re part of a church group doesn’t mean we’re not here for you.”

I turned to her slowly. Let the bitterness show, because sometimes honesty is the only thing you have left to give.

“Yeah, well, God doesn’t care about me,” I whispered. “So what’s the point? I’m gonna meet him soon anyway. I’ll ask him myself.”

That shut them up.

Faith’s face changed. It wasn’t pity. And it wasn’t a performance. It was something like… pain. Like what I said had grabbed her by the throat and choked her. Good, I thought, and felt ashamed at the same time. Maybe now they’d leave.

But she didn’t go. Instead, she scooted her chair an inch closer. The sound should’ve grated, but somehow it didn’t. “Listen,” she said softly, “I know there’s no way we can understand what you’re going through, Nathaniel. But I want to try.”

Lynn glanced at her friend like Wait—what are you doing? Faith didn’t look away from me.

“Sometimes,” Faith said, “people show up and say the wrong thing. Or they say too much. We can just sit, if you want. We don’t have to talk.”

The room hummed around us. The IV pump ticked. My blanket suddenly felt too heavy, and I uncovered my arms. Something in my chest loosened a fraction of an inch. I kinda hated that.

We sat with that almost-silence for a full minute. I could hear a toddler down the hall throwing a tantrum with heroic commitment. I envied the honesty of it.

“Do you ever get tired of being brave?” Faith asked.

I blinked. “I’m not brave.”

“You’re here,” she said simply.

I felt heat behind my eyes and blinked hard, furious at my body for betraying me. “That’s not bravery. I don’t have a choice.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But it counts.”

Lynn cleared her throat. “We, um, brought you something.” She nudged the gift bag forward with her foot like it might explode. “You don’t have to take it. We just—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Set it there.”

She did, and folded her hands, relieved to have completed at least one part of their task.

“Do you want to tell me about you?” Faith asked. “I’m a good listener.”

“No,” I said, because the truth was I was tired of the story. “But you can tell me about yourself. If you want.”

She looked surprised. “Okay.” She said. “I like to draw. And read. But I’m terrible at volleyball. My mom says I should learn piano, but my fingers hate being bossed around.”

“That’s not a real thing,” I muttered.

Then she laughed—quietly, glancing around like she‘d forgotten where she was. “It is if your fingers are like mine.” She wiggled them—quick, nervous. “And I… I got my Patriarchal blessing last week.” She fumbled the words like they were too big in her mouth. “It was… intense.”

Lynn shot her a side-eye. Apparently, she hadn’t expected her friend to mention that.

“Intense how?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“I don’t know.” Faith shrugged, eyes shifted to her lap. “Like someone turned on a light inside my chest that I didn’t know was there.” Her cheeks flushed, embarrassed. “That sounds dumb.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, because it didn’t. It sounded like the opposite of everything happening in my world. And I was envious.

She looked up. Our eyes met. There was a warmth in her gaze that didn’t feel artificial; it felt like a hand offered on a cliff edge. I wasn’t sucked in, but I didn’t look away either.

Then she reached out—hesitating, just for a second—and placed her hand on my forearm.

And that’s when the universe cracked.

Not figuratively. Not some poetic metaphor. Something literally broke inside me.

A blinding light erupted behind my eyes, white shot through with gold. I couldn’t breathe. My entire body seized. Heat shot through my chest like I’d swallowed a soldering iron, but somehow, it wasn’t painful. It was… cleansing. It rushed down my spine, through my lungs, up into my skull, and blasted out into the universe. Like my bones were pipes, and something ancient had been waiting to open the valve.

The spot where she touched me—on my left forearm—burned. Not like fire, but as if something divine inside me was trying to sear its way out.

I clutched the wheelchair armrest, gasping. My back arched. The sound inside my head narrowed to a single high-pitched note. I could feel every inch of myself for the first time in months. Every vein. Every heartbeat.

Somewhere far away, a monitor jumped, then steadied. Someone shouted. A nurse dropped something. Lynn’s chair scraped back hard enough to screech.

Then the light faded.

Faith’s hand snapped back like I’d bitten her. She stared at me, open-mouthed, eyes wide. Something had happened. Something real. Her hand trembled in the air between us.

I looked at my arm. For the barest instant, I thought I saw… glow. A faint shimmer beneath the surface. Then it blinked away like a mirage.

And for the first time in years…

I didn’t feel sick.

I felt alive.

I watched the two Mormon girls rejoin their youth group, all bright-eyed and cheerful like they hadn’t just stepped into a ward full of dying kids. Their voices blended back into the hum of the room—laughing, whispering, grateful to be alive. I hated the sound of it. I hated that they got to walk out of here without thinking about IV poles or morphine drips or how long they had left.

A burning sensation crawled up my left forearm, sharp enough to snap my attention away from them. At first, I thought it was another nerve flare-up from the chemo, but when I looked down, I froze.

There on my skin—right where Faith had touched me—light was pushing up through the surface, glowing from beneath like someone had stuck a flashlight under my flesh. I scowled and leaned closer. The shape was too defined to ignore.

Fingerprints.

Glowing fingerprints.

My stomach dropped. I rubbed my eyes with my other hand, hoping it was just chemo-brain or exhaustion or whatever else my body had been doing lately to screw with me. But when I blinked the blur away, the glowing impressions were shifting. Stretching. Morphing.

Not finger marks anymore.

Wings.

It looked like wings sinking into the skin instead of rising out of it. Not like a scar. Not like a burn. Like something had been stamped into me from the inside out. The glow brightened the harder I stared.

I yanked my lap blanket over the mark, heart hammering against my ribs. I gripped the wheelchair wheels, ready to bolt before anyone noticed—then stopped.

What was I doing? It had been months since I’d had the strength to move this thing on my own. I could barely lift a fork without shaking. But now… my arms didn’t tremble. My hands felt steady. Strong.

I didn’t trust the feeling. Not one bit. But I pushed anyway, because shock does weird things to you, and apparently, mine came with bad decisions attached.

The wheelchair rolled forward like it weighed nothing.

I almost slammed straight into Nurse Susan.

“Nathaniel!” she gasped, throwing her hands out. “What are you doing? You should have called one of us—let me help you.”

Before I could say a word, she moved behind me, grabbed the handles, and steered me down the hallway and into my room. The floor was cold and sterile as always. The fluorescent lights hummed. I felt like I was floating above my own body.

She lowered me into bed, tucked the blanket around me, checked my IV line, then patted my shoulder.

“You rest,” she said gently, then slipped out the door.

But the second she was gone, I shoved the blanket aside.

Something was happening. Something massive. Something impossible.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My gown rode up a little, and I couldn’t help it—I stared. My legs should’ve been thin, wasted away to bone and stretched skin. But now?

Thick muscle lined both thighs.

“What…?” My voice cracked, barely more than a whisper.

I stood up.

I stood up.

For the first time in months, my legs held me like they remembered how. No wobble. No pain. Just strength.

I rushed into the bathroom, flipped on the light, and stared into the mirror.

My scalp—where there had been nothing but patchy fuzz and pale skin before—was sprouting new growth. Dark and thick. It grew as I watched, waves forming, creeping past my ears like I was watching a time-lapse on fast-forward.

My face looked fuller, healthier, not sunken or gray. My shoulders broadened right there in the reflection. My chest rose and fell with breaths that didn’t wheeze.

Each second the transformation continued, my panic climbed.

“What is happening to me?” I whispered, gripping the sink with both hands.

A soft glow reflected off the mirror, and I looked down.

The mark was shining so brightly that it lit up the small room with an eerie pulse.

Fear hit me first.

Then awe.

Then anger—burning hot and immediate—because suddenly everything clicked into place with sickening clarity.

Every prayer I’d said for years. Every blessing from every Melchezidek priesthood-holder in the ward. Our entire congregation fasting on my behalf. Every night, my parents knelt by my bedside begging Heavenly Father to save me.

Nothing.

Not a single thing had helped.

But now, some thirteen-year-old girl, a complete stranger, walked in, put her hand on my arm, and BOOM! I’m healed?

My stomach twisted. My throat tightened. Nothing about this made sense.

God has ignored me all this time, so why act now? Why through her? Why not through the people who were “authorized” to heal? Why wasn’t it my dad’s hands on my head that changed anything? Why wasn’t it my name on the temple prayer roll, or the fasting, or the blessings from the men who said they held the keys to the kingdom of heaven?

Why her?

Why this?

My pulse thundered in my ears.

I gripped the sink so hard my knuckles went white. My reflection stared back at me—older, stronger, almost unrecognizable.

And angry.

Not confused. Not relieved.

Angry.

Deep, bone-level angry.

Because if God had been ignoring me this whole time? If He’d made me suffer for years, only to snap His fingers now?

Then screw Him.

Maybe this wasn’t Heavenly Father. Maybe this wasn’t divine. Maybe this was something else entirely.

Something darker.

Something older.

Something that felt a lot more like power than mercy.

I stumbled back into the room, my heart pounding loud enough to drown out every other sound. The mark was burning—but it wasn’t exactly painful. It felt more like some kind of internal fuse had been lit.

I pulled the blanket over it and lay down, staring at the ceiling, chest heaving.

Apparently, I wasn’t dying anymore.

I didn’t know what I was now.

But whatever Faith had awakened inside me—it didn’t feel holy.

And it wasn’t done.

I didn’t sleep that night, lying in that stiff hospital bed with the blanket pulled to my chin, staring at the ceiling tiles like they were going to peel back and reveal the punchline to whatever cosmic joke I’d been shoved into. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the glow again—Faith’s fingerprints on my arm, burning into me like a brand.

She literally left her mark on me.

Well, maybe not her mark.

But definitely a mark, there was no doubt about that.

I kept expecting to wake up from this dream.

For the pain to come back.

For the nausea to grip me.

For the misery to remind me that I was a kid with an impending expiration date.

But… nope.

There were no more aches in my bones or pounding in my skull.

No crawling fatigue dragging me under like a riptide.

It was like my body forgot I’d ever been sick at all.

Sometime around dawn, a nurse I didn’t recognize walked in. She glanced at my chart, then at me, then back to the chart like something wasn’t adding up.

“You’re awake,” she said, squinting her eyes suspiciously. “You look… good.”

“Sorry,” I deadpanned. “I’ll try to look worse.”

She didn’t laugh.

Figures.

She checked my vitals anyway—blood pressure normal, oxygen normal, temperature normal. She even checked twice, like the machines were malfunctioning or something. Then she left, shaking her head with a confused look on her face.

By the time Mom burst through the doorway, the sun was spilling through the blinds. She looked tired…older; even though her hair was sprayed in place, and she’d put on make-up, still…her eyes were puffy. My illness had obviously taken a toll on her. But when she saw me sitting upright, her mouth fell open.

“Oh…my goodness…” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Nathaniel.”

Her voice cracked, and it made me flinch because I’d heard it break in fear for so long.

Now it cracked in disbelief.

She came close and leaned in, touching my face with shaking fingertips, like I might dissolve if she breathed too hard.

“Hey, Mom,” I murmured.

“My sweet son—” She choked. “You look…normal.” She ruffled the silky strands of dark hair now dusting my forehead.

Yeah.

I knew.

Dad pushed the door open a few minutes later, and the shock on his face was unmistakable. His eyes scanned my body like he was looking for the catch. His hand clamped my shoulder, gentle but firm.

“Son,” he whispered. “How do you feel?”

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? God. I didn’t even know how to answer that.

How do you tell your dad, a man who’d prayed over your limp, dying body a thousand times, that something he didn’t do—something he couldn’t do—had fixed you overnight?

“I feel…” I swallowed. “Different.”

Neither of them noticed how I kept my left arm tucked under the blanket.

Good.

Because the mark wasn’t just glowing now.

It was pulsing.

The doctors came in next. You could practically smell the skepticism rolling off them. They ran test after test, asked question after question, poked every inch of me like I might fall apart in their hands.

One doctor frowned at the chart so hard I thought the numbers might start apologizing.

“This is… remarkable,” he said carefully. “Your scans are showing…”

He swallowed. Looked at the other doctors. Then back at me.

“Stability where there hasn’t been stability in years.”

Mom burst into tears. Dad closed his eyes like he was saying a silent prayer of thanks. I stared at the floor.

Stability.

Was that what they were calling this?

They didn’t see the truth.

They didn’t see my arm burning under the blanket.

They didn’t see that I hadn’t felt this strong since I was twelve.

They didn’t feel that strange power humming in my blood like an electrical current.

Faith healed me.

Not belief in God.

But Faith, a thirteen-year-old girl from the church youth group.

Ironic, that.

After they left, I sat on the bed and stared at my hands. They looked like I remembered them from a couple of years ago. The tremor was gone. The skin was plump where chemo had made it tissue paper thin.

I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

Still can’t.

I looked at the door. If I told my parents what really happened—if I showed them the new mark on my arm—their faces would do that thing where hope and horror wrestled for five seconds, but no one says anything out loud. I didn’t know if I could stand it.

But the change was so obvious. There was no hiding it. And no getting around it.

I inhaled deeply, then stood again and walked a slow lap around the room.

Because I could.

I pressed my palm to the mark on my skin.

Because it burned.

My breath hitched. A hum traveled up my arm into my shoulder, then across my chest until it settled behind my sternum like a spirit-bird folding its wings, roosting. Just waiting to take flight.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to curl up like before and wait for the end. I wanted to grab the nearest human being, shake them, and say, Do you see this?

Instead, I sat on the bed and listened to my pulse synchronize with the hum in my arm. And for the first time since the diagnosis, the future didn’t look bleak.

For the first time in years, I actually HAD a future.

And it looked like a door.

But I didn’t know who held the key.

They discharged me before noon. As Dad eased my wheelchair down the concrete ramp, I heard the first whispers.

“Miracle,” a nurse murmured behind her hand.

Another nurse crossed herself: “Or… something else.”

Their eyes tracked me like I was a comet passing too close to Earth.

Outside, the sunlight hit me like someone snapping a Polaroid straight into my retinas. Thankfully, it was cool out, so Mom hadn’t blinked when I’d asked her to bring a long-sleeved sweatshirt.

She had no idea I needed it to hide the thing burning beneath my skin.

Dad heard the whispers, too, and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get you home, son. Wait here, I’ll pull the car around.” He motioned for Mom to take the wheelchair handles.

I could have walked.

But they insist on wheelchairs for every patient leaving the hospital. I don’t get it.

While we waited, Mom kept reaching out like she needed to touch my face again, just to confirm I wasn’t a hallucination. I caught her looking up at the sky, muttering thanks under her breath.

But Dad…

There was a look in his eyes that made me wonder if he suspected something unusual—like parents sometimes sense storms before they break.

In the car, the seatbelt’s click felt amplified. The engine’s idle rattled like a coin in a jar. Every road crack popped beneath the tires. In the rearview mirror, I caught Dad’s eyes flick to me and back to the road, again and again, like he was afraid I’d vanish if he didn’t keep checking.

When we pulled into the driveway of our beige two-story, everything looked the same as it always had. But then I stepped out of the car, and the world hit me like a wave. Damp dirt from the flowerbeds, gasoline from our neighbor’s lawn mower two houses down, the metallic tang of the sprinkler heads. The porch step complained with its familiar third-board creak. A blue jay screamed from the maple tree in the yard like we’d offended it by arriving. For a second, I just stood there, my hand on the railing, breathing like a diver who’d broken the surface, gasping for air.

Inside, Mom fussed over me until I threatened to hide in my room. She made soup, brought blankets, hovered with the unbearable energy of someone trying to show gratitude to the universe by smothering their kid.

Dad didn’t say a word. Not once. He sat in his Lazy-Boy with scriptures open, but he wasn’t reading. He was watching me like I’d come back from the grave wearing someone else’s skin. He gazed at me as I crossed the living room, as I leaned on the door frame, as I bent to pick up a pen that had rolled under the coffee table, but didn’t even wobble when I stood back up.

He had given me priesthood blessings. Had poured oil on my head, prayed until his voice cracked. He’d called in other elders, men with higher authority. None of it had worked. And now—without his hands, without his faith—here I stood.

That burned him. I could see it in the tiny flex of his jaw, in the way he gripped the leather binding of his Quad like it should leave a bruise.

By dinner, ward members had already started calling.

Sister Nelson.

The Bishop’s wife.

Mom’s visiting teachers.

“Is it true?”

“We heard the good news!”

“Heavenly Father must have a special calling for Nathaniel!”

I wanted to scream.

Dad watched Mom take calls from where he sat at the kitchen table. His hands were clasped, knuckles white. His mouth tight.

“You don’t look happy,” I said quietly.

He looked up slowly.

His eyes searched my face.

“I’m grateful,” he said. “More than you know.”

“But?”

He hesitated.

Then:

“But I don’t understand it.”

I held his gaze. “Neither do I.”

The mark pulsed again—slow, warm, insistent.

I pulled my sleeve down a little farther. I constantly tugged it down. The mark was not a blunt hand print anymore; it had redefined itself, as if it had decided what it wanted to be. Fine golden lines traced the shadow of a wing, radiating outward like something pressing into me from the outside. If I stared too long, it seemed to shift, like ink curling in water. It pulsed sometimes—small, secret—like it had its own heartbeat.

That first night, I lay awake in bed and listened to the house breathe. No more fluorescent lights or machine beeps or nurse shoes squeaking on polished tile. Just the tick of the hallway clock and the occasional sigh of the air vent. Ordinary noises. But somehow louder than the hospital ever was.

My body felt like it didn’t belong to me anymore—it was too alive, too responsive, too wired. My legs twitched with restless energy. My lungs felt too full, like they wanted to scream even though I hadn’t said a word in hours.

The next morning, a casserole showed up on our doorstep. Then a pie. Then a huge bouquet of flowers. By afternoon, the kitchen counters looked like an altar. There were cards with sentiments: “We’re so happy for you.” “We always knew Heavenly Father was watching.” “The power of prayer works.”

By the next Sunday—our first Fast and Testimony meeting since I’d come home—Mom insisted we go to church.

“Everyone’s been praying for you,” she said, smoothing the collar of my shirt like smoothing the fabric could smooth the situation. “They deserve to see the answer to their prayers.”

The phrase made something in my throat close. Their prayers. What about mine, the ones that felt like I’d been calling a disconnected number for the last two years?

Dad didn’t argue, but he wasn’t thrilled either.

Still, I went. Curiosity, maybe. Or stubbornness. Or the part of me that wanted to see who I was to them now.

The chapel buzzed the moment we walked in. Heads turned as if pulled by a string. The organist missed a note and pretended she hadn’t. Sister Peterson stood so fast her purse slid off the pew and smacked the carpet. “Just look at him,” she said to anyone who’d listen. “Look at Nathaniel!” Tears clung to her lashes like dew.

Everyone’s eyes were wide and bright and hungry. They wanted to believe this proved something. That the gospel was true. That their faith mattered. You could see the math happening on their faces: we prayed, he was healed, therefore we are right.

It nauseated me. Like my existence was validation of their beliefs.

Sacrament meeting blurred. The bread and water, and hymns. When Brother Allen got up to bear his testimony, his voice trembled on the first sentence and then gathered strength like wind through a canyon. “Heavenly Father still performs miracles today,” he said, one hand pressed to his chest. “We’ve witnessed His hand in our ward.” Heads bobbed like buoys. The word miracle entered the room again and again, and every time, the mark under my sleeve gave a tiny electric throb, as if feeding off the sound.

Mom sat ramrod straight. Dad folded his arms across his chest, jaw tight. I kept my head down, wishing my skin didn’t buzz under my sleeve.

When Brother Allen sat down, there was that uncomfortable silence in the chapel while everyone waited anxiously to see who would be brave enough to go next.

Suddenly, without warning, Mom stood up.

She didn’t even glance at us first. She just smoothed her skirt and walked up the aisle toward the pulpit.

I glanced at Dad sitting next to me, and his eyebrows jerked up. My stomach fell.

Climbing the steps at the front of the chapel and glancing to smile at the bishop and his councilors seated there, she moved behind the podium and faced the congregation. Her eyes were already shining.

“Dear Brothers and Sisters, I would be remiss today if I didn’t stand and publicly thank my Heavenly Father for the incredible miracle he has worked in our family this past week,” she began, voice trembling. “As most of you know, our sweet son, Nathaniel,” she paused, glancing and nodding at me.

Heads swiveled.

Eyes landed on me and didn’t leave.

I wanted to sink into the pew and disappear.

Mom kept talking—soft, reverent, overflowing with hope.

“was diagnosed, two years ago, with stage four relapsed medulloblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer .”

A rustle moved through the chapel—people shifting, bracing, remembering.

“This has been… a long road,” she continued, her voice thinning. “We prayed. We fasted. Nathaniel received blessing after blessing from the elders. For a while, we even thought we had our miracle. He went into remission.”

A small smile flickered across her face, fragile as tissue paper.

“But then the cancer came back with a vengeance. Even worse than before. It ravaged his poor body, and we… we reached a point where we had to accept that our son was truly dying. The doctors told us there was nothing more they could do. That we needed to prepare ourselves.” She swallowed hard. “We tried to be strong. We tried to have faith. But I’ll be honest—my heart was breaking. Every day.”

Someone in the front row pressed a hand to her mouth, sobbing.

“And then,” she inhaled deeply before going on, “last Friday, Heavenly Father intervened.”—her voice lifted, full of awe—“When the doctors examined him…they discovered that the tumor was gone.” She let the words settle like a soft explosion. “Completely gone. Not reduced in size or shrinking. Just gone. And not only that—his body has been made whole again. His strength. His hair. His color. Brothers and Sisters, our son has been restored.”

Gasps. Sobs. A chorus of whispered “oh my”s.

Tears slid down her cheeks, but she kept going.

“I stand before you today to bear my unwavering testimony that I know our Heavenly Father lives. He hears and answers prayers—even when it feels like silence. I know He still works miracles today. And I needed to stand here, in front of all of you, and publicly thank Him for giving us our son back.”

Her voice trembled on the final words.

“I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

She stepped down to a room full of people, wiping their eyes and staring at me like I was Exhibit A in a spiritual courtroom.

This wasn’t her fault.

But it felt like being set on fire.

Dad’s jaw flexed. His hands were fists on his knees.

By the time she returned to her seat, the whole congregation was in a stir.

Brother Walker, one of our Home Teachers, was sitting behind us and leaned forward to grasp my shoulder.

Members wiped their eyes and turned to look at me as if expecting a halo to appear.

Other testimonies followed—about half the ward bounded up to the mic to talk about never losing faith, miracles, answered prayers, the Lord working in his own time, gratitude for “the example of the Gray family.” A few men got emotional. Sister Jensen cried through her entire testimony.

I felt stripped bare.

Exposed.

Claimed by a fictional story that had absolutely nothing to do with what happened in that hospital lounge.

The mark under my sleeve throbbed with every repetition of the word: miracle.

And then the question was raised:

How? What happened?

And that opened Pandora’s Box.

Faith’s face flashed across my mind.

The shock in her eyes.

The way her hand had ripped away like she’d touched fire.

What did she do to me?

What am I now?

It took me two days to find her.

Her first name, I remembered. Faith. Of course it would be something poetic like that.

But it took longer to get the rest. A call to the hospital claiming I wanted to thank the girls from the visiting youth group. It wasn’t a total lie. A chatty receptionist who didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to give out information.

Faith Portner. Salt Lake City.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the cordless phone on the nightstand like it might explode.

For almost twenty minutes I just sat there, rehearsing what to say, my hand hovering over the buttons. Finally, I took a deep breath and dialed.

It rang. Once. Twice. I was about to hang up when someone picked up on the other end.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice—older, polite.

“Uh…hi. Is Faith there?” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. “This is Nathaniel. From the hospital.”

There was a pause.

“Oh! One moment, dear.”

Muffled voices. Footsteps. Then silence. My heart thudded in my ears.

“Hello?” It was her. Hesitant, but definitely Faith.

“Hey. Um. It’s Nathaniel. From the hospital.”

Another pause. Then, “I remember.”

“I need to ask you something. Please don’t think I’m crazy.”

***

The church parking lot was empty when I got there.

The late afternoon sun bled across the sky, throwing long shadows from the steeple. I stuffed my hands in my hoodie pocket, shoulders hunched, wishing I could disappear into the cracks of the sidewalk. My pulse thudded with the mark on my arm, its glow hidden beneath the thick sleeve but still impossible to ignore.

She was already there.

Faith leaned against the brick wall near the back entrance, her hair catching the light of the sunset. She wore flared jeans and a pastel track jacket this time. No gift bag. No chaperone. Just her and a knot of nerves wrapped around her shoulders like a scarf. She straightened the moment she saw me, biting her lip like she’d been rehearsing a speech.

I stopped a few yards away.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she replied, stuffing her hands in her pockets. “How are you feeling?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to actually show.”

“I didn’t either.”

For a while, we didn’t speak.

“So,” I said, finally breaking the silence. “What the hell did you do to me?”

Faith flinched. “You mean at the hospital?”

I pushed up my sleeve and held out my forearm.

She gasped.

“You touched me. And now…” I shoved it up more to show the faint shimmer crawling along my veins. Even in the dying light, it pulsed faintly, undeniable. “This. This wasn’t chemo, it wasn’t doctors, it wasn’t God answering prayers. It was you.”

Faith’s eyes widened. She took a step closer, but I stepped back.

“I constantly feel it,” I told her. “At night. It burns.”

Faith didn’t respond. Her eyes stayed locked on the mark.

“I’m not normal anymore. I can hear things. See things. Electronic gadgets glitch when I touch them. This isn’t just some placebo effect. This is real.”

“I believe you,” she said softly.

I stared at her. “Why?”

She swallowed hard and looked away. “Because something happened to me, too.”

She told me about her Patriarchal Blessing. The vision. The glowing goddess with eyes like galaxies and skin like marble.

She told me about the throne and the crown and the voice in her head that called her daughter.

“After that,” she said, “everything changed. I didn’t tell anyone except my mom. And even she barely believed me. Until she took me to visit my great-aunt.”

“You don’t get it,” I said finally. “They all think God saved me. They think their prayers worked. But it was you.”

Faith shook her head. “It wasn’t me, Nathaniel. I was just—” She pressed a hand to her chest. “—like a spark. A match. The fire was already waiting.”

I turned to her sharply. “Don’t feed me poetry. What are you?”

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, in a whisper:

“My aunt says our family has… a history. Bloodlines that trace back to something not entirely human. She calls it angelic.”

I stared. “I know how it sounds. But it’s the only explanation she’s ever given me. And maybe it explains why…” She gestured vaguely to the space between us. “…why this happened.”

My laugh came out hollow. “So what? You think you’re some kind of angel? And I’m your science project?”

Her eyes flashed. “No! You’re—” She stopped herself, shook her head. “You’re alive. And maybe that means something. To you. To me. To both of us.”

I looked away, jaw tight.

Because buried beneath my anger was the truth I couldn’t deny: when her hand touched my arm, I hadn’t just been healed. I’d been awakened.

I shivered. Not from fear. From something deeper. Something primal.

“I don’t know how to stop it,” I whispered. “I don’t even know what it wants.”

Faith looked away, down the street, where the wind tugged at the branches of bare trees. Then she said, “Maybe it doesn’t want to be stopped.”

I flinched.

She stood straighter, shoving a hand through her wind-tousled hair. “Be careful, Nathaniel.”

Faith turned to go, but paused, reaching out instinctively, like she meant to place a hand on my arm.

Then stopped.

Her fingers hovered in the air for a heartbeat too long, trembling slightly.

I saw it in her eyes: the fear. Not of me… but of what she might do to me if she touched me again.

She drew her hand back like I was fire.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, her voice barely audible. “I just… I don’t know what’ll happen.”

And then she walked away, her arms hugging herself tightly, as if she was trying to contain something vast and dangerous inside her skin.

I didn’t want to go. Not because I didn’t care about Sister Nelson, but because I didn’t care about anything anymore—not after Faith, not after the hospital, not after everything that had happened. The mark on my arm still hadn’t faded. Some nights, it even shimmered faintly when the room went dark. I’d tried to convince myself it was imagination—light tricking my eyes, a reflection from my desk lamp—but deep down, I knew better.

Still, when Dad asked if I’d come along for a blessing, I said yes. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe curiosity. Or maybe just because saying no to him felt wrong.

“It’s just Sister Nelson,” he said that morning, straightening his tie in the mirror. “She’s not feeling well. It’s nothing serious. But she asked for a blessing. It won’t take long.”

I almost told him to go without me. To get his home teaching companion to go along with him. But the way he asked—the way his voice softened on that word blessing—made me feel like this mattered to him. So, I went.

The Nelsons lived only a few blocks away. Their house was small and old, one of those 1950s homes with wood paneling. Sister Nelson had decorated every wall with framed temple prints. It smelled faintly of VapoRub, chicken soup, and old hymn books. The blinds were half-closed, letting in just enough afternoon light to paint stripes across the carpet.

Sister Nelson was lying on the couch beneath a crocheted afghan, her face pale and tired. Her husband sat close by, hands twisting a tissue into knots. She smiled when we entered, a small flicker of gratitude that made me feel uncomfortable.

“Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “I just… need some peace.”

Peace. I wondered what that even felt like anymore.

Dad nodded gently. “Of course.”

He pulled the small vial of consecrated oil from his pocket. I’d seen this a hundred times before—the ritual, the words, the laying on of hands. It was something that was supposed to bring comfort, but it never really did anything. I couldn’t remember a single time a priesthood blessing had actually healed someone.

That was before Faith.

I hung back while Dad gently applied a drop of oil to the crown of her head and began the blessing. His voice was calm, steady, practiced. The cadence of a man who’d said these same words for decades.

When he finished, he turned and nodded to me.

I froze, eyes wide.

“You’re a priest now,” he said softly. “You can seal the anointing.”

My chest tightened. I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t trust myself—not with this whatever was inside me now. But his eyes held that quiet trust I’d grown up with. The kind that always made me want to prove myself worthy.

So, I stepped forward.

My hands trembled as I placed them on Sister Nelson’s head. Her scalp felt warm beneath my fingertips. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and began to speak the familiar words.

“By the authority of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood…”

But before I could finish, something shifted.

It started as a hum—low, electric, rising from the base of my spine. Then came the heat. A pulse. A current. It shot through my arms like lightning, racing toward the place where my hands touched her skin.

The air in the room thickened. Colors sharpened behind my eyelids. I could hear everything—the clock ticking in the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator, even the faint rustle of leaves outside the window.

Then Sister Nelson gasped.

Her chest expanded, her body jolted once, then twice. A soft glow—not bright or visible exactly, but something—radiated outward.

Dad took over, his words stumbling for half a second, but he recovered quickly, finishing in a tone that sounded more like awe than control.

And then it was over.

Sister Nelson sat upright, blinking. Her color and energy had returned. She reached for her husband’s arm, eyes wide and full of tears.

“That was amazing…” she whispered, touching her chest. “I feel so much lighter. Like something that was overshadowing me is gone.”

Her husband choked up. “Thank you, Brother Gray. Thank you, Nathaniel. You don’t know what this means to us.”

But I did know. Or I thought I did.

Because I could still feel it—the heat in my hands, the electricity running through me. It hadn’t stopped when the prayer did. It was still moving, still alive.

Dad stepped back, nodding his head. But when he finished, we just stood there for a long moment. None of us knew what to say.

On the drive home, he didn’t speak for miles. Just stared straight ahead, hands tight on the wheel, the faint hum of the car filling the silence between us.

Finally, he said, “That was… remarkable.”

His tone was part wonder, part worry.

“Heavenly Father must be working through you, son.”

I looked at him. “But why me?”

He smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. I don’t question it.”

He paused. “But, Nathaniel… I am concerned. Gifts like this—can draw attention.”

Attention.

Yeah, he wasn’t kidding.

By the time we got home, the news had already started to spread. I don’t know how. But the ward gossip mill was in full force. Sister Nelson probably called someone, or maybe it was her husband. Either way, word got out fast.

By the following Sunday, people were whispering at church.

“Did you hear about Nathaniel Gray? He healed Sister Nelson.” “No, it was his father’s Melchezidek priesthood authority.” “No, no—it was the kid.”

The bishop shook Dad’s hand that morning with a saccharine smile. “We’re so proud of your family,” he said, loud enough for half the ward to hear.

I just wanted to disappear.

During sacrament meeting, when one of the deacons passed me the sacrament tray, he whispered, “Is it true?” I didn’t answer. I just took a piece of bread and passed it down the row.

By the time the final hymn ended, I could feel eyes burning holes in my back.

That night, I sat in my room staring at my arm again. The mark glowed faintly under the lamplight, tracing thin golden veins that pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat.

It didn’t feel holy.

It felt… hungry.

I thought about Faith. About the way her hand had burned against my skin that day in the hospital. The light. The way my tumor had dissolved like it had never been there at all.

And then I thought about Sister Nelson. The same light, the same fire—but this time, it hadn’t just healed her. It had filled me.

Like energy transferring between two currents—her weakness into me, my power into her.

Was that what healing was supposed to feel like? Because it hadn’t felt sacred. It had felt… intoxicating.

Within a week, more people started calling. Families who’d heard through the grapevine that “Brother Gray’s boy” had the gift of healing. A mother whose son had seizures. An old man with lung cancer. Someone’s aunt with rheumatoid arthritis.

They all wanted the same thing—a touch.

Dad took the calls, his voice steady and polite, always promising to “pray about it.” But I could see the storm in his eyes.

He wasn’t just afraid for me.

He was afraid of me.

And honestly? I couldn’t blame him.

Because sometimes, when I was alone, I’d close my eyes and imagine the energy from the mark spreading through someone else. And the thought made me feel powerful.

Too powerful.

One night, I heard my parents whispering in the kitchen. I didn’t mean to listen, but my hearing was hypersensitive, and their words carried up the stairs.

“He’s only fifteen,” Mom said, her voice trembling. “I know,” Dad whispered back. “What if it’s not from God?” A long silence. Then Dad said softly, “Then we need to find out what it is.”

My chest ached. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the faint golden glow from my arm reflecting off the walls.

What was it?

Faith had called it a miracle.

The doctors had called it impossible.

But now, it felt like something much bigger than either of those things.

Something that didn’t care about prayers or blessings or worthiness.

Something that had chosen me, whether I liked it or not.

I started wearing only long-sleeved shirts. It was spring in Utah—too warm for that—but I didn’t care. The mark had to stay hidden.

Still, I caught people staring at me. In church, at the mini-mart, in school. On the street…Whenever I was, conversations seemed to pause just long enough to make my skin crawl. People didn’t look away fast enough. Not anymore. They watched me like I was carrying something radioactive—dangerous, miraculous, or both.

I tried pretending it didn’t bother me, but the mark under my sleeve didn’t let me forget. Each time someone whispered my name, it pulsed. Each time someone stared too long, it warmed. Like it could sense being noticed.

Like it liked it.

I hated that part the most.

One afternoon, I was cutting through the hallway at school when someone brushed my arm by accident—just the barest graze through my sleeve. The mark flared, sharp as a spark plug firing in my bones, and the kid—some freshman I didn’t know—stumbled backward, clutching his chest.

“You okay?” I asked, heart slamming.

He blinked, dazed. “Yeah. Just… dizzy for a second.”

And then he walked off like nothing happened.

But I felt it.

A tiny rush—warm, electric—racing up my arm and into my ribs.

It terrified me.

Because I’d felt something leave me.

Not warmth.

Not emotion.

Energy.

A weird, draining pull—like something had reached through the mark and siphoned off a thread of whatever lived inside me.

It reminded me of that bible story where a woman touched the hem of Jesus’s garment, and he sensed it immediately. How he stopped, turned, and said he’d felt energy go out of him.

I used to think that was just poetic language. Symbolic.

But standing in that fluorescent hallway, sleeve burning against my skin, I understood it in a way that made my stomach twist.

Because that’s exactly what it felt like.

Like something had gone out of me.

And worse—like something inside me wanted more.

The mark pulsed again, a hungry little throb, almost eager.

I pressed my arm against my side, trying to calm my breathing.

“No,” I whispered under my breath, even though I didn’t know who—or what—I was saying it to.

That night, I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the sleeve hiding the mark. The house was quiet. Mom and Dad had turned in hours ago, but their earlier whispers still clung to the corners of my mind.

What if it’s not from God?

Then we need to find out what it is.

I lifted the fabric slowly.

The gold wing glowing faintly—soft veins branching like roots or lightning across my forearm.

“This is getting worse,” I muttered.

But even as I said it, something inside me disagreed.

Not worse.

Awakening.

I snapped the sleeve back down.

“I’m not doing this—whatever this is,” I murmured into the dark.

I lay back, staring at the ceiling, every nerve in my body buzzing with energy that didn’t belong to a normal fifteen-year-old boy.

A week ago, all I’d wanted was to live.

Now the thought creeping into my mind terrified me more than dying ever had:

What if this thing didn’t just save my life…

What if it is remaking it?

Outside, a dog barked. A car drove by. The world went on like nothing was happening.

But I felt it—deep, undeniable.

Something was coming for me.

And whatever it was…

It already knew my name.

The desert had teeth.

That was the first thought that hit me as I opened my eyes and realized I wasn’t in my bed anymore.

The air rasped against my throat like sandpaper with every breath, hot and dry, full of grit that clung to my tongue. A vast expanse of cracked earth stretched in every direction, veined with rivers of ash that glowed faintly from below, as if the ground itself was smoldering. Three suns squatted in the sky—bloated, angry orbs that poured crimson, amber, and burnt-gold light across the plain.

And there, rising like a wound in the world, was The Dod.

It wasn’t a mountain. It wasn’t even natural. It looked wrong, like someone had dropped a colossal slab of obsidian straight out of the heavens and let it slam into the earth, shattering the land around it. Its sides gleamed like mirrors, polished black that caught the suns’ light and twisted it until the horizon looked warped and sick.

Every instinct in my body screamed that I didn’t belong here.

I glanced down. My hospital gown was gone, replaced by dark, fitted clothes I’d never owned—strange fabric that flexed like armor but weighed almost nothing. My boots crunched on the red dust when I shifted, leaving imprints that looked too deep, as if the earth was trying to swallow me.

The mark on my arm pulsed like a second heart.

I clenched my fists. This had to be a vision. But it felt too sharp, too real. The heat singed my skin, the ash stung my eyes, the faint metallic taste in the air coated my tongue like blood.

Then the shadow fell.

A sound like a hurricane tore across the desert as a vast shape sliced down from the heavens. My head snapped back in time to see it—black wings spread wider than a city street, each beat stirring cyclones of dust. The dragon landed atop the Dod with a thunderous crack, claws carving grooves in the obsidian.

It was bigger than anything I’d ever seen—its body like a fortress of scaled armor, its molten eyes the color of lava. Smoke rolled from its nostrils, and when it growled, the sound rumbled deep enough to shake the marrow in my bones.

And then I saw him.

The rider slid down from the dragon’s shoulder, moving with a fluid grace that made the hair rise on my arms. Bare feet touched the black stone without hesitation. His coat flared around him like a shadow stitched to his skin. His hair was a messy wave of dark ink, and his eyes—they glowed, blue and electric, alive with a dangerous patience.

He looked like a prince out of a nightmare.

And yet… familiar.

I couldn’t place it, but something deep inside me recognized him. Like I’d been waiting for him.

“You didn’t ask for this,” the boy said, his voice low and smooth, carrying easily over the distance between us. “Neither did I.”

I swallowed hard, my throat dry. “Who are you?”

He smiled faintly, as though the question amused him. “A friend. Or at least—I could be.”

He came closer, every step deliberate, eyes never leaving mine. My pulse raced, but I couldn’t move. His gaze was magnetic, pulling me in, making the vast, burning desert feel small and irrelevant.

“You’ve noticed it already,” he said, nodding toward my sleeve. “The strength. The clarity. The hunger. It isn’t a curse.”

My stomach twisted. “Then what is it?”

“A gift.” He stopped a few feet away, close enough that I could see faint scars curling across his collarbones, marks that looked like ancient burns. “One that can make you more than human. Already has.”

The mark on my arm seared in response, like it wanted him, wanted this.

I stepped back, shaking my head. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

His expression softened, almost pitying. “We don’t get to choose the story we’re born into, Nathaniel. We only get to choose how to play our part.”

The dragon behind him shifted, smoke coiling, molten eyes fixed on me. The sound of its breathing was like a forge bellows, steady and inevitable.

“What is this place?” I asked.

He glanced around, then back at me. “Some call it Blarjord. Others call it a prison. For me…” He spread his arms, turning slightly toward the plateau. “…it’s home.”

Blarjord. The word rolled heavy and strange on my tongue, like it didn’t want to be spoken in the language of the living.

“And you?” I asked quietly.

His smile curved sharply. “I am Ethan.”

The name struck me like déjà vu.

“You’re not like the others,” Ethan said, circling me slowly. His steps made no sound against the ash, though the dragon’s talons scraped the stone in rhythm. “They look at you and see a miracle. A saint. A vessel for their God. But you and I—we know better. We know what it feels like to touch that tide. To drink from it until it fills every hollow place.”

I bristled, but his words pierced too close to the truth. I thought of Sister Nelson gasping under my hands, chest arching as power poured through me, of the intoxicating rush.

“You don’t understand,” I muttered.

Ethan stopped in front of me again, tilting his head. “Oh, but I do. More than anyone else ever will. And I can help you. I can teach you to master it. To control it, instead of letting it consume you.”

He extended a hand. Not a command. Not a demand. An invitation.

The mark on my arm flared in answer.

I stared at his hand, my chest tight. Every fiber of me screamed that this was dangerous—that nothing about this kid or his dragon or this blasted desert could ever be safe. And yet…

For the first time since Faith’s touch, since my recovery, since the whispers started—I didn’t feel alone.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Ethan said softly, lowering his hand when I didn’t take it. “But soon, Nathaniel, you will. Because power like this… it never hides. Not for long.”

The dragon unfurled its wings, the sound like thunder rolling through stone. Ash spiraled into the air, blotting out one of the suns.

Ethan climbed onto its shoulder with fluid ease, his glowing eyes still locked on mine. “When you’re ready, find me again. This place will always answer your call.”

With a single beat of its wings, the dragon launched into the burning sky. The force knocked me backward, dust choking my lungs.

When I looked up, the Dod was empty. The horizon warped in the heat.

And then I was back—gasping in my bed, sweat drenching my sheets, the mark on my arm burning like fire.

I pressed my hand to it, trembling.

I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed Ethan. But I knew one thing for certain:

I didn’t feel alone anymore.

The call came on a Wednesday night, it was one of those quiet, thoughtful nights when the house felt relaxed. Mom had just loaded the dishwasher. Dad had been sitting in his favorite chair, watching a rerun of Star Trek. I was upstairs in my bedroom pretending to do algebra when Dad appeared in my doorway without knocking. He never knocked. He leaned one shoulder against the frame, the solid wood holding him up.

“Brother Jensen called,” he said softly. “Caleb’s in the hospital again.”

I knew the name. Everyone in the ward knew it—twelve years old, born with a hole in his heart. He’d had multiple surgeries, with lots of complications, the whole roller coaster.

“They’ve asked for… us?” I asked, already guessing the answer.

His eyes met mine and slid away. “They asked for you. But I told him we’d come together.”

There was a beat where I could have said no—where I should have said no. I wasn’t ordained to do miracles. I wasn’t anything except a kid who’d been dying, and now I wasn’t.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked, eyebrows hiking high up on my forehead.

“I mean, what about all the gossip and rumors?”Dad flinched—so small I almost missed it.

He stepped farther into my room, lowering his voice. “I know what people are saying, son. I know it’s… getting intense. But when a family asks for help, we don’t turn them away.”

“That’s not what I meant.” I swallowed. “Dad… you and Mom were whispering about this. About me. About whether this is even from God.”

His jaw tightened. The muscle there jumped once, then settled.

“I worry,” he said finally. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. Your mother worries too. This isn’t something we were expecting.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then looked at me with serious eyes.

“But, Nathaniel… I’ve seen you heal someone now.” His voice wavered on the word heal. “And I can’t pretend that isn’t real. I can’t pretend God isn’t capable of working in ways we don’t understand.”

“Okay,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, and got up to grab a jacket.

We drove in a hush, Dad’s hands stayed at ten and two on the steering wheel. The dashboard clock clicked loudly, and I watched the way his knuckles tightened when he changed lanes, how he breathed out through his nose when we hit a red light. The car smelled of wintergreen gum and motor oil and a faint trace of aftershave.

It was so surreal walking back into that hospital. I felt like it was going to swallow me whole. Elevators, then extra-wide hallways with sanitized floors, and the ever-present odor of sickness and bleach and medicine.

The Jensen family waited in a little alcove by pediatrics: the Mom had red, swollen eyes and a paper cup in her hand that she wasn’t drinking from. The Dad’s jaw looked like he had given up on unclenching, and the older sister sat twisting a long strand of hair pulled up in a hair tie.

Brother Jensen looked up and stood, right hand extended toward my dad.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, and Dad gripped his shoulder. He escorted us across the hall and into his son’s room.

The space was soft with machine sounds—high, innocent beeps; the whoosh of oxygen; a steady, low thrum like a giant cat purring badly. Caleb looked smaller in that bed than I’d remembered him being from church. His skin had a dull pallor, and there was a blue tinge to his mouth and fingernails. When he saw me, his eyes fluttered and then steadied, like he’d been trying to keep awake until I arrived.

Guilt hit me in a hot wave. I didn’t want to be anyone’s last hope. I just wanted to be—I don’t even know—left alone? Alive without owing anything?

Dad set the tiny vial on the bedside table with a reverence that made the fluorescent lights feel like sacrilege. He anointed Caleb’s head. It should have been ordinary. It had been ordinary my whole life. But then he nodded to me.

“Nathaniel,” he said, and it sounded like a prayer and a question at once.

My palms were already sweating. I wiped them on my jeans and stepped closer. Something in my sleeve woke and stretched, a cat beneath a blanket.

“Hey, Caleb,” I said. My voice came out steady, like some part of me knew how to do this even if the rest of me was shaking. “It’s Nathaniel.”

His lips moved. I don’t know if he meant my name or if he was asking for something he couldn’t phrase.

I set my hands on his hair, and no lie, I expected something earth-shattering and hated myself for expecting it.

But I didn’t expect what happened next.

A force slammed down my arms so hard, it was like I’d grabbed onto a live wire.

It wasn’t the least bit gentle. It wasn’t sweet. It was a torrent ripping ice loose and taking entire trees out with it. The hum of the machines sharpened into a shriek. The lights overhead flickered and popped. There was a split-second of darkness, then a stutter as they figured out how to come back on again.

Caleb gasped, back arching involuntarily. Not in pain but in response to the surge of energy coursing through is body. His chest strained against the tube taped there. The EKG jumped and then—God help me—found a rhythm I could feel in my fingertips.

“Easy,” Dad calmed, his palm hovering over Caleb’s forehead like a benediction. His voice wobbled once and then held.

But I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t. The current poured through me. It filled all the hollow spaces inside me that the cancer had carved out—spaces I didn’t know had remained empty after the recovery. It fed me. I hated acknowledging that word…But I also loved it. There was truth in it. Every second I stayed connected, something inside of me drank deeply and said thank you.

The monitors steadied. The blue of Caleb’s lips retreated a shade. Rosy color returned to his cheeks like he’d remembered how to be healthy.

Then the torrent subsided. The roar diminished to a whisper. I lifted my hands and stared at the boy in front of me.

The room breathed and came back to life.

Sister. Jensen grabbed my hands and kissed my knuckles like I was a holy relic. “Bless you, Nathaniel,” she sobbed. “Bless you—”

I backed away so fast the bed rail bumped my hip. “I… I need some air.”

“Nathaniel,” Dad said, but I was already in the corridor, speed walking away. I didn’t know where my feet were taking me until the door thudded shut and concrete swallowed the sound.

The stairwell was cold and smelled like wet metal. One flickering bulb fought a losing battle with the shadow corners. I leaned both palms on the railing and let my ragged breath out.

That had NOT felt holy.

But, damn, it had felt good.

My hands were still tingling, not on the surface of my skin but under it, like the nerves had been electrified. The mark beneath my sleeve was a burning hot ember. For a minute, I thought it might burn a hole right through the fabric. I pressed my forearm to the cool metal rail until the chill bit through, but still the heat throbbed.

“God,” I said to the empty stairwell, to the chipped paint and gum stuck under the step edge. “What am I?”

A door clicked open above me, then closed. Footsteps. A nurse with tired eyes and a name tag passed me without looking twice. People cry in stairwells. That’s what they’re for.

I slid down two steps and sat, elbows on knees, head in my hands. The world felt tilted a few degrees. I tried to catalog the guilt and the relief and the secret, shimmering joy. Every time I thought of Caleb’s pulse under my fingers, the joy increased.

Addict, a voice inside my head whispered. Is that what you are now?

Another voice answered, bitter and familiar: Would you rather he died?

Somewhere, two floors up, a machine alarm chirped and was silenced. Down the stairwell, the echo of a gurney’s squeak drifted.

Dad’s face flickered across my mind, the way his hands had hovered over the boy like he wasn’t sure if he should touch—whether he still had the right. He’d given so many blessings that comforted, but didn’t change a single physical symptom. Tonight, he’d watched mine change everything in that room. I’d felt the moment his prayer skipped a beat, then kept going, faithful men don’t falter, faithful men exude confidence.

He must be speaking to the Jensens by now, in the careful voice of a man who has seen something he can’t explain. He would say the right words—God’s will, tender mercies, keep praying—while part of him counted the cost. What does it mean if my son can do what my priesthood power never has?

I leaned my head back against the cinderblock wall and stared up at the bulb until it haloed and blurred. Somewhere in the buzzing of it, I heard myself think something I wasn’t ready to speak aloud:

I want to do it again.

Not because they needed me.

Because I needed that transfusion.

Shame washed over me after that admission. I dragged my hand down my face and let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Great,” I muttered. “Now I’m a miracle junkie.”

I shouldn’t be alone with this.

The thought rose sharp and immediate and, weirdly, practical. Mom would cry and ask if I felt the Spirit. Dad would talk about stewardship and boundaries and fasting, and maybe we’d both pretend that answered anything. The bishop would nod solemnly and take notes he wasn’t supposed to take.

Faith—my chest tightened at the name—Faith would look stricken and guilty and somehow more luminous than before, and I didn’t want to put that on her. She’d started something without meaning to. I couldn’t ask her to finish it.

There was only one person who had made me feel understood in this thing, and he wasn’t a person I should want anywhere near me.

Ethan.

The image unspooled with the clarity of a memory I’d polished by thinking about it too often: the red desert; the black obsidian of the Dod; the dragon exhaling smoke like a cathedral censor; the boy with eyes lit like a storm warning. He had offered me a word I hadn’t known I’d been starving for—brother—and I had pretended not to hear it while my bones leaned toward the sound.

I closed my eyes, and the stairwell dimmed like the bulb was obeying my command. Ethan’s voice slid through the quiet, not as a sound but as an idea—controlled, amused, patient.

You called.

I shook my head once, furious with myself. “No. I didn’t.” My whisper fogged and vanished in the cold air. I hadn’t said his name. I hadn’t meant to.

But I didn’t have to, did I? The mark was a door, and he knew how to knock from the other side.

I remembered his hand not touching mine. I remembered wanting it to.

“They’ll eat you alive there,” he’d said of my world, and I had wanted to argue, except I could already feel the teeth.

Another pulse rolled out from under my sleeve. The hairs on my arms lifted like a wind was moving through me from the inside.

I forced myself to count my breaths. Four in. Four hold. Four out. Again. Again. The heat receded enough that I could feel the coarse grit of paint under my palm. Someone had carved initials into the step edge with a key: J.M. + C.T. A date. A tiny defiance that said we were here.

The stairwell door opened a crack. Dad’s face appeared, paler than the light behind him.

“There you are,” he said. Relief dropped his shoulders an inch. “How are you?”

“Ok, I guess,” I said honestly.

He came in and let the door fall shut gently. The two of us stood in the chill like two men in a chapel, not sure what to say. He didn’t try to hug me. I was glad. I didn’t know what I’d do with gentleness right now.

“They’re… grateful,” he said, voice rough. “The doctor says Caleb’s vitals have stabilized more than they have in days. He wants to run tests in the morning.”

I nodded. I didn’t trust my mouth.

Dad’s eyes slipped to my sleeve. The fabric was entirely ordinary. The glow stayed under the cotton like an animal under a sheet. He swallowed. “Son… what did it feel like?”

I could have said the right words. Warmth. Peace. The Spirit. The sort of answer that plays well over a pulpit.

“It felt like I grabbed a live wire,” I said instead. “Like I was standing in the eye of a tornado and it was tearing through me, sending energy into him.”

Dad flinched like the truth had a weight. He nodded. He didn’t say it was wrong or right. He stood there breathing with me for a few moments, a father and a son trying to find each other across a new canyon.

“We should go home,” he said finally.

“Yeah.”

He opened the door and held it for me, like he always did. I stepped past him into the corridor lights and the smell of cafeteria coffee and bleach. The door sighed shut behind us.

We didn’t speak in the elevator. He pressed the button. I watched the numbers light up as we passed each floor. When it stopped at the lobby, the doors hesitated a fraction too long before they parted, that little stutter all machines have that makes them feel briefly threatening.

Exiting the hospital’s main doors, the night yawned cool and indifferent. The parking lot lamps spread pale circles on wet asphalt. I could hear a dog bark somewhere beyond the edge of the property and, three blocks away, a couple arguing through cracked car windows. I could hear everything. I tried to hear nothing.

Halfway to the car, I stopped. Dad turned toward me, brows lifting.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I… left something.”

He studied my face, searching. He nodded once, then kept walking. Keys clinked.

I went back inside. Past the florist booth with deflating balloons. Past a volunteer in a vest wheeling an empty chair like a prop in a play. Down the hall to the stairwell. I opened the door and entered the familiar space.

I walked to a step, sat, and closed my eyes.

I didn’t say his name.

I didn’t have to.

I reached—not with hands, not with words—with the same part of me that had opened when I touched Caleb. I let the wanting surface, just enough to catch light.

The mark answered—one deep, resonant throb that felt like a door unlatching somewhere far away and also right here, in the exact space between my sternum and my spine.

A thought that wasn’t entirely mine uncurled like smoke: That’s why you need me.

I opened my eyes to the buzz of the bad bulb and the wet-metal smell and my own breath fogging faintly.

“I don’t,” I whispered, and even I could hear how untrue it sounded.

The heat in my arm cooled by a degree.

I scrubbed my hands over my face and laughed once without humor. “Miracle boy,” I said to the empty stairwell. “What a joke.”

Then I turned and walked out to the car where my dad was waiting, my sleeve pulled down to my wrist, the coal under it banked, my mind already repeating a name I shouldn’t say again and knew I would.

I didn’t mean to fall asleep.

One minute, I was staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows from the blinds slice across the wall, and the next, I was somewhere else entirely—half-dream, half-memory, suspended in that strange in-between place where everything feels too real to be imagined.

The room around me faded like fog burning away under sunlight. The hum of the air conditioner vanished. Even my heartbeat softened until it wasn’t a sound but a pulse in the air, connecting me to something vast and waiting.

And then I was standing in a field.

It wasn’t any field I knew—this one shimmered with life, every blade of grass breathing with faint light. The sky above wasn’t blue or black but both at once, layered and rippling, shot through with veins of gold.

The kind of peace that’s so perfect it feels wrong, because nothing in life ever really feels that way.

Then I saw her.

Faith.

She was standing at the edge of the meadow, her white dress fluttering like mist around her ankles. Her hair moved with a wind I couldn’t feel. And her eyes—her eyes—were glowing faintly, soft and radiant, like someone had tucked the last light of dawn inside them.

“Faith?” My voice cracked on her name.

She turned, but she didn’t smile. There was sadness there, deep and endless, the kind of sorrow that doesn’t come from anything human.

“You weren’t supposed to wake up,” she said quietly.

“What does that mean?”

Her expression flickered—fear, regret, something else I couldn’t name. “You were supposed to rest. The power needs time to settle.”

“The power?” My laugh sounded thin. “You mean whatever this is? The thing that’s burning holes through my veins every time I touch someone?”

She stepped closer, the grass bowing under her feet, bending toward her like worship. “It’s not meant to burn, Nathaniel. Not if it’s used the right way.”

“Then why does it feel like it’s eating me alive?”

Her gaze dropped to my arm—the mark beneath the fabric of my sleeve was glowing again, even here, even in this place that shouldn’t exist. The light bled through, pulsing with my heartbeat.

Faith reached out, but stopped just short of touching me. “Because you’re carrying something that isn’t meant for this world,” she whispered. “It’s older than anything we’ve been taught to believe. You weren’t chosen by accident.”

I swallowed. My throat felt raw. “Then what am I?”

Before she could answer, the sky cracked.

A sound like thunder—but deeper—rolled through the air. The clouds turned red. The light dimmed, replaced by a shadow crawling across the horizon like spilled ink.

Faith gasped. “He’s coming.”

“Who?”

The field began to shatter—literally shatter—like glass underfoot, pieces of light falling away into endless black. I stumbled backward. “Faith!”

She turned to me, voice urgent, desperate. “You have to resist him, Nathaniel. He’ll twist the gift—make it his own. Don’t let him in.”

“Who are you talking about?” I shouted over the roar.

But she was already fading, her edges breaking apart like ash in the wind. Her final words ripped through the collapsing dream, cutting straight into my chest.

“We share the same blood.”

Then everything went white.

I woke gasping, drenched in sweat, the sheets tangled around me like restraints. My heart slammed against my ribs. For a second, I didn’t know where I was. The shadows of my room seemed too still, too deliberate—like they were listening.

The mark on my arm burned. But this time, it was cold—freezing me from the inside out. I threw the blanket aside and pushed up my sleeve.

The veins beneath my skin were lit, faint but undeniable, tracing patterns like blue lightning branching from the point of the mark outward.

“Stop,” I whispered. “Please.”

But it didn’t stop.

And then I heard it.

A voice. Low. Smooth. Familiar.

“You’ve met her.”

I froze. My head jerked up, eyes scanning the room, but I was alone.

“Who’s there?”

The voice chuckled softly, echoing without sound. “You already know.”

I closed my eyes, trying to steady my breathing. “Ethan.”

He laughed again, quieter this time, a sound that curled around my name like smoke. “You sound disappointed.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Want?” He paused, as if considering. “Maybe just to help you understand what you are.”

“I already know what I am,” I snapped. “A mistake.”

The mark pulsed once, hard enough to make me flinch. His tone darkened. “No. You’re not a mistake, Nathaniel. You’re an echo.”

“An echo of what?”

“Of power that predates your world. Power that runs through my bloodline.”

I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to block him out. “Faith said not to listen to you.”

He laughed again, sharp and cold. “Faith. Sweet Faith. Always playing the obedient daughter of light. You think she understands what she’s done? She awoke something that can’t be unmade.”

I felt the heat rise under my skin again, climbing my arm, threading up my neck. My pulse thundered in my ears. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” he murmured. “Then tell me, why does it feel good when you use it? Why do you crave it?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

The silence between us was the kind that could crush a person.

“You see?” Ethan said softly. “You and I aren’t so different. You heal. I destroy. Two sides of the same coin.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

He didn’t argue. He just said, “Keep telling yourself that,” and the air went still again.

The light in my arm flickered once, then went out.

For a long time, I sat there in the dark, staring at the faint outline of my hand, waiting for the mark to move again.

Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, fading into the night.

Somewhere deep inside me, I knew Ethan wasn’t gone. He was watching. Waiting.

And worse—part of me wanted him to come back.

Because Faith’s warning still echoed in my head: We share the same blood.

I didn’t know if that made me the weapon—or the war.

By Monday morning, the whispers had turned into a storm.

It started small—someone in the ward talked to someone else, who mentioned it to someone at the grocery store, who mentioned it to their neighbor—and by the time I stepped off the bus, kids were staring at me like I’d survived a lightning strike.

Miracle Boy.

The nickname made my skin crawl.

I kept my head down through first period, but it didn’t help. Notes were passed. Hushed voices rose and fell as I walked by. Some kids looked spooked. Others looked fascinated, like they were waiting for me to levitate.

Between classes, a group of sophomores fell silent as I passed. One of them muttered just loud enough to hear, “That’s him. The one who healed that old lady.”

I wanted to tell them I hadn’t healed anyone—that I didn’t even understand what had happened. But the mark on my arm pulsed once, quiet and warm, like it disagreed.

By lunch, I’d had enough. I slipped outside to the low brick wall near the parking lot, hoping for five minutes of quiet. The cold air stung my face, and for a moment, I could almost breathe.

Almost.

I pulled my sleeve up and stared at the bright shimmer glaring from my skin. The branching lines seemed deeper every day, like they’d spread overnight. When I brushed my fingers over them, the pulse quickened.

“Stop it,” I whispered.

The glow dulled. Reluctantly.

A horn honked—two short blasts that broke through my thoughts.

I jerked my head up.

Mom’s station wagon idled by the curb, turquoise paint catching the afternoon light. She leaned across the front seat to crank down the passenger-side window.

“Nathaniel! Honey, come on—school called. They said you weren’t feeling well?”

I wasn’t sick. That was the problem.

But I grabbed my books anyway and headed toward the car.

When I reached the door, something caught my eye—the newspaper on the front seat, unfolded and waiting. The headline and photo on the front page were unmistakable:

LOCAL BOY MAKES MIRACULOUS RECOVERY

Caleb Jensen stood between his parents, smiling beneath the headline. He looked… vibrant.

My stomach dropped.

Mom followed my gaze and sucked in a breath.

“I didn’t put that there,” she said quickly. “Someone at the grocery store left it on the counter, and I just brought it home.”

She didn’t sound convincing.

I climbed in, shutting the door harder than I meant to.

“People are talking, sweetheart. I thought you should know before it gets… out of control,” she said softly as she pulled away from the curb.

“It already is,” I muttered.

She didn’t argue.

Back home, I sat at the dining table and flipped through the rest of the paper. Then another. Mom kept all the neighborhood newsletters and ward bulletins piled in a basket near the phone. I knew I shouldn’t look—but I couldn’t help myself.

One letter to the editor read:

“Not all healings come from God. Discernment is essential.”

An article quoting doctors called the recovery “medically unexplainable.”

A neighborhood circular quoted ward members anonymously:

“I saw him. He didn’t even look like the same boy.”

“It had to be divine.”

“Or… something else.”

And the worst one:

THE BOY DEFIED DEATH. NOW HE DEFIES EXPLANATION.

Each word tightened the net around me.

That’s when Ethan’s voice slipped through the back of my mind like smoke floating under a door.

Now you see. The world will never let you be ordinary.

“Get out of my head,” I hissed.

I’m not in your head, Nathaniel.

His tone was smooth, patient.

I’m in the echo of what you’re becoming.

My lamp flickered. Once. Twice.

I slammed the papers shut.

By morning, things had escalated.

Mom nearly dropped her mug during breakfast when she heard the newscaster say my name. On the tiny kitchen TV—balanced on the counter beside the flour canister—my hospital photo filled the screen.

A banner ran beneath it:

TEEN SURVIVOR LINKED TO MYSTERIOUS HEALING

“Oh, sweetheart,” she breathed, pressing a hand to her mouth. “They’re talking about you on Channel 2!”

Dad didn’t smile.

He set his hot cocoa down too hard.

“We didn’t ask for this,” he complained.

“They’re calling it an act of God,” Mom said, almost pleading. “Isn’t that good? Isn’t that what we—what you—prayed for?”

Dad’s eyes cut to me. Sharp. Worried.

“Not like this.”

The air between them tightened like a cord pulled too tight.

I ducked out before anyone could say my name.

At school, it was like a dam broke open.

A news van was parked along the chain-link fence. The reporter wore a beige trench coat, hair sprayed stiff against the wind. The cameraman hoisted a heavy shoulder-mounted camera, and the moment I appeared, they moved as one.

“Nathaniel! Just a moment—are the rumors true?”

“Did you really heal a woman during a blessing?”

“Has the church contacted you about your powers?”

Microphones thrust in my face.

The mark burned under my sleeve.

I shoved through them, ignoring the questions, the bulb flashes, the hungry eyes.

Inside, the principal took me by the elbow before I could head to class.

“Nathaniel,” he said gently, “the school board’s… concerned. We can’t have media on campus like this.”

“I didn’t invite them.”

He sighed. “I understand, son. But maybe…stay home a few days. Just until things settle down.”

Settle.

Right.

The world was swarming all around me.

That afternoon, the phone on our kitchen wall rang—

Mom wiped her hands on a dish towel, then answered.

“Of course, dear, just one moment while I get him for you.”

She hesitated, then held out the receiver.

“It’s… for you.” She smiled weakly as I got up and walked to where she was standing.

I took the reciever and pressed it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Faith said softly. Her voice sounded thin, like she’d been holding her breath for a long time. “Um… I hope it’s okay that I called. I just—” She exhaled shakily. “I’ve been seeing reports about you on the news.”

I swallowed.

Of course she had.

“You okay?” she asked. “It looks… overwhelming.”

That was an understatement.

“I’m hanging in there,” I said. “It’s been… a lot.”

“I just wanted to check on you,” she said. “After what happened… I feel kind of responsible.”

A silence settled—not uncomfortable, just… full.

“Thanks,” I murmured. “Really.”

“Yeah.” A small pause. “Well… I won’t keep you. I just wanted to let you know I’m here for you—call me if you need to talk, okay?”

“I will, thanks. That would actually be really nice.”

I jotted down her number, and we said our goodbyes.

I was left staring at the wallpaper, the receiver growing heavy in my hand.

Mom was watching me like a hawk.

“Soo…” she began with a small grin, “is there something going on we should know about?”

I shook my head. “No. She’s just a friend. She came to the hospital with a youth group. It was a service project thing. Visit the sick kids, you know.”

Mom tilted her head. “Oh, I see. She sounds sweet. When was this?”

Dad had walked in during the last part of the call. He leaned against the doorway, arms folded.

My heart kicked hard.

This was it.

The moment I’d been avoiding.

I pulled in a breath. “Umm…the day I got healed.” I glanced nervously from one of them to the other.

“Oh, isn’t that strange timing?” Mom put down the spoon she’d been holding and turned to face me.

I exhaled long and slow.

“Mom, Dad…there’s… something I haven’t told you. About the healing.”

They exchanged an uncomfortable look, then all eyes were on me.

Silence.

“I didn’t just… get better,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t a priesthood blessing. It wasn’t the doctors and the cancer treatments. And it sure wasn’t God answering the ward members’ prayers.” I stopped, rolling my eyes and shaking my head back and forth.

Mom’s brows knit together. “Then… what was it?”

I hesitated, then forced the words out.

“It was Faith. She touched me.”

Dad exploded with a sardonic laugh. “What?”

But Mom just stared.

“I’m not joking,” I said. The looks on their faces were just too much.

“Look!” I shoved my left sleeve, revealing the glowing, golden wing with veins crawling up my arm. “I have proof!”

Both of them gasped at the revelation, moving closer to me.

“Not that I want it,” I continued. “It burns. And it throbs. Constantly. But there it is. The source of my healing.”

My parents stood gazing, speechless.

“I…I don’t get it.” Mom whispered. “I mean…how?”

“She was just trying to comfort me. I think she was just as surprised by what happened as I was.”

The mark pulsed as they looked on, like it was enjoying the extra attention.

“But there was this incredible electric surge of light that bolted through my body like lightning when she touched me. It shocked her, too. I could see it in her eyes.”

Mom came a little closer, curious. But Dad took two steps back, visibly frightened by what he was seeing.

“As soon as she left, that mark appeared on my arm. Well, not that mark, exactly.” I paused, glancing down at the thing on my forearm. “At first, it just looked like fingerprints made of light pressed into my skin. It has morphed over time.”

Mom reached out a finger, then glanced up into my face. “Can I?” She asked, moving her hand closer. I jerked my arm back. “Uhh…I wouldn’t. It can have weird effects on people.”

She withdrew and scrunched her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“Even when people accidentally brush against my arm, they get dizzy or have other physical reactions. I just think you shouldn’t touch it.”

Dad’s left eyebrow shot up at that. “This thing doesn’t seem holy to me, Nathaniel.” He covered his face with both hands. But Mom objected—

“How could it NOT be from Heavenly Father, John? I mean…our dying boy is completely healed. And just look at that mark! It’s obviously a golden WING! Isn’t that a visible sign from God that this is an angelic healing? What better image could He have chosen to assure us that this was His will?”

Dad let his hands fall and stared at the mark like it was something dangerous crawling up my arm.

“A wing doesn’t automatically make it holy,” he muttered. “Lucifer was an angel, too.”

Mom shot him a look. “John. Not now.”

But Dad didn’t back down. “You felt it burn, didn’t you? You said it throbbed. And people get dizzy when they touch you. That doesn’t sound like a gift from God.”

His voice cracked on the last word.

Mom softened. “He’s just scared, sweetheart,” she said to me gently. “We’ve never… seen anything like this.”

“Neither have I,” I said quietly. “Believe me.”

The kitchen went still again, except for the hum of the fridge and the faint ticking of the wall clock.

The mark pulsed once—slow, warm—like it understood the attention was about it.

Dad sank into a chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Mom hovered by his side, but kept her eyes on me, a mixture of wonder and confusion simmering there.

“So this girl,” Dad said finally, looking up. “Faith.” He said her name like it tasted foreign. “She did this to you?”

“She didn’t try to do anything,” I said quickly. “She didn’t even know she could. She was just… being kind.”

Mom clasped her hands. “A spiritual gift,” she whispered. “Sounds like some kind of laying-on-of-hands miracle passed through her.”

Dad cut in sharply. “Marilyn. Please.”

She fell silent, but the certainty in her expression didn’t fade.

Dad turned back to me. His eyes were glassy—not with tears, but with something heavier.

“Son… this is bigger than anything we can understand. And I don’t know what to call it yet. But we have to be careful. All of us.”

I nodded, throat tight.

Careful didn’t even begin to cover it.

Mom touched my cheek. “You should rest, honey. You’ve been through so much.”

I pushed my sleeve back down and was heading for the stairs when Dad jumped in, “Have you told anyone else about this, son?”

I turned to him, shaking my head.

“Good,” he said, visibly relaxing. “Let’s keep this to ourselves. Things are bad enough without sharing this disturbing information. Better ask Faith to keep a lid on it, too.” He paused, thoughtful, before adding, “And I want to meet her and her parents. Set that up, please, Nathaniel.”

I nodded, mechanically. Then, stepping out of the kitchen, I could hear them murmuring behind me—Mom’s voice full of awe, Dad’s full of worry. Two people looking at the same phenomenon and seeing two different sources.

Upstairs, I closed my bedroom door and sat on the edge of my bed.

Faith’s gentle voice still lingered in my ear.

My parents’ shocked faces replayed in my mind.

The mark thrummed under my sleeve like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

And I couldn’t help thinking—

If they’re this shaken about Faith…

what would they do if they knew about the rest?

The visions.

Ethan’s enticing voice.

The feeling that something was watching me from just beyond the edges of sleep.

No.

That part stayed locked inside my head.

By the next morning, the sidewalk outside our house looked like the edge of a revival meeting—if revival meetings were held on cold concrete and ran on caffeine, fear, and rumors.

Hand-painted poster boards leaned against our hedge:

HEAL ME, PLEASE

GOD WORKS THROUGH YOU

LAY HANDS ON ME



People sat in lawn chairs, knees pulled to their chests, breath fogging in the cold. Someone knelt on the curb whispering a rosary. Another guy had propped up a bulky Super 8 camera, winding film, recording everything like he was documenting a prophecy.

From my bedroom window, I watched them until the mark on my arm began to prickle—like it felt the attention and wanted to answer it.

I dropped the curtain.

Downstairs, Mom burned pancakes while peeking out the front window every thirty seconds. Dad sat at the table with his scriptures open but hadn’t turned a page.

“Maybe we should call the police,” Mom whispered.

“They’re on public property,” Dad said. “And they’re peaceful.”

“That little boy out there isn’t peaceful,” she countered softly. “He’s in pain. His mother’s been here since two in the morning.”

I wrapped my hands around a mug of cocoa. The ceramic warmed my palms. The mark warmed too, answering the heat.

“I’m not a doctor,” I muttered.

“You’re not a sacrament,” Dad said too quickly. Then softer: “You’re my son.”

The doorbell rang.

Mom jumped. “I’ll tell them to come back later.”

“Not ‘come back,’” Dad reminded her. “No appointments. We don’t know what this is yet.”

She cracked the door open anyway. Cold air and whispers slipped in. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “Today won’t work. Please—respect our privacy.”

When she closed the door, she let her forehead rest against it for a moment before smoothing her face into something like calm.

Dad turned to me. “You should go to school.”

“School told me to take a few days off,” I reminded him.

“You can’t hide from this,” he said.

I wasn’t hiding. I was containing. There’s a difference.

Still, I said, “Okay,” because fighting was exhausting.

We slipped out the back door, avoiding the crowd.

I lasted two class periods.

By mid-morning, a news van sat half a block from the school. A reporter stood outside the gate with a microphone, waiting. Inside, whispers hit me from both sides of the hallway.

“That’s him—”

“My mom said he healed that woman—”

“No, it was the priesthood—”

“No, it was HIM—”

A sophomore snapped a photo of me with his cheap plastic camera. The flash popped, and I saw spots for seconds afterward. Someone else whispered a fast, shaky prayer when I walked by.

By third period my arm buzzed under my sleeve like a trapped hornet.

During lunch, the principal intercepted me in the hall—not to tell me to leave again, but to protect me.

“Nathaniel,” he murmured quietly, “there are reporters outside. If you want to slip out through the teachers’ lot, it might be easier.”

No lecture. No reprimand. Just pity.

Dad’s truck was already waiting when I stepped outside.

He didn’t talk on the drive home.

A streetlamp blew as we drove under it—soft pop, falling sparks. Dad flinched but didn’t look at me.

When we pulled up, the crowd outside our house had shifted but not shrunk. Some had left for the noon news. Others replaced them. The little boy from earlier was gone; a woman in a headscarf stood in his place, hands pressed over her stomach, eyes fixed on our door.

I slipped inside without a word.

Upstairs, I collapsed against my bedroom door.

I didn’t want to be a shrine. Or a miracle. Or a headline.

I wanted to be alone with this thing I never asked for.

Dad’s voice from last night whispered through me:

You’re an idol—and idols break.

I pulled up my sleeve. The mark pulsed slow and deliberate.

My extension phone rang.

And I let it ring.

Then a knock on my bedroom door.

“It’s open,” I said.

Mom stepped inside like I was a patient recovering from surgery. She perched on the edge of my bed.

“We need to set limits,” she said gently. “Hours. Rules. Something so people know we can’t—can’t do this all day.”

“Do this,” I echoed hollowly.

“You don’t owe them anything,” she whispered. “Not your hands, not your strength, not your time.”

I wanted to believe her. I also remembered what it felt like to heal Sister Nelson—the electric flood, the incredible relief.

Wanting both things made me sick.

Mom cupped my shoulder. “We’ll protect you,” she said. “Even if people get angry.”

I nodded. She needed to see me nod.

When she left, I finally let out the breath I’d been holding for hours.

The house creaked. A pipe knocked. The clock ticked. Every ordinary sound felt too loud.

A package arrived at sunset.

Mom brought it inside and set it on the table.

Curiosity made me open it.

Inside was a neatly folded black T-shirt, soft cotton, expensive. A golden wing—almost identical to the mark on my arm—ran along the left sleeve.

A note tucked beneath it read:

Your story inspires us. We’d be honored to collaborate with you.

Collaborate. Like I was a brand.

The mark flared in response—sharp, eager.

I dropped the shirt back into the box like it had burned me.

Dad appeared in the doorway.

“Trash,” he said quietly. “We owe no one an explanation.”

I nodded and shoved the box into the garbage can outside. It didn’t make me feel better.

Night fell. The street dimmed. The crowd thinned.

But even with fewer people, the air around our house felt swollen with expectation—like everyone was holding their breath.

I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling fan.

My bedroom felt full, like something unseen had stepped inside and shut the door behind it.

I whispered into the dark:

“I can’t keep doing this.”

Heat rose from the mark, warm and slow, curling up my arm.

It wasn’t a message of comfort.

It was a presence.

The kind you feel in your bones.

Just when the pressure in my chest loosened enough for me to breathe—

the landline phone downstairs began to ring.

Sharp.

Insistent.

Impossible to ignore.

It kept ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

Until Dad finally answered—

The first warning came quietly.

Not from heaven, not from the mark, but from the phone call Dad received that night after dinner.

We’d just finished cleaning up when it rang—an old landline phone that almost never rang anymore. Mom froze mid-dish, hands dripping with suds. Dad hesitated, then dried his fingers on a towel and answered.

“Gray residence.”

Silence on the other end. Then his expression shifted—respectful, then tight. He turned his back slightly, voice dropping low.

“Yes, President. Of course.”

The name alone made Mom’s knuckles whiten around the sponge. The stake president.

I stayed in the doorway, invisible but listening.

Dad’s “yes, sir” and “I understand” went on for nearly five minutes. Then a pause, and his tone changed—quieter, uncertain.

“…He’s my son.”

Another pause. A long one.

When he finally hung up, his face was ashen.

“Was that—?” Mom began, but the look he gave her stopped her mid-sentence.

He didn’t answer. Just walked past both of us and into the living room, lowering himself into the recliner with the weight of someone who’d just been handed bad news and couldn’t decide if it was about faith or family.

“What did he say?” I asked.

Dad rubbed his temple. “The bishop wants to see us. Tomorrow night.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “Because of you.”

The meeting wasn’t optional.

The church building looked the same as always—white steeple, floodlights, the faint smell of pine cleaner and carpet glue—but that night it felt smaller. The halls echoed with the kind of quiet that knows it’s about to judge you.

Mom gripped my hand until it hurt. Dad walked ahead of us, suit pressed, expression unreadable.

Bishop Carlsen waited in his office, along with President Lowry—the stake president. I’d seen both of them speak in church a hundred times. They were usually warm, friendly. Tonight, they weren’t smiling.

“Brother Gray. Sister Gray. Nathaniel.”

They shook hands all around, polite and cold, like diplomats before a war.

Once we sat, the bishop folded his hands and leaned forward. “We’ve been hearing some… remarkable reports.”

Dad cleared his throat. “About Sister Nelson.”

“Yes,” said President Lowry, his voice even but sharp. “And about others.”

I frowned. “Others?”

He met my eyes. “We’ve received accounts from multiple members that you’ve performed healings—miraculous healings.”

My heart thudded once, hard. “I—”

He held up a hand. “Now, before you speak, understand that the Church believes in miracles. We believe in priesthood power, in blessings of healing and comfort. But what concerns us here is order. Authority.”

He looked at Dad when he said the word, not me.

Dad straightened slightly, defensive. “President, Nathaniel acted under my direction. He was performing a blessing, not—”

“With respect, Brother Gray,” President Lowry interrupted, “the accounts suggest something beyond a standard blessing. Sister Nelson claims she felt a physical surge of power, unlike anything she’s ever experienced. She recovered overnight from a chronic condition. That’s not common.”

He turned to me. “Nathaniel. Tell us what happened.”

Every instinct screamed to lie, but the truth burned too close to the surface.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just… did what my dad told me. I put my hands on her head, said the prayer. And then it was like… something moved through me. Like light. Heat.”

“From where?” the bishop asked softly.

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “It didn’t feel—”

“Divine?” Lowry finished.

The silence that followed was worse than shouting.

Dad’s hand twitched on the armrest, a warning.

I stared at the table. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

The bishop’s tone softened. “We’re not accusing you, son. But we need to protect you—and the Church—from misunderstanding. You’re very young. You’ve been through illness, trauma. Sometimes those experiences can… shape perception.”

“So you think I’m imagining it.”

“No,” Lowry said carefully. “We think it’s possible there are… other forces at play. Not all power comes from above.”

That made Mom gasp. Dad looked like someone had punched him.

“With respect,” he said, voice shaking, “are you suggesting my son is being influenced by—?”

“I’m suggesting caution,” the stake president said firmly. “Your family’s faith is being tested. If Nathaniel is truly blessed, that will reveal itself in time. But for now… we strongly advise that he refrain from participating in further blessings. No public demonstrations. No healings.”

“You mean hide it.”

He sighed. “We mean protect the sanctity of the priesthood. This—attention—this chaos on television—it’s not of God. It’s sensationalism. And Satan thrives in confusion.”

The word hung in the air.

Satan.

For a long moment, no one breathed.

Then Dad nodded stiffly. “Understood.”

Lowry stood. “Good. I knew you’d be wise about this, Brother Gray. We’ll be praying for your family.”

The meeting was over.

Outside, the night air felt colder than it should’ve. I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. Mom cried quietly in the car all the way home.

Dad didn’t say a word.

When we pulled into the driveway, the crowd outside our house was gone. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe not.

Inside, I finally spoke. “They think I’m evil.”

Dad turned sharply. “No one said that.”

“They didn’t have to.”

He looked so tired. “Nathaniel, the Church operates through order. Authority. If power exists outside of that, it’s… dangerous. Unregulated.”

“Unregulated?” I laughed bitterly. “You make it sound like a government agency.”

He didn’t laugh back. “Because the consequences are real.”

I could feel it then—the space widening between us. The mark on my arm pulsed in time with my heartbeat, like it was listening, waiting for me to choose sides.

Mom touched my shoulder gently. “They’re just scared. We all are. But Heavenly Father wouldn’t give you something meant for harm.”

Dad shot her a look, but she ignored it.

I nodded, pretending to believe her.

That night, sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it wasn’t kind.

I dreamed of standing in the church hallway alone, the carpet muffling every step. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Then the walls began to breathe—slow, shallow breaths like the lungs of something enormous.

A whisper slid through the dark. Not Ethan’s this time. Something older.

They’ll take it from you.

I spun around. “Who’s there?”

They’ll name it sin and call it obedience.

The light dimmed. My skin glowed faintly, the mark burning through the sleeve like molten gold.

“Stop,” I said. “Please—”

You can’t bury what’s divine, child.

Then I woke, gasping.

The mark still glowed.

For the first time, I wasn’t sure if I was hearing a warning from Heaven—or an invitation from Hell.

I didn’t see Ethan again for almost a week after the bishop’s meeting. But I felt him.

Like a half-heard melody hiding under the hum of fluorescent lights, or a presence waiting just behind my reflection. Every time the mark flared, I caught his echo — a flicker of thought that wasn’t mine.

At first, I tried to ignore it. Then, I stopped pretending I could.

The night it happened, a cold storm had rolled in from the west. The sky outside my bedroom window was restless — clouds pushing and folding against each other, flashes of lightning tracing veins through their bellies.

I lay awake, watching the ceiling breathe with each strike of light, when the whisper came.

You’re not alone.

I sat up, heart hammering. The mark burned beneath my sleeve, hotter than it had since Sister Nelson’s blessing.

“Ethan?”

The air shifted — not quite a voice, not quite silence. Then a shimmer. My bedroom window darkened, swallowing the light from the street. The world outside blurred and bent.

And there he was.

Not fully, not in flesh, but close enough to steal my breath. His form was half-shadow, half-light, his expression tired but resolute. The air smelled faintly of smoke and salt, like the space between storms.

“Nathaniel,” he said. “You’re ready now.”

My pulse stuttered. “For what?”

“To understand what’s happening to you.”

I wanted to laugh, or cry, or maybe both. “You think I don’t understand?”

“I think you’re still afraid to.”

He stepped closer, and for a second, I thought I could feel the weight of him — a shadow cast across the room that didn’t belong to me.

“You said before that I wasn’t supposed to be alone,” I said. “That there were others like me.”

“There are,” he said. “But they’re not here. Not in this world.”

Lightning lit his face for a heartbeat. He wasn’t much older than me — maybe a year, two at most — but his eyes looked centuries deep.

“What are you?” I asked.

His mouth quirked into something between a smile and sorrow. “What you’ll become. If you let it.”

The mark pulsed, answering him.

“I don’t want this,” I whispered. “I didn’t ask for any of it.”

“No one asks to be chosen,” Ethan said softly. “But choice still comes.”

I wanted to hate him for his riddles, for knowing more than he was willing to share. But his voice carried something I hadn’t heard from anyone in weeks — understanding.

“Why me?” I finally said. “Why now?”

He hesitated. For the first time, Ethan looked uncertain.

“Because,” he said at last, “you were born with light that shouldn’t exist here. And there are those who would see it extinguished before it burns through the veil.”

“The veil?”

“Between worlds,” he said. “Between what you think is heaven and what most call hell. They’re closer than you know.”

I shivered. The rain outside hit the glass like fingertips.

“And you?” I asked. “Which side are you on?”

He looked past me, as though seeing through the wall, through the storm, through everything.

“I walk between,” he said quietly. “For now.”

The mark flared, and a thousand unspoken things passed between us — grief, hunger, recognition.

Then the shadow around him deepened.

“They’re watching you, Nathaniel. The ones who claim to serve the light. But light can blind just as easily as it reveals. Be careful who you trust.”

“Who’s watching?”

He didn’t answer directly. “Your father’s not wrong to be afraid. The Church senses what it can’t control. They’ll come again — this time not to question, but to claim.”

Something cracked inside me. “You’re saying they’ll take me?”

“I’m saying,” Ethan replied, “that they’ll dress it up as protection.”

My pulse thundered in my ears.

“What do you want from me?”

He took another step forward. The space between us thinned until I could feel the static rise on my skin.

“Not want,” he said. “Need.”

“Why?”

“Because our world depends on you waking up.”

His words trembled the air. For a second, the room itself seemed to breathe with him — the curtains rippling though the window was shut, the shadows lengthening, the clock stalling between seconds.

“Waking up to what?” I demanded.

“To who you are.”

Lightning burst behind him, illuminating something vast and winged — a flash of obsidian feathers and gold fire — then gone.

Before I could speak again, he reached out. His fingers brushed my sleeve, right where the mark pulsed.

The world fell away.

I was standing on a shoreline under a blood-colored sky. The sea was black glass, stretching into forever. Shapes moved beneath it — too large, too graceful to be fish.

On the horizon rose a citadel carved from shadow and flame. It pulsed with a heartbeat I could feel through my bones.

Blarjord.

The name wasn’t spoken aloud. It arrived.

Ethan stood beside me, fully real here. “This is where I come from.”

The words didn’t sound proud. They sounded like confession.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and then, “It’s wrong.”

“Both,” he agreed. “Light and dark exist together here. Not as enemies. As balance.”

He crouched beside the water, touched the surface with one fingertip. Ripples spread, and within them I saw flashes — Faith’s hand on mine, Sister Nelson gasping for air, my father’s tears at the kitchen table.

Each image fractured, bled gold, and dissolved into the waves.

“This is what your power does,” Ethan said. “It connects. It heals. It feeds.”

“Feeds?”

He met my gaze. “Every act of healing draws from something. You can’t pour light into another without pulling it from somewhere else. The question is—what are you feeding?”

The mark on my arm burned so bright I could see it even here, a radiant branch of fire climbing my veins.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will.”

Thunder rolled across the horizon. The sea darkened.

Ethan turned toward the citadel. “She’s watching,” he murmured. “We should go.”

“She?”

But before I could ask, a voice like silk and smoke whispered across the air.

Bring him to me, child of shadow.

The words vibrated through the water, through my skin, through the core of me.

Ethan stiffened. “Not yet,” he said, defiance flaring in his tone. “He’s not ready.”

The voice laughed — low, melodic, terrifying.

You were never ready, either.

A wind tore through the shore, howling with unseen wings. I stumbled backward. Ethan reached for me, grabbed my arm—

And I woke up.

I was back in my bed, gasping, drenched in sweat. The storm outside was still raging, thunder shaking the house.

But the mark—

The mark wasn’t glowing anymore. It bled.

A thin red line traced where the light had been, like the aftermath of something burned too hot.

I stumbled to the mirror. My reflection looked back at me, eyes wide, terrified.

Behind me, for a fraction of a second, another figure flickered in the glass.

Ethan.

Or what was left of him.

His voice came faint, breaking apart like static.

The veil’s thinning. She knows your name now.

Then he was gone.

And I understood, with a certainty that hollowed me out from the inside:

Whatever had started with Faith’s touch in that hospital room wasn’t just about healing anymore.

It was about belonging— to something vast, ancient, and hungry.

And whether I wanted to or not, I’d already stepped into its shadow.

The house had learned to hold its breath.

Mom spoke softer now, like loud sounds might crack me open. Dad moved carefully, a calm so controlled it felt like gauze stretched over a wound. Outside, voices laced through the summer air—prayers, whispers, the scrape of camera tripods on concrete. Someone left a candle on the curb with my name scratched into the wax. By noon there were five.

I spent most of the day upstairs, blinds tilted so the light came in shredded. Every time the doorbell rang or a car idled outside, the mark under my sleeve pulsed—sharp, aware.

By evening, the voices blended into a constant murmur, the low tide of people wanting something they were sure I could give.

Dad finally convinced them to stay on the sidewalk—city code and all that—but the sound still filled the walls.

Around midnight, the crowd thinned. A siren wailed somewhere across town. The air conditioner sighed through the vent, then clicked off. For one quiet moment, the house exhaled.

I lay on my back, arm over my eyes, listening to the blood in my ears. Everything felt too loud. Or maybe I’d become too thin to contain it. The mark hummed at the base of every thought, tuning the world to a pitch I couldn’t ignore.

I told myself I wouldn’t reach for him.

Then I blinked, and I already was.

Not with words. I didn’t need them. A thread had stretched between us for days, humming every time I tried to silence it. All I had to do was stop pretending I didn’t feel it and tug.

The ceiling dissolved.

Heat. Dust. Red light pressed against my skin.

The Dod rose around me—black rock carved by fire and time. Malgore crouched at the plateau’s edge, his furnace breath rolling in waves, eyes glowing like banked coals. The heat wasn’t just heat; it was presence.

And Ethan waited at the center.

Barefoot. Dark coat unmoved by the wind. Blue eyes bright even in the glare.

“You came quickly,” he said. Approval, stripped of praise.

“I’m tired of drowning.” The words came out thin, but true.

He stepped closer. “Good.”

I didn’t ask how he knew about the crowds outside my house, the candles at the curb. He always knew exactly the pieces of my life I was breaking under.

“Tonight,” he said softly, “I’m not here to talk about them—” he nodded at the invisible world behind me “—or their fear, or their worship, or the way they want to carve you into something that fits their hands.”

He stopped right in front of me. The air between us buzzed, heat meeting nerve.

“Tonight, I’m going to give you a door.”

The word hit like a switch.

“A door to what?” I asked.

Ethan knelt, pressing his palm flat to the cooled lava. When he lifted his hand, a glowing symbol remained—sharp and simple. A circle. A vertical line splitting it. Three short marks crossing that line like descending steps. Feathered arcs curved along the outer rim.

My mark answered instantly—buzzing so hard my teeth ached.

“This,” Ethan said, “is a transit rune. A way to open a passage. A gate. It’s anchored to this place—” he tapped the stone “—but it will answer wherever you draw it.”

I tried to memorize the lines, the shapes, the rhythm of it.

“You can draw it on stone, bone, water, glass,” he continued. “Obsidian listens best. Mirrors respond fastest.”

A shiver slid down my spine.

“You want me to draw it?” I asked.

“When you’re ready,” he said. “It won’t open by accident. It needs intent.”

I looked at my empty hands. “I don’t exactly have obsidian lying around.”

“Every world does,” he said with a small shrug. “Yours is full of it. And if you don’t find any? Try a mirror.”

That part scared me more than I wanted to admit.

“Do I need blood?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.

“Not necessarily. Your mark can power it on its own. But blood remembers. Ash agrees. Chalk works—it’s just weak. You’ll experiment. Failure teaches faster than success.”

He glanced at my sleeve, where the mark pulsed.

“Don’t force it,” he warned. “Your mark isn’t a faucet.”

“It feels more like a tide,” I said quietly.

For a second, he looked genuinely pleased. “Good. That means you’re already farther along than most.”

Most of who?

I didn’t ask.

Behind him, Malgore shifted, stone groaning under his weight. Ethan didn’t even look back; his focus stayed on me like the dragon was just another breeze.

“You grew up in a world of strict rules,” Ethan said, voice low. “But the power in your arm doesn’t belong to any of them. It’s older than your church. Older than your books. The only things that matter now are these: can you bear it… and will you let anyone make it small?”

My throat tightened. “People keep saying it’s from God. And in the same breath… that it might not be.”

“They’re both trying to claim it,” he said. “Light insists it’s the only truth. Shadow insists it’s unworthy unless it frightens you. Power doesn’t care about either. It just is. You’re not a battlefield unless you agree to be one.”

I thought of Dad’s hands shaking over Caleb Jensen’s hospital bed.

Mom folding laundry without turning toward the window.

Faith pulling her hand back in terror after she healed me.

“What happens if I step through the door?” I asked.

“Sanctuary,” he said. No hesitation. “A place where the noise can’t reach you. A place to learn control instead of drowning in instinct. No cameras. No worship. No fear.”

“And the price?”

“Honesty,” he said simply. “With yourself. And with me.”

Heat rippled across the roof. My arm burned in steady response.

Ethan extended his hand—not a command, not a seduction, just an offer weighted with the world behind it.

“Doors aren’t temptations,” he said. “They’re tools. People fear tools in the wrong hands.”

Wind swept across the Dod, tugging at my shirt. The rune glowed brighter, thin gold threads tracing its curves.

“What if I’m not ready?” I whispered.

“Then you wait,” he said. “But you came because the noise on your side is louder than your heartbeat. Because being worshiped is suffocating you. And because you know the difference between being used… and being seen.”

I swallowed. Hard.

“You sound sure.”

“I am,” he said. “Because I remember the night I learned the cost of starving for the wrong things.”

He didn’t explain. I didn’t push.

Far below, the desert shimmered. The world felt older than anything I’d ever been told was real. My mark pulsed again—one bright, hot syllable of agreement.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why choose anyone at all?”

Ethan looked at me like he was bracing my shoulders to keep me upright.

“Because you didn’t break,” he said. “Because you didn’t pretend nothing happened. Because you asked for help without bowing. And because you’re afraid—but you’re still here.”

The offer withdrawn, he stepped back.

“When you draw it,” he said, nodding to the rune, “your mark will change. You’ll feel pressure behind your eyes. Breathe. Don’t look down when the ground shifts.”

“I can’t just disappear,” I said. “My parents—”

“You’re not disappearing. You’re stepping into another room. Time moves differently here. You’ll be gone as long as you need… and home before a heartbeat passes.”

I didn’t know if it was true. I needed to believe it anyway.

“Why the feathers?” I asked quietly.

Ethan’s gaze flicked to my arm. “Every mark has a story about who first wrote it on you.”

My skin went cold. Faith. Her touch. The wing etched into my bones.

“I thought you hated angels,” I said.

“I hate liars,” he replied. “Light lies by calling itself the only way. Shadow lies by pretending it can’t be beautiful. I prefer doorways.”

Malgore exhaled—a slow, warm gust. Ethan rested a hand on the dragon’s scale as easily as touching a railing.

“When you’re ready,” he said.

Wind. Heat. A crack in the world.

I was back in my bedroom, staring at the ceiling.

The house was quiet.

Candles outside flickered like distant stars through the blinds.

My arm burned.

I went to the bathroom. The mirror caught my reflection—the healthy face that shouldn’t exist. The eyes that didn’t belong to a dying boy.

I pushed my sleeve up.

The wing glowed faint and restless beneath my skin.

I reached for the bar of soap… then stopped. Soap would wash off. Chalk would smear.

Blood remembers.

Ash agrees.

We had ashes in the fireplace.

My breath fogged the mirror.

I lifted my finger and traced the sigil into the condensation—slow, careful, exact.

Circle.

Vertical line.

Three short descending strokes.

Feathered arc.

The mirror rippled.

A real ripple—like something pressed against it from the far side.

Pressure loosened behind my eyes. My mark flared gold.

I stumbled back. The ripple faded. The room stilled.

My heart wouldn’t slow.

I wiped the mirror clean.

The door was real.

For the first time, the fear wasn’t bigger than the relief.

Not because I was brave.

Because now the choice was mine.

I tugged my sleeve down and turned off the light.

In the dark, the mark pulsed once—quiet and aware.

“When I’m ready,” I whispered.

It warmed beneath my skin, like a hand answering back.

The obsidian war-hall breathed heat, the air shimmering above the braziers like warped glass. Valdis paced—not out of impatience, but because the silence tonight had teeth. Every ember, every flicker of shadow, felt like a creature waiting to speak.

At the center of the hall, the Seer knelt.

She was older than any year Valdis remembered counting. Blind, but her eyelids were covered in thin glyphs—inked prophecies that shimmered faintly like scales catching moonlight. The smell of salt and old visions clung to her robes.

“Rise,” Valdis said without looking at her. “If you crawl, it had better be because death is holding your leg.”

The Seer stood, joints whispering. “My queen,” she rasped, “the threads have tightened.”

Valdis finally turned. “Speak.”

“There is a child,” the Seer said. “A human boy. Marked by light—light older than angels. It roots itself beneath his skin like a star pressed into flesh.”

Valdis stilled. For an instant, her centuries folded inward, and she seemed almost young again. “The mark remains?”

“Yes,” the Seer said. “And it grows.”

Valdis’s mouth curved—not into kindness, but into recognition. “Good. Power that grows can be bent.”

The Seer tilted her head, listening to visions no one else could hear. “He is torn between hunger and fear. He feeds others with what burns inside him, and the giving hollows him… yet he hates that it is sweet.”

Valdis laughed softly. “Little paradox. The light makes saints and addicts of the same fools.”

She moved to the war-table—slabs of etched slate whose ancient rivers glowed faintly when she touched them. She slid a token along a fault line no mortal cartographer had ever mapped.

“Tell me what direction the boy moves.”

“Toward us,” the Seer said. “Though he does not know it. The door he opened widened the seam between worlds. His mark strains for balance, and balance always finds its weight.”

Valdis’s eyes glittered. “Describe him.”

“Human. Young. Stubborn enough to break before he bows. Compassion is his first instinct… and his greatest weakness.”

“Can he be turned?” Valdis asked.

The Seer hesitated—never a good sign.

“He has turned twice already,” she said. “He will turn again. In which direction… that depends on who reaches him first.”

Below the hall, Malgore shifted in his cavern, the dragon’s low rumble vibrating the stone. Valdis rested a palm against the floor, feeling his heartbeat rise through her bones.

“And the messenger?” she asked. “The boy of storm and shadow.”

“Ethan.” The Seer’s voice softened in a strange, pitying way. “Loyal. Hungry. He believes he swims where he chooses… and so he never sees the net.”

Valdis hummed. “Of course he doesn’t. Nets are invisible to those who enjoy the water.”

“Will you tell him the truth?” the Seer asked carefully.

Valdis’s smile sharpened. “Why wound a perfectly obedient instrument with knowledge? A bow does not need to understand the arrow’s path to send it flying.”

The braziers crackled as though in agreement.

“There is more,” the Seer whispered. The glyphs on her lids glowed faintly, pulsing. “The girl. The origin of the boy’s mark.”

Valdis’s fist went still on the map.

“Speak of her,” she said, voice flat.

“She does not know what she is,” the Seer murmured. “But the bloodline remembers her. Old debts stir. The light that touched the boy came through her… and it remembers.”

Valdis closed her eyes. Inside her chest, something ancient and bruised twisted once—quick, sharp, then gone.

“The angels discard their failures and call them parables,” she said. “I call them opportunities.”

The Seer bowed her head.

“You wish to track the seams,” she said.

“Yes,” Valdis replied. “Find where the skin between worlds has thinned. The boy has drawn one already.”

“It widens,” the Seer confirmed. “Not by my hand… but by his.”

Valdis exhaled slowly—a sound both satisfied and grim. “Good. A child who can open doors can be taught which ones to keep shut.”

“And if he refuses?” the Seer dared to ask.

Valdis slipped a hand into her pouch and closed it around a small black stone worn smooth by years of want. When she spoke, her voice was almost tender.

“Then we teach him what refusing costs,” she said. “Gently, if we can. Perfectly, if we must.”

A tremor rolled up through the stone as Malgore growled—anticipation, hunger, promise.

Valdis turned away, already planning ten moves ahead on a board only she could see.

“Bring me proof,” she said. “Bring me the boy’s path. Bring me the hinges on which his heart turns.”

The Seer pressed her forehead to the floor, the glyphs on her lids dimming like stars swallowed by approaching dawn.

Outside, beyond the plateau, a seam shivered open—an ember beneath ash.

It was enough.

For now.

The house had started treating me like a bomb.

Mom moved softer, like sudden noises might set me off. Dad read his scriptures in the living room with this tight, quiet intensity, as if sheer concentration could contain whatever was happening under my skin.

I hadn’t really slept since the night with the mirror.

I’d wiped the fogged sigil away with my palm, turned off the bathroom light, told myself it was nothing. Just steam and nerves. But the way the glass had shivered—that hadn’t felt like nerves.

Now the memory sat behind my eyes like a migraine that hadn’t bloomed yet.

The mark on my arm didn’t burn or throb this morning. That almost made it worse. It was awake, but calm, like an animal lying low and watching.

The doorbell rang at nine sharp.

Not the frantic, leaning-on-the-button ringing I’d gotten used to. Just one neat chime.

Through my bedroom window I saw the mailman in his blue shirt and shorts, cheeks red from the cold. He left a thick bundle on the porch and hurried back to his truck, not even glancing at the people gathered along the hedge.

There weren’t as many as before, but there were still some—the faithful, the stubborn, the ones who didn’t have anywhere else to put their hope. One woman held a framed picture of a little girl in pigtails. Another man just stared at our door like he was negotiating with it.

I backed away from the glass.

Downstairs, Mom called, “Mail’s here!”

I didn’t move at first. Mail had stopped being letters a long time ago. It was all… weight. Requests. Desperation on paper.

“Nathaniel?” Dad’s voice floated up. “Can you come down, son?”

There was something in his tone that made my stomach tighten. Not just tired. Not just worried.

Decided.

I tugged my sleeve down to my wrist and headed for the stairs.

The kitchen table was covered.

Envelopes—thick ones, thin ones, some with official-looking logos, some with shaky handwriting. Mom had sorted them into piles: ward members, strangers, “national,” which was her new word for “outside Utah,” and a smaller stack set apart near Dad’s elbow.

He rested his hand on that stack like he was keeping it from blowing away.

Mom looked up at me, eyes bright but rimmed with fatigue. “Some of these are… different,” she said. “Your dad thought we should talk about them together.”

Dad cleared his throat. “Have a seat, Nate.”

I sat. The chair felt too small all of a sudden.

He picked up the top envelope from the special pile. The return address said New York in a neat black font. I didn’t recognize the company name, but it sounded important—the kind of name that came with suits and microphones.

“This one came yesterday,” Dad said. “Special delivery. I wanted to pray about it before showing you.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

He unfolded the letter and read, voice flat, like if he didn’t put any emotion into it, it would be less real.

“‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Gray and Nathaniel,’” he began. “‘My name is Thomas Greene, and I’m a senior producer with National Broadcast Network. Our team has been following your son’s extraordinary story with deep interest and respect.’”

My skin crawled at the word salad.

“‘We believe it is important that stories like Nathaniel’s be told carefully, in his own words, without sensationalism. We would like to invite your family to participate in a one-hour documentary special, to air on prime-time television. This would not be a talk-show appearance, but an in-depth, respectful profile. Nathaniel would have the opportunity to share his experience, his faith, and his perspective on what has happened.’”

Dad glanced up at me, then looked back down.

“‘We are prepared to fly your family to New York, cover all travel and lodging expenses, and provide a modest honorarium in thanks for your time. You would have approval over the final cut to ensure accuracy and comfort with the way your family is portrayed.’”

Approval.

The word snagged. Hard.

Dad finished: “We understand this is a sensitive situation and would be honored to speak at your convenience. Sincerely, Thomas Greene, Senior Producer.”

He set the letter down like it weighed ten pounds.

Mom was chewing her lip. “They said you’d have control, Nathaniel. Over how they tell it.”

Control.

That word hit even harder.

Up until now, other people had been telling my story for me—doctors, bishops, random people in our ward, the news. Even my mom, up at the pulpit, calling me a miracle like I hadn’t been the one lying there feeling my cells fall apart.

“I don’t want them twisting anything,” Dad said quietly. “Networks say ‘respectful’ and then cut it to make it dramatic. They’ll turn you into a spectacle.”

He wasn’t wrong.

But the idea of sitting in a chair under bright lights and saying, This is what happened. This is what didn’t. This is what I believe, not what everyone else keeps saying—

that was… tempting.

“What do you think?” Mom asked me. There was hope in her voice. Not about money. About God. I could hear it. “It could help people understand Heavenly Father’s hand in all this.”

I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

I really didn’t.

Dad reached for the next envelope. This one had a government-looking seal next to the address: Bethesda, Maryland.

“This is from a research hospital,” he said. “National Institutes of Health.” He tried to keep his voice neutral, but something like curiosity slipped out around the edges.

He unfolded the letter.

“‘Mr. and Mrs. Gray, we recently became aware through public reports of your son’s remarkable recovery from recurrent medulloblastoma. As a national medical research institution, we are deeply interested in understanding the mechanisms behind such events.’”

Mechanisms.

“‘We would like to invite Nathaniel to participate in a voluntary research study focused on spontaneous remission and unexplained healing. Our goal is to expand scientific knowledge and, if possible, improve treatment for future patients.’”

My chest tightened.

“‘We would perform a series of non-invasive tests, including imaging, bloodwork, and assessments of the unique mark that has appeared on his forearm. We respect your family’s religious beliefs and would welcome any discussion about how to conduct our research in a way that aligns with your values. All travel and accommodations would be covered. There is no cost to your family.’”

Non-invasive. Unique mark.

I rubbed my arm without thinking.

“‘Please understand that participation is entirely voluntary. Whether or not you choose to join this study, we wish your son continued health.’ Signed by a Dr. Eleanor Nash.”

Dad folded the letter carefully.

Mom exhaled slowly. “At least they’re honest,” she said. “They’re not promising miracles. Just… wanting to understand.”

For a second, the kitchen blurred and turned into my old hospital room. The taste of metal in my mouth. The sound of machines. The way doctors would stand at the end of my bed and talk about me like I was a puzzle they hadn’t solved yet.

Only now I wasn’t dying.

I was the puzzle.

“I kind of want to know,” I said, surprising myself. “What this is. What it did to me.”

Dad’s jaw flexed. “They poke and prod long enough, they’ll start calling it something. Putting it in a box. That’s what science does.”

“Science is how we found the tumor,” I snapped, then regretted it when his face fell.

Mom put a hand on his arm. “John. Maybe understanding more could help. Not just Nathaniel. Other kids, too.”

He didn’t answer. He just picked up the last item in the special pile.

It wasn’t a letter this time. It was a notepad, torn off messy, with a name and phone number scrawled in pencil. The paper looked… expensive, somehow. Thicker. Off-white.

“This was a phone call,” Dad said. “Came in about an hour ago while you were showering.”

My stomach flipped.

“He wouldn’t leave much on the line,” Dad went on. “Didn’t want to say too much to your mother.”

Mom rolled her eyes faintly. “Like I’m made of glass.”

“He asked to speak with me,” Dad said, ignoring that. “Said his employer saw the news report last night. Knew your name.”

“Knew my—who was it?” I asked.

Dad looked at the note like it might bite him. “He said he represents Mr. Alden Kerr.”

The name meant nothing to me.

Mom’s eyes widened. “The Alden Kerr? From New York?” At my blank look, she added, “Honey, he owns… everything. Hotels. Airlines. Stores. He’s in the Wall Street Journal all the time. He’s… rich doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“Oh,” I said. Brilliant response.

“What did he want?” Mom asked.

Dad hesitated. “He said Mr. Kerr is very ill. Terminal. Some kind of aggressive lymphoma. Doctors have given him months. Maybe less.”

My chest went cold.

“His wife saw your story,” Dad continued. “They’ve been calling churches and hospitals all morning, asking who to talk to. Someone at a station gave them our number.” He sighed. “The man on the phone said Mr. Kerr is… not a religious person. But he’s seen enough to believe there might be… something. And he wondered if Nathaniel might be willing to fly out and meet with him.”

The kitchen went very, very quiet.

“No cameras,” Dad said. “He emphasized that. No reporters. No press releases. He doesn’t want a circus. He just…” His voice faltered. “He just wants a chance.”

I thought of the boy on the porch who’d disappeared by noon. The candle with my name carved into the wax. The letters from parents whose kids were dying.

I thought of lying in the hospital bed, listening to doctors talk right outside my door about “quality of life” and “what we can do to keep him comfortable.”

I swallowed hard. “He wants me to… what? Lay hands on him?”

“He didn’t say it that way,” Dad answered quickly. “He said he’d be grateful for a visit. For a prayer. For… whatever you felt able to offer.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“That we’d pray about it,” Dad said. “And that it’s a lot to ask of a fifteen-year-old boy.”

Mom’s hand had crept to her mouth. Her eyes were bright, wet. “Nathaniel,” she breathed, “do you realize…? This man could go to any specialist in the world. Pay for any treatment. And he’s asking for you.”

The mark warmed under my sleeve—not burning, not pulsing, just… there. A weight. A light turned toward something.

“I’ve been where he is,” I said quietly. “Hearing you’re going to die. Watching doctors run out of words.” My throat closed. “I know what that feels like.”

“And?” Dad asked, voice gentle. Too gentle. It made me want to run.

“And part of me wants to go,” I admitted. “Not for his money. I mean, I don’t even—” I broke off, shaking my head. “Just… to look him in the eye and not be the one lying in the bed this time.”

Mom’s face crumpled for a second, remembering. Then she straightened and wiped at her eyes with her apron. “Whatever we decide,” she said, “it won’t be about money.”

Dad nodded once. “I agree.” Then, to me, “But you also heard what President Lowry said. No more healings. No more… displays. They’re worried. I’m worried.”

“They’re worried about control,” I muttered.

Dad winced.

Mom stepped in. “Sweetheart, we’re not saying yes or no today. We’re just… putting it all on the table. You have a say. It’s your life. Your body.” Her voice shook on that last word. “We just don’t want you used. By anyone.”

“That includes billionaires,” Dad added. “And networks. And scientists with agendas.”

“And the Church,” I said before I could stop myself.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full. Heavy.

Dad looked like I’d slapped him. “Nathaniel—”

“I’m not saying I hate it,” I said quickly. “I’m just saying… everybody wants something from me right now. Heavenly Father wants me humble. The Church wants me obedient. The world wants me on camera. Doctors want my blood. Some rich stranger wants my hands. I just…” I dragged a hand through my hair. “I don’t even know what I want.”

Mom reached out and covered my hand with hers. Her fingers were warm, soap-scented, real. “Maybe,” she said softly, “that’s what we pray for first. Not what everyone else wants. What you want. What Heavenly Father wants for you.”

Dad bowed his head automatically, like his neck was wired to respond to the words “Heavenly Father.” But his eyes, when he raised them again, were glassy and raw.

“You don’t have to decide today,” he said. “If any of this doesn’t feel right, we say no. To all of it. Do you hear me? I’ll take the phone off the hook. Board up the windows if I have to.”

He meant it.

The idea of saying no to everything—going back to being just a kid who’d almost died and then hadn’t—should have been comforting.

It wasn’t.

It felt like respirator air. Manufactured. Thin.

“I need to think,” I said.

Dad nodded. Mom squeezed my hand one more time and let go.

I went upstairs and closed my bedroom door. The click sounded louder than it should have.

On my desk, my scriptures sat where I’d left them after the meeting with the stake president. Next to them was the notebook where I’d scribbled Ethan’s rune shape in the dark—circle, line, three steps, feathered edge. I’d traced it for hours without touching a mirror again.

The invitations stacked up in my head.

A documentary that wanted my story.

A research team that wanted my blood and my mark and my cells.

A dying man who wanted my touch.

Three doors. None of them glowing. All of them real.

I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling until it blurred. The mark warmed, a low, steady heat that wasn’t asking yet, just… noticing.

I didn’t say his name out loud.

I didn’t have to.

The thread between us had gotten easier to find. Thicker. Like a muscle I’d been unconsciously working.

I let myself reach.

The ceiling dissolved.

Heat. Red sky. Black stone. The Dod rose around me, solid and impossible, the air tasting like iron and dust.

Malgore lay coiled near the edge, vast and half-sleeping, one wing unfurled like a shadow cast by a broken moon. His breath rolled across the plateau in waves.

Ethan stood with his back to me, coat unruffled, as if the wind didn’t dare move his clothes. He didn’t turn until I spoke.

“I got… invitations,” I said. My voice sounded small in all that space.

He smiled without showing teeth. “Of course you did.”

“You knew?”

“I didn’t need to know the details,” he said, turning fully now, those bright, impossible eyes cutting through the heat. “Power shifts. People with money and influence grow… curious. It was only a matter of time before they stopped throwing candles at your curb and started throwing contracts.”

I thought of the letter from New York. The words “final cut” and “in your own words.”

“They want to put me on TV,” I said. “Tell my story.”

“And does that tempt you?” he asked, genuinely interested.

“Yes,” I said. No point lying here. “I’m sick of everyone else doing it for me.”

“Good,” he said softly. “Owning your own story is the bare minimum. Not the prize.”

I shifted. “There’s also a research hospital. They want to… test me. Figure out why I’m alive. Why the mark—” I glanced at my arm. Here, it needed no sleeve to glow. It was just… there. “Why this happened.”

“Knowledge,” Ethan said. “A different currency.” He tilted his head. “How does that one feel?”

“Scary,” I admitted. “But… right. Maybe. I don’t know. I want to understand what’s happening to me. I’m tired of being… a mystery.”

“Even to yourself,” he said, nodding. “That’s the worst kind of imprisonment.”

“And then there’s the last one,” I said. “A man. Rich. Important. Dying. He wants me to come to him. No cameras. Just…” I swallowed. “Just hope.”

Ethan’s expression shifted. Not pity. Something sharper. “And that one,” he said quietly, “cuts both ways.”

I nodded.

“It makes you feel what?” he prompted. “Say it. Don’t pretty it up.”

“Powerful,” I said, the word scraping in my throat. “And… seen. Like I’m not just somebody’s miracle story. Like I’m… needed. By someone who doesn’t need anyone.”

He didn’t flinch. “Honest,” he said. “Good.”

“You’re enjoying this,” I accused.

He shook his head. “I’m interested. There’s a difference. Most people pretend they don’t enjoy being wanted. You’re at least honest enough to admit it.” He stepped closer, bare feet sure on the blistered stone. “Listen to me, Nathaniel. The light touched you first. Remember that.”

I thought of Faith’s hand. The shock in her eyes. The wing flaring under my skin like a brand from the inside out.

“You’ve been marked since that moment,” Ethan went on. “Not as a puppet. As a possibility. The angelic side saw potential and staked a claim. That doesn’t make you theirs.” He lifted his chin slightly. “Now everyone else sees it too. The Church, the networks, the doctors, the dying king in his tower. They’re all circling the same thing.”

“Me,” I said.

“No,” Ethan corrected gently. “What moves through you. What you might become if you stop apologizing for existing.”

I swallowed. “My dad thinks… if it’s not coming through the priesthood, it’s suspect.”

“Of course he does,” Ethan said. “He was taught that a pipeline to heaven runs through a few chosen men, and anything that bubbles up outside those pipes must be contamination.” He smiled thinly. “He’s wrong. But he’s sincere about it. That makes him dangerous in a very specific way.”

“He’s just scared,” I said. “We all are.”

“Fear is honest,” Ethan said. “Cowardice is what happens when you pretend fear is obedience.” He gestured vaguely, and the horizon seemed to tilt with his hand. “You are standing on your Dod, Nathaniel. Your crossing place. Not because of some glowing hole in your street. Because choices are lining up in front of you like doors, and once you walk through, you will not be able to pretend you’re just a boy who almost died.”

I thought of the three offers. The way each one tugged at a different part of me.

“How do I know which one is right?” I asked.

He laughed softly. Not unkindly. “You keep asking the wrong question. There isn’t one right door and two wrong ones. That’s the kind of arithmetic they taught you in Sunday School. This,” he gestured again, taking in the plateau, the dragon, the sky, “is not a flannel-board lesson. Each choice reshapes you. None of them let you go back.”

“That doesn’t help,” I muttered.

“It helps if you stop waiting for someone else to bless your decision,” he said. “You want to understand your body? Then letting those doctors examine you is a door into knowledge. You want to control your story? Sitting in front of their cameras on your terms is a door into that. You want to know what it means to hold someone else’s life in your hands?” His gaze sharpened. “Go to the dying man.”

My stomach knotted. “That sounds… selfish.”

“Because you’ve been taught that anything you do that isn’t pure sacrifice must be selfish,” he said. “I’m not telling you to use him. I’m telling you that looking death in the eye from the other side of the bed will change you. And you will need that clarity if you’re going to live with what you can do.”

The wind, if that’s what it was, shifted. Ash swirled around us without ever clinging to my clothes.

“And what about… them?” I asked. “Faith. The angels. Whatever claimed me first.”

“They had their chance,” Ethan said. “They touched you and walked away, trusting that ‘free agency’ would do the work for them.” A flicker of something like contempt crossed his face. “They won’t drag you to their side. They’re too proud of being hands-off.”

“That’s… what they taught us,” I said slowly. “In Primary. That Heavenly Father wanted us to choose for ourselves. That forcing us would have… ruined the plan.”

“Maybe,” Ethan said. “Or maybe it was easier to wash their hands of what happened after.”

The stone under my feet seemed to pulse. Or maybe that was my own heartbeat.

“I’m not asking you to bow,” Ethan said, voice quieter now. “I’m asking you to stop letting everyone else treat your life like a lesson in their books. You want to go on television? Do it because you’re done being misquoted. You want to let scientists poke you? Do it because you’re tired of not knowing what’s happening in your own veins. You want to lay your hand on a dying billionaire? Do it because you remember what it’s like to be fourteen and told you won’t see sixteen.”

Tears pricked my eyes. I blinked them back angrily.

“And if I say no to all of it?” I asked.

“Then you’ll still be what you are,” he said simply. “Just quieter. Smaller. More crowded by other people’s fear.” He looked past me, toward something I couldn’t see. “I won’t force you. They won’t either. Not really. That’s the one mercy of all of this. It’s yours to choose.”

“Doors,” I said. “You and your doors.”

He smiled, the real kind, quick and sharp. “You already tested one,” he reminded me. “With your mirror and your breath. You wiped it away, but you know now. The road between worlds is there whether you walk it or not.” He tipped his head. “This is the same. Different kind of door. Same question. Who shapes your life—fear, or you?”

The red sky shuddered. Or maybe my vision did.

“What if I open the wrong one?” I whispered.

“Then you live with it,” he said. “You learn from it. You don’t pretend you were tricked. That’s how you stay yourself, no matter who’s watching.”

For a long moment we just stood there—the boy who wasn’t supposed to live, the boy with storm in his eyes, the dragon behind him like a rumor carved into the world.

“Go home, Nathaniel,” Ethan said finally. “Look at your parents. Listen to what they fear. Then make a choice that belongs to you. When you walk through your first door, I’ll feel it. That’s enough.”

The Dod tilted.

The red sky folded in on itself.

I blinked, and I was staring at my ceiling again.

The house was quiet. No chanting outside. Just the faint hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the hallway clock trying to keep up with the universe.

My arm was warm. Not burning. Ready.

I sat up slowly and swung my legs over the side of the bed. For a minute I just sat there, breathing.

Then I went to my desk.

The letters lay where I’d dropped them earlier. I picked up the one from the National Broadcast Network and read the words “in your own words” one more time.

I set it aside.

I picked up the letter from Dr. Nash. My eyes caught on “non-invasive tests” and “understanding the mechanisms” and “help future patients.”

I put that one in the center of the desk.

I stared at the telephone on my nightstand. The rotary dial gleamed faintly in the afternoon light.

The notepad with Mr. Kerr’s assistant’s number waited beside it.

My heart hammered. I picked up the receiver before I could talk myself out of it.

My finger fit into the first hole in the dial. I turned it, listened to the ratcheting tick as it spun back.

Halfway through the number, I stopped, hand frozen.

Then I finished it.

The line rang twice.

“Office of Mr. Kerr,” a woman’s voice answered, crisp but tired. “This is Elaine.”

My mouth went dry. “Um. Hi. This is… Nathaniel Gray. You called my dad this morning.”

There was a sharp inhale on the other end. Papers rustled. “One moment, please.”

A click. A pause. Then a different voice—male, older, worn at the edges.

“Nathaniel?” he said. “This is David Hart. I work for Mr. Kerr. Thank you for calling back.”

I could hear something in the background—a faint, labored cough, muffled as if someone had turned their head away from the receiver.

“I can’t promise anything,” I blurted. “I’m not… I don’t even know how this works. Sometimes it…” I swallowed. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“We understand,” Hart said. His voice was gentle. Not slick. Not sales-y. “He isn’t asking for a guarantee. He’s had guarantees all his life. They didn’t mean what he thought.” A pause. “He’d just like to meet the boy who refused to die when the doctors said he should have.”

The mark flared—just once. Not greedy. Just… present.

“When?” I asked.

“We can work with whatever you’re comfortable with,” Hart said quickly. “We’ll send tickets for you and your parents. No press. You have my word.”

I looked at the closed bedroom door. I pictured Mom drying her hands on a dish towel, Dad with his scriptures open, trying to find a verse to hold back the ocean.

“I’ll have to talk to them,” I said. “But… I think I want to come.”

Silence. Then I heard someone exhale like they’d been holding their breath all day.

“Thank you,” Hart said. “Whatever happens, thank you.”

We hung up.

I set the receiver back into its cradle. My hand shook a little.

On the desk, the NIH letter waited. My fingers found a pen. I slid into the chair and started to write.

Dr. Nash,

Thank you for your letter…

The words came easier than I thought they would.

I wasn’t promising everything. I wasn’t promising anything I couldn’t live with later.

But I was saying yes.

Not to their stories.

To mine.

When I finished the letter, I sat back. The house sounded different. Not quieter. Not louder.

Just… mine again. For the moment.

The mark pulsed once beneath my sleeve, warm as a hand closing over mine.

I didn’t pray. I didn’t ask for a sign. I didn’t wait for thunder.

I just whispered, so softly no one in the house could hear:

“I chose.”

And for the first time since the hospital, that felt like enough.

By the time the clock in the hallway clicked over to midnight, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep.

The house felt too small for my skin. Letters piled on the hall table. Tithing slips and ward bulletins shared space with envelopes from lawyers and television stations. The phone on the kitchen wall had gone quiet for the night, but it didn’t matter—I could still hear it ringing in my bones.

Everyone wanted something.

A blessing. A miracle. An interview. A contract.

Me.

Dad had fallen asleep in his chair again, scriptures open on his chest, glasses sliding down his nose. Mom lay on the couch with a thin afghan pulled over her, the TV off, one hand still curled around a damp tissue. The room smelled like cocoa and worry.

I stood in the dark at the bottom of the stairs and thought: if I stay here, I’m going to suffocate.

The mark under my sleeve pulsed once, like it agreed.

I grabbed Dad’s truck keys off the hook and eased open the front door. The night air slapped me in the face—cold, clear, wide. The candles people left on the curb earlier had burned down to puddles of wax. Someone had chalked HEAL OUR SON on the sidewalk in shaky blue letters.

I didn’t look at it.

The truck started on the second try, coughing once before settling into a low, familiar rumble. I pulled away from the curb, past dark houses and sleeping lives, and headed west—out where the suburbs fell apart and the desert began.

No radio. No tape deck. Just engine noise and the quiet hiss of tires on pavement.

The farther I drove, the lighter I felt. Streetlights thinned to nothing. The sky opened up, black and crowded with stars. My face in the rearview mirror looked… wrong. Too smooth. Too bright. Like someone had taken the sick kid I used to be and traced over him with something sharper.

I didn’t recognize that boy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

When the gas gauge slid close to a quarter tank and the road turned into a thin black stripe rolled out over nowhere, I pulled off onto the shoulder and killed the engine.

Silence fell so hard my ears rang.

For a minute, I just sat there, hands on the wheel, heartbeat loud.

Then I got out.

The desert wasn’t sand dunes like in movies. It was scrub and rock and hard-packed dirt that remembered every boot that stepped on it. The air tasted dry and mineral, old as bones. I walked away from the truck until it was just a lump of darker shadow behind me and the only light came from the stars and a sliver of moon.

The mark burned steadier with every step.

“I’m here,” I said softly, to no one. To him.

The wind answered first, scraping grit across the ground. Then the world tilted—not like a dream, more like a camera refocusing. Heat rolled under my feet even though the air was cold.

And he was there.

Ethan stood a few yards away, dark coat unmoving in the breeze, bare feet planted on rock like he owned it. He looked almost exactly as he had on the Dod—sharp, composed, blue eyes too bright in the dark—but something about him felt closer. Less like a projection. More like a person who could leave footprints.

“You chose a good place,” he said. His voice slid into the night easily, like it belonged there. “The earth hears better when there’s no one talking over it.”

“I couldn’t breathe in the house,” I said. My throat felt tight, but the words came out clear. “They all want something from me.”

“They want pieces,” he corrected gently. “Not you. Just what moves through you.”

I swallowed. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not yet.” He tilted his head, studying me. “You look different.”

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I glanced down at myself. Jeans. Old t-shirt. Nothing special. But I knew what he meant. The weight I’d lost in the hospital hadn’t come back as frail flesh. It had come back as definition—lines on my arms, shadows under my cheekbones that weren’t from illness. My hair had grown in thick and dark, falling in waves instead of lying flat. Even my eyes didn’t look like my eyes anymore. Too clear. Too bright.

“Everyone keeps staring,” I muttered. “Like I’m some… painting in a museum.”

Ethan’s mouth quirked. “Light leaves a mark,” he said. “Some people call it beauty. Some call it glory. Either way, it makes them want to claim you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” he said. “Tonight isn’t for feeling better. It’s for telling the truth.”

My stomach tightened. “You said… you’d help me understand what I am.”

“I did.” He nodded toward the open land around us. “This is where it starts.”

A breeze sighed across the desert, lifting my hair. The mark reacted, heat blooming down my arm. For a second, the wing under my skin glowed through the fabric, faint and gold.

Ethan’s eyes flicked to it, then back to my face. “How much have you used it since Caleb?” he asked.

“Twice,” I admitted. “Sister Nelson. And a woman my dad brought over. Bad arthritis. She walked like her bones were full of glass. After the blessing…” I shook my head. “She danced in our kitchen. Literally. She cried the whole time.”

“And you?” Ethan asked softly. “What did you feel?”

I thought of the way the power had raced through me, burning out the ache in my joints, flooding my chest with something that tasted like metal and sunlight. I thought of the sweetness under the shock, the way part of me had wanted to hold onto it a little longer than I should have.

“I felt… good,” I said finally. The word sounded pathetic next to what it really was. “Too good. It scared me.”

“Of course it did.” Ethan stepped closer, just enough that I could see the faint rise and fall of his chest. “You’ve been taught all your life that anything that feels that strong must belong to someone else. God. The Church. The priesthood. Never you.”

The truth of that hit hard. “It’s not supposed to be about me,” I said weakly.

“Isn’t it?” His gaze didn’t let me look away. “Whose body is it running through? Whose heart does it hitch to? Whose skin burns when the mark answers? You’re not a pipe, Nathaniel. You’re a person.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.

Ethan let the silence stretch just long enough to settle around us. Then he changed the subject without really changing it.

“Tonight,” he said, “you’re going to stop guessing. You want to know what you are? We test it. Carefully. With no cameras. No pastors. No producers. Just you, the mark, and the earth.”

“Test it how?” I asked.

“Reach,” he said simply.

I stared at him. “That’s not helpful.”

He smiled—just a flicker, but real. “Close your eyes.”

Normally that kind of instruction would’ve made me roll my eyes. But the desert was too big, and I was too tired of being confused. So I did it.

“Breathe,” he said. “Not a prayer. Just breath.”

I inhaled. The air scraped my throat on the way in, dry and cold. I exhaled. The ground under my boots felt solid, honest.

“Now,” Ethan’s voice said, closer than before, “let the noise drop away. No reporters. No ward. No parents. Just what’s left.”

I tried. The kitchen phone, the church office, the hospital corridors—all of it thinned, like someone turning down a radio station I hadn’t realized was blaring.

“What do you feel?” he asked.

“My arm,” I said immediately. “The mark. It’s… bright. Loud.”

“Good. Don’t run from it. Follow it.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Yes, you do,” he said quietly. “You followed it here.”

I swallowed. The heat in my forearm wasn’t just heat. It was… pressure. Like water pressing against a dam. I let my attention sink into it. The world narrowed to that one bright ache.

And then I felt it.

Not just the mark. Something beyond it. Threads. Faint and invisible but unmistakable—tugging from different directions, through the dark. Pain. Fear. Hope. Dozens of small flares. Hundreds.

A child crying in a hospital crib miles away.

A man in a motel room clutching a pill bottle.

A woman in our own ward on her knees beside her bed, begging.

They weren’t voices, exactly. More like pressure points in the dark, all pushing toward the same place. Toward me.

My eyes flew open. I stumbled back a step, heart hammering. “What was that?”

“The world,” Ethan said calmly. “Or rather, the parts of it that know your name now. They’re reaching.”

“It’s too much.” My hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists. “I can’t help all of them.”

“You can’t,” he agreed. “And you’re not supposed to.” He nodded toward the open desert. “Pick one.”

The idea made my stomach flip. “Pick—?”

“One,” he repeated. “Not because they deserve it more. Because you cannot bleed for everyone. You choose, or other people will choose for you.”

I closed my eyes again, less willingly this time. The threads pressed in immediately, a knot of need. I forced myself to breathe slower, to feel each strand without letting it swallow me.

One stood out—not because it was louder, but because I recognized the flavor of the fear.

Old. Male. Alone.

Lungs burning. Heart hammering like a bird in a cage.

“I’ve got someone,” I whispered.

“Good,” Ethan said. “Hold onto the connection. Don’t try to pull him to you. Let the mark stretch out to him.”

I did.

The world lurched.

I wasn’t in the desert, not completely. At the same time, I didn’t leave my body. It was more like standing in a doorway and leaning just far enough to see into another room.

For a heartbeat, I saw him.

A man in an expensive shirt unbuttoned at the throat, sitting on the edge of a hotel bed. Gray at the temples. Hands shaking. Ashtray overflowing on the nightstand. A glass of something dark sweating beside a pill bottle. His left arm clutched to his chest. His face white with terror.

I didn’t know his name, but I knew his type. I’d seen him in my future, in the letters, in the offers—executives and donors and “benefactors” who wanted a private audience with the miracle boy.

He was rich. He was dying. And he was hanging by a thread.

My mark flared.

“What do I do?” I whispered.

“Offer,” Ethan said. “Not words. Presence. Let your mark brush his pain and see what it does.”

Every lesson in Church screamed that this was wrong—that healings came by priesthood authority, by prayer, not by… reaching through the dark to a stranger in a hotel room in the middle of the night.

But the man’s fear tasted exactly like mine had in the hospital hallway before Faith touched me.

I let the mark stretch.

Heat poured through the connection, not violent, not like the power in Sister Nelson’s living room. This was softer, more controlled—like pouring warm water into ice-cold hands. The pain in his chest eased. His breath evened. The panic receded just enough that he loosened his death grip on his arm and sagged back onto the pillows, staring at the ceiling, stunned.

He didn’t know why he felt better. He wouldn’t remember this as a miracle. Maybe just as “one of those nights I thought I was going to die, and then I didn’t.”

But I knew.

And God, it felt good.

The relief in him washed back through the connection and into me—sweet and bright and terrifying. My knees went weak. I gasped, breaking contact, clutching my arm with my other hand like I could hold the mark still.

The desert snapped back into focus. Stars. Rock. Cold air. Ethan, watching me.

I dropped to one knee, dizzy. “That—” I couldn’t quite breathe. “That felt… incredible.”

“It should,” Ethan said. “That’s the truth of it, not the hymn version.”

“I helped him.” My voice shook. “He was going to have a heart attack. Or something. I could feel it. And then I—” I swallowed. “I stopped it.”

“You eased it,” Ethan corrected. “His body will still fail someday. No one lives forever. Not even most of us.” His eyes softened, just a little. “But you gave him time. You gave him choice. That’s not evil, Nathaniel. That’s mercy.”

“Then why do I feel like I swallowed lightning?” My whole body buzzed. Every nerve awake. “Why do I like it so much?”

“Because you’re honest,” he said simply. “Power moving through you feels good. Healing feels good. You’ve spent your whole life being told that wanting that feeling makes you selfish, or proud, or unworthy.” He shook his head. “Wanting it doesn’t make you anything. What you do with it does.”

I stared at my glowing arm. “What if I can’t stop wanting it?”

“Then learn to hold it,” he said. “Learn to channel it on purpose instead of leaking it everywhere until you’re an exhausted saint or a cautionary tale.”

I let that sink in, heart thudding hard against my ribs.

“Do you see now,” Ethan continued quietly, “why the producers want you on camera? Why men with more money than some countries want you alone in their rooms? Why your Church wants to either own the story or shut it down?” His eyes didn’t leave mine. “You walked out into the desert in the middle of the night and kept a stranger’s heart from tearing itself apart. No oil. No priesthood circle. No chapel. Just you.”

“That sounds…” I faltered. “Arrogant.”

“It sounds true,” he said.

The mark still burned, but the edge of the rush had softened. In its place, a strange steadiness settled. The fear didn’t vanish, but it wasn’t the only thing in the room anymore.

“What was this?” I asked. “Some kind of test?”

“A trial,” he said. “Not from me. From reality.” His mouth curved, almost sad. “You wanted to know what you are. Now you do.”

I looked out over the dark land—all that empty space, all that sky. “I’m scared of what this could turn me into,” I whispered.

“That’s good,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “The ones who scare me are the ones who aren’t.”

I huffed out a shaky laugh. It surprised both of us.

Ethan stepped closer, just enough that the air between us buzzed again. “You’re going to be offered platforms,” he said. “Contracts. Stages. ‘Opportunities to share your story.’ People will tell you it’s your duty to the world to let them watch you save it.” His gaze sharpened. “If you go in blind, they will eat you alive. If you go in trained, they won’t know whether to worship you or fear you. That’s when you’ll be able to actually help.”

“Trained by who?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

His smile was small and certain. “By me,” he said. “And by the ones who taught me. On ground where you won’t be punished for asking the wrong questions.”

The Dod flashed in my mind—black stone, red sky, the slow shadow of Malgore’s wings.

“And you won’t… take this away from me?” I asked. “Twist it? Use it to hurt people?”

The honesty of the question surprised me. It surprised him, too. For a moment, something like respect crossed his face.

“I won’t take it,” he said. “I can’t. It’s yours now. I can only show you how not to drown in it. As for harm—” He hesitated. “Power always carries the risk of harm. That’s what makes it real. But I won’t make you into something you don’t choose to become.”

The word choose hit me harder than anything else tonight.

Agency.

The thing I’d been taught all my life was God’s greatest gift—and the thing everyone seemed determined to take from me the second the mark showed up.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “About the cameras. The contracts. Any of it.”

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” he said. “For now, go home before the sun comes up. Your parents will wake soon.” His gaze softened. “You’ll break your mother’s heart if she finds your bed empty.”

He wasn’t wrong.

I blew out a breath I didn’t remember taking. The adrenaline was fading, leaving me tired down in my bones.

“Ethan?” I said.

“Yes.”

“That man in the hotel. Is he… important?”

“Important to whom?” he asked. “To himself, certainly. To his children, maybe. To his company, likely. Will the world notice if he dies?” Ethan’s mouth turned wry. “The markets might.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he said. “And yes. He’s one of the ones who’s already sent letters.” His eyes gleamed. “You’ll meet him. On purpose next time.”

A shiver ran down my spine that wasn’t entirely fear.

The desert wind shifted. The stars felt closer for a heartbeat, then far away again. Ethan stepped back, his outline blurring at the edges.

“When you’re ready,” he said, “draw the rune again. On glass, on stone, in ash. Step through. Let us teach you the parts of yourself your world is afraid of.” His voice dropped. “Or let them own you. That’s the other option. But don’t pretend there isn’t a choice.”

Then he was gone.

Not with a flash, not with a crack. Just… not there. The night closed up around the space he’d been.

I stood alone under the stars, my arm still warm, my heart still pounding. The desert was just desert again—scrub, dirt, cold. But something under my feet felt changed, like the ground knew my name now too.

On the walk back to the truck, I noticed a ring of earth a few yards from where we’d stood—a rough circle of pale glass where the soil had fused. When I stepped closer, my mark tingled.

I touched the edge of it with the toe of my shoe. It chimed, faint and bright, like someone had struck a crystal goblet.

Proof.

I drove home in the thin gray before dawn, headlights carving tunnels through the dark. The neighborhood looked the same as always—quiet houses, sleeping trees, the chalked plea still faintly visible on the sidewalk.

Inside, Dad snored softly in his chair, scriptures still open. Mom had shifted on the couch but hadn’t woken. I crept upstairs, every muscle aching from a night that hadn’t touched my body but had wrung out everything inside it.

In the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror.

The boy who stared back looked nothing like the one who’d gone bald and yellow in a hospital bed. My face was all clean angles and clear eyes. My hair curled around my ears in dark waves. My skin glowed faintly, even in the bad hallway light. I looked like I’d stepped out of one of those oil paintings in the church foyer—angels in white, perfect and impossible.

I pushed up my sleeve.

The wing blazed under my skin, veins of gold threading out farther than they had yesterday. It didn’t look like a wound. It looked like a signature.

“Who do you belong to?” I whispered.

The mark pulsed once, steady.

The answer didn’t come in words.

But for the first time, the fear of it wasn’t the only thing I felt.

There was relief, too.

Not because any of this was safe. Because at least now I knew: the hunger, the beauty, the pull, the power—they weren’t accidents. They were pieces.

What I did with them was going to be the real trial.

I tugged my sleeve down and slid back into bed just as the first birds started up outside.

Downstairs, the phone would start ringing again soon.

This time, I wasn’t sure I was going to let Dad say no to everyone.

The cavern beneath The Dod was always cold, but tonight it felt colder still. Black water lapped against jagged rock, carrying with it the copper tang of blood and the salt of the Black Death Sea. Shadows seemed to move of their own accord, slithering along the cavern walls as though the very darkness bent toward its queen.

Valdis stood at the water’s edge, her black veil fluttering in the draft that funneled through the underground passages. Malgore, her massive shadow-dragon, lay coiled behind her, his green reptilian eyes half-lidded but watchful. The beast’s rumble echoed through the cavern like distant thunder.

The Seer’s words whispered still in her mind, though hours had passed since she’d dismissed the withered crone from her presence:

A boy marked by light will open the way. His healing is not his own. Through him, the chains of mortality may be broken, and the rift between realms widened. He is the key you seek, though another holds the lock.

Valdis’s lips curved into the faintest smile. She had always been patient, but patience was not passivity. This was the moment she had waited centuries for—the chance to secure true permanence, not the cursed longevity she had clawed from the veins of mortals.

Behind her, footsteps echoed. Ethan. She did not need to turn to know it was him; his presence was as familiar as her own shadow.

“You sent for me,” he said, his tone carrying the edge of irritation. He fancied himself independent, the master of his own will. She allowed him that illusion—it made him easier to shape.

Valdis turned slowly, her veil catching the pale torchlight. “I did, child.”

Ethan stiffened. He hated it when she called him that. Good.

“You’ve done well,” she continued, stepping closer. Her boots clicked softly against the obsidian floor. “The boy listens. He trusts you. He even… envies you.”

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “He’s powerful. More than I expected. Every time he touches someone, it spreads. The hunger in him—it grows.”

Valdis’s eyes gleamed. “As it should. Power that does not hunger is power wasted.” She circled him slowly, the way a hawk might circle prey. “And you have fed that hunger, haven’t you? Shown him that what the mortals call curse is, in truth, the greatest gift?”

Ethan didn’t answer at first. His mind flickered back to the last vision—the way Nathaniel’s eyes had lit up when Ethan whispered that he could be more than a miracle boy. More than a puppet. A leader.

Finally, he said, “He doesn’t fully trust it yet. He clings to the girl. To Faith.”

“Faith,” Valdis hissed the name like a curse. “The angel-blood. She is dangerous. Her touch woke the power in him, yes—but she does not understand the forces she has unleashed. She would see it shackled. Bound.”

Ethan frowned. “And you want it unbound.”

Valdis stopped before him, her face inches from his. Through the veil, he could feel the weight of her gaze. “I want him sharpened. Forged. A blade cannot remain soft iron—it must be tempered in flame, or it will break. Nathaniel is iron, boy. You must make him steel.”

Ethan looked away, toward the black waters, his voice quieter. “And if he resists?”

Valdis smiled, though it was hidden by the veil. “Then he will break. And even in breaking, he will serve me.”

Malgore shifted behind them, smoke curling from his nostrils. The dragon’s restlessness mirrored the tension in the air.

Valdis moved past Ethan, her long fingers trailing briefly across his arm—a mockery of affection. “Do not trouble yourself with doubts. You are my chosen. Through you, Nathaniel will come. Through him, the doorway will open. And when it does…” She raised her hands toward the vaulted ceiling, her voice rising in a chilling crescendo. “The Dark Cabal will kneel before me, not as queen of the damned, but as immortal above immortals.”

Ethan swallowed, his throat dry. He hated the way her words stirred something inside him—fear, yes, but also longing. Power. Recognition.

Still, unease pricked him. “Why me? Why not command him yourself?”

For a long moment, silence stretched, broken only by the sound of waves slapping against stone. Then Valdis spoke, her voice low, conspiratorial.

“Because, dear boy, he does not yet fear me. He does not yet know me. To him, I am only shadow. But you… you are like him. Young. Caught between light and dark. He sees in you the brother he never had. The brother he longs for.”

Her words slid into him like a knife. Ethan flinched despite himself.

Valdis leaned closer, her whisper curling into his ear. “Do not fail me, Ethan. His hunger will grow, and when it does, he will turn to you. You will guide him into my hand. And then—then we will drink eternity together.”

A pulse of violet light rippled through the cavern, faint but unmistakable. The mark. Nathaniel’s mark, glowing across realms. Ethan felt it even here, a thrum in his chest like a tether pulling taut.

Valdis’s head snapped toward it, eyes alight with triumph. “He reaches for you. Do you feel it? The boy is calling.”

Ethan’s pulse quickened. He did feel it—the tug, the strange resonance in his own blood. Nathaniel wanted him. Needed him.

Valdis’s laughter echoed through the cavern, low and predatory. “Go to him, child. Answer his call. Bring him to me.”

Ethan turned toward the shadows, the tether pulling him forward. For the first time, he wondered if he was leading Nathaniel—or if Nathaniel, unknowingly, was leading him.

Behind him, Valdis stood tall and still, her veil rippling in the cold air. Malgore growled low, restless.

“The Queen’s gambit,” she murmured to herself, savoring the words. “And soon… checkmate.”

The city outside my window buzzed like a beehive.

The setting was unfamiliar to what I was used to in my small town back home in Utah. Neon signs blinked red and blue and sickly green, all blurred across the glass. Sirens wailed somewhere below, threading between the honks and the low hum of traffic. It all blended into a kind of restless chaos.

I sat on the edge of the hotel bed, left sleeve pushed up, staring at the mark.

It was beautiful.

I hated that that was the first word that came to mind, but it was. I used to detest the thing. But now we had a relationship. A kind of understanding. The wing had grown even more intricate just since we left Salt Lake—its thin lines branching farther up my arm, curling toward my shoulder like living light. When it pulsed, gold ran through it, making the veins appear as rivulets of fire.

Tonight, it wasn’t just pulsing.

It was thrumming.

I could still feel the boy’s small hand in mine from earlier. Fourteen years old, some rare blood disease I couldn’t pronounce. The network had flown him in “for a special segment.” The producer had said the words with wet eyes and a smile guaranteed to boost ratings.

“We’ll cut if you’re uncomfortable,” she’d told me backstage, reassuring fingers on my arm and too much perfume in the air. “Just… let it happen. Be yourself.”

As if I knew who that was anymore.

On the stage, under the hot lights, the kid had looked even smaller. His mother clutched a crumpled tissue in one fist and a rosary in the other. The studio audience held its breath as if I was about to pull a rabbit out of a hat instead of asking God—or whatever it was—to work a miracle.

When I touched him, the power came fast.

There was no gradual rise, no gentle glow. It hit like a tidal wave, roaring through my veins and out through my hands. The boy’s body jerked. The overhead lights flickered. For one long second, every sound in the studio disappeared under the rush inside my head.

Then it was over.

He sat up straighter. Color rushed back into his face. His chest rose and fell without effort. He stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else.

The crowd exploded.

They cheered. They cried. Some fell to their knees right there between the rows of seats. The host hugged me. Cameras zoomed in on my face, my hands, the mark that had burned through my cuff in a clear, glowing wing-print.

And deep down inside, buried under the shock and the relief, something in me… fed.

It had felt incredible.

That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about now, alone in a hotel room a thousand miles from home.

I flexed my fingers, watching the wing flare softly.

“Something’s wrong,” I whispered to the empty air. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to feel.”

No answer.

Just the city noise and the soft whir of the air conditioning flaring on.

I was almost relieved when the phone on the nightstand rang.

I picked it up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Nathaniel?”

Her voice pulled me back three states in one heartbeat.

“Faith?” I sat up straighter without meaning to. “Hey.”

“I hope it’s ok to call,” she said. “Your mom gave me the number. She said you were probably still awake.”

I let out a humorless little laugh. “Yeah. That’s a safe bet.”

“I, um…” She cleared her throat. “We watched your segment. The whole ward did. They put a TV in the Relief Society room, and there was an announcement in the ward bulletin. There were so many people, they had to bring in extra chairs.”

Of course, they had.

“How’d I do?” I chuckled, trying to make it a joke. It came out brittle.

“You looked… different,” she said slowly. “Stronger. Taller. The camera couldn’t quite keep up with you.” A pause. “You helped that boy.”

There it was. The part I’d been waiting for. The acknowledgment I was craving.

“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

Another pause. I could hear her breathing. I pictured her sitting on her bed back home, knees tucked up, phone cord wrapped around her fingers.

“Did it feel the same?” she asked finally.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, when you healed him.” Her voice softened. “Did it feel like it did in the hospital? With you?”

The memory flashed bright and sharp—her hand warm on my arm, the surge of light that had torn through my dying body, the way it had been terrifying and gentle at the same time. Like being struck by lightning and wrapped in love.

“No,” I said honestly. “It didn’t.”

“I didn’t think so,” she murmured.

I frowned. “You didn’t think so?”

“I could see it in your face,” she said. “Tonight. When it hit. You looked… hungry. Not just focused. But hungry.” She sucked in a quick breath like she regretted saying it as soon as it came out. “I’m sorry. That sounded rude.”

“No,” I said slowly. “It’s probably true.”

Silence stretched between us, full of things we’d both seen and weren’t saying.

“Back then,” she went on, quieter now, “when I touched you in the hospital lounge, it felt like something pouring through me. Like… like love being poured into a cup that was about to crack. That power didn’t feel like it was mine to hold. It didn’t feel like it belonged to me at all.”

“It didn’t belong to me, either,” I said. “I was just trying not to die.”

“I know.” Her voice wobbled, just a little. “But what you did tonight—that looked like it belonged to you. Like it listens to you now.”

“It does,” I said before I could stop myself.

The admission hung in the air between us.

“That’s what scares me,” she whispered.

Something in my chest pulled tight. “Why?”

“Because power that feels like it’s yours is easier to… twist.” She chose the word carefully. “And the way those producers were talking, like you’re a new prophet, or a… a product—”

“I’m not a product,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to.

“I didn’t say you were,” she said quickly. “I just… I’ve been praying about it a lot, Nathaniel. Praying for you, mostly. And every time I do, I feel this… warning. Not about you. About what people are going to try to do with you. And with that mark.”

The wing throbbed under my skin, as if it knew we were talking about it.

“You think I don’t know that?” I said. “You think I can’t tell when someone just wants a piece of the miracle boy?”

“I know you can,” she said. “You’re much sharper than people think.” A beat. “But sharp people can still be cut.”

A bitter laugh clawed its way up my throat. “What am I supposed to do, then? Go back to lying in a bed waiting to die? Pretend this never happened? Tell the network ‘No thanks, I’ll pass on helping kids because someone might get jealous of the ratings?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Isn’t it?” I pushed, the words tumbling out now. “You saw that boy tonight, Faith. You saw his mom. Are you really saying I should’ve stayed home so God could teach everyone a lesson about humility?”

She didn’t answer right away.

When she did, her voice was shaking. “I’m saying you shouldn’t let them own you.”

“They don’t,” I said. Too fast.

“Nathaniel,” she said gently, “I’ve seen that contract they mailed. Your mom showed me. ‘Exclusive rights to all televised healings.’ They basically want to schedule miracles between commercials.”

I closed my eyes. The words on that thick, glossy paper flashed behind my lids. The number at the bottom had made my dad choke. My mom had covered her mouth and whispered, “We could pay everything off. We could help so many.”

“I can help more people this way,” I said. “One at a time in living rooms isn’t enough. There are thousands watching. Millions. Don’t you want people to see what God can do?”

“Of course I do,” she whispered. “I just don’t think Heavenly Father needs a sponsorship.”

I flinched. The worst part was how much I agreed.

Underneath my anger, a thin vein of guilt pulsed in time with the mark.

“That’s not fair,” I muttered.

“I’m not trying to be fair,” she said, a little desperately now. “I’m trying to be honest. You know something feels off. You said it yourself the night Sister Nelson walked. ‘It doesn’t feel holy.’ Remember?”

I did. I wished I didn’t.

The city hummed outside the window. A siren wailed and faded. My palm itched.

“You’re scared,” I said, seizing the safest explanation. “Of all of this. Of me.”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I am.”

Her honesty startled me more than any denial would have.

“I’m sixteen,” I said. “I was supposed to be dead. Now, people with more money than our entire ward put together are flying me out, asking me to touch them. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t. And I’m not pretending I do.” A pause. “But I do know what it’s like to be used by a power you don’t fully understand. To have everyone around you suddenly think they get to interpret it for you.” Her voice softened. “You’re not the only one who wakes up at night wondering if the thing that saved you is going to swallow you.”

For a moment, the hotel room dissolved. I smelled antiseptic and Jell-O and the dry, tinny taste of hospital air. Faith’s palm on my arm. Her eyes huge and terrified. The mark appearing like a fingerprint of light that never went away.

We weren’t that different, really.

But then, underneath her words, I felt it.

Like a second voice, quieter, threaded through the line.

They’ll pull you back into their smallness if you let them, Ethan murmured, his presence sliding in with the subtlety of smoke. They’re afraid of what you’ll become if you step outside their script.

I clenched my jaw.

“She’s not trying to control you,” another part of me argued. “She’s just… scared for you.”

Fear is control in nicer wrapping, Ethan replied lazily. Listen to her. Every sentence is about what you shouldn’t do. Who you shouldn’t trust. Which doors you mustn’t walk through. Ask yourself this—has she once asked what you want?

I swallowed hard. Faith was still talking, her words a half-second behind my spinning thoughts.

“…I just don’t want you to wake up one day and realize everybody’s been taking from you, and you don’t even recognize yourself anymore,” she was saying. “You’re not a… a tool. Or a spectacle. You’re a person, Nathaniel.”

The last part came out fierce. Protective.

I should have been grateful.

Instead, something in me twisted.

“I want this,” I said, more harshly than I intended.

Silence snapped down the line.

I heard my own words echo back at me in the quiet.

“I want it,” I repeated, softer but no less true. “I don’t want to go back to being the kid everyone pities. I don’t want to be the homework assignment on the ward’s prayer list. When I walk into a room now, people look at me like I might actually matter. I can… do something. I can touch a stranger in another state and stop his heart from exploding. I can take a dying boy and stand him up in front of millions of people and show them he’s not dying anymore.” My hand shook around the receiver. “Why is that such a bad thing?”

“It’s not bad,” she said quickly. “It’s good. It’s just—”

“Just what?” I pushed. “Just dangerous? Just complicated? Just not your style of miracle?”

“That’s not fair,” she said, echoing my words from before.

“That’s what this feels like,” I said. “Like everybody else gets to decide how I use something inside my own body.”

There it is, Ethan murmured approvingly. There’s the truth. Hold onto that.

I wanted to hang up. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to rewind the whole call and say nothing but thank you.

Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, suspended between the two of them.

“Faith,” I said, “you healed me. I know that. You know that. But whatever happened that day… it didn’t stay yours. It moved. It set up camp in me. I’m the one lying awake at night with my arm on fire. I’m the one hearing strangers beg in my head. I’m the one whose face is on the news, whose parents are getting calls from stake presidents and TV producers and people who want us to come and people who want us to disappear.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“So maybe,” I said, “for once, I’m allowed to say yes to something without having to check if it makes everybody comfortable.”

There was a long, long pause.

When she spoke again, her voice sounded smaller. Older.

“I’m not trying to make myself comfortable,” she said. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

The mark snapped hot under my skin, like it resented the implication that I needed protecting.

They’ll always frame their fear as love, Ethan said softly. It’s the easiest way to make you feel guilty for walking away.

My eyes burned. “I am alive,” I said. “For the first time in a long time, I feel… awake. Strong. Like I’m finally more than just a body waiting for the next scan. And you’re asking me to step back because it doesn’t look the way you thought an angel’s gift should look.”

Her breath hitched at the word.

“I never said that,” she murmured. “I don’t even understand what I am, let alone what you are. But I know this much—every time heaven grants a gift, hell sends a counterfeit. And sometimes they look almost exactly the same.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“I can’t do this with you in the middle,” I blurted.

It was the truest thing I’d said all night, and the one I regretted as soon as it left my lips.

“What do you mean?” she asked, barely audible.

“I mean…” I dragged a hand down my face. “Every time I reach for this thing, for the mark, I hear your voice in my head asking if I’m sure. If it’s really from God. If I’m being used. If I’m being careful enough, humble enough, good enough. And then I hear my dad’s voice. And the bishop’s. And the stake president’s. And the TV host’s. And Ethan’s.” I let out a shaky laugh. “And I’m so tired, Faith. I’m so tired of being a battlefield.”

Silence.

I could almost feel her holding her breath on the other end.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“I’m saying maybe…” I swallowed. “Maybe for a while you shouldn’t call. Or… pray about me so much. Or worry about every interview, every flight, every person I touch.” The words scraped coming out. “Maybe you need to let me figure this out without you standing there as… as my conscience.”

The pain in her inhale physically hurt me.

“I didn’t know I was…” She stopped, then tried again. “I wasn’t trying to be your conscience.”

“I know,” I said quickly. “I know. You’ve been… you’ve been the only one who actually understands any part of this. But that’s exactly why…” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t hear you and hear myself at the same time. Not right now.”

A long pause.

When she finally spoke, her voice was steady in a way that made my chest ache.

“Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll give you space.”

Guilt crashed over me. “Faith—”

“I’m not hanging up angry,” she said. “I’m… sad. And scared. And I don’t like where this is going.” A tremor slipped into her words. “But you’re right. It’s your body. Your mark. Your choice. God doesn’t force any of us. He didn’t in the beginning, and He won’t now.”

That “war in heaven” concept wrapped in one quiet sentence.

“I’ll still pray for you,” she added softly. “I can’t stop that. But I’ll stop… calling. For a while.”

The bond I hadn’t realized I was leaning on gave a little twist.

“Faith, I don’t want to lose you,” I said, suddenly terrified I’d gone too far.

“You’re not losing me,” she said. “You’re just… walking somewhere I can’t follow.”

Can’t, or won’t? Ethan whispered.

I shut my eyes, jaw clenched.

“Please be careful,” she said. “Not just with them. With you.”

My throat tightened. “You too,” I managed.

“Goodbye, Nathaniel.”

The line clicked.

The silence that followed wasn’t like the quiet after a TV interview, or after a blessing, or after a dream. It was heavier. It rang in my bones.

The mark on my arm throbbed once, hard, as if something had just tugged it from the other side and then let go.

Not Ethan.

Her.

For a second, I felt the absence as clearly as I once felt her touch—the warmth, the brief brush of light, the way her presence had settled over the mark like a soft hand on a wild animal.

Then it was gone.

The wing still glowed. The power still hummed. But the thread that had connected us—thin, unspoken, stretched between hospital fluorescent bulbs, my parents’ kitchen, and that phone call—had gone slack.

“Did I just… break it?” I whispered.

You unclenched, Ethan said. His voice filled the hollow she’d left without effort, like water rushing into a new shape. You stopped letting someone else sit with their fingers on your choices.

“That’s not what it feels like,” I muttered.

It will, he said. It always feels awful when you stop being someone’s savior or project. Especially hers. But look at your arm, Nathaniel.

I did.

The mark’s glow had changed. Not brighter. Not darker. Just… clearer. As if some faint overlay had lifted, leaving only the raw lines underneath.

“This doesn’t mean you chose me over her,” Ethan said calmly. It means you chose yourself over her expectations. That’s the first step toward choosing anything honestly.

“She wasn’t expecting anything,” I said automatically.

Everyone is, he countered. Your father expects obedience. Your bishop expects submission. The network expects performance. She expects… purity. That’s the prettiest leash of all.

I wanted to argue.

Instead, I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling until the plaster blurred.

Somewhere below my window, a woman laughed too loudly. A car radio blared a song about love that didn’t sound like any love I recognized.

The space where Faith’s presence had been felt raw and sore.

The mark pulsed again, slower now. Less like a wound. More like a heartbeat.

“Bonds don’t just disappear,” I said quietly. “Not the important ones.”

No, Ethan agreed. They don’t. But they do change. You cut one tonight. Not all the way. Just enough that she’ll stop trying to stand between you and what’s coming.

“And what is coming?” I asked.

His answer was almost gentle.

The part where you stop apologizing for existing, he said. And the part where the people with real power stop pretending they don’t believe in miracles.

I thought of the man in the hotel room, clutching his chest. The CEO who’d shaken my hand today with fingers that trembled. The way his assistant had slipped my dad a card with a private number written on the back.

I thought of Faith’s voice saying counterfeit. Of Dad’s voice saying Satan. Of my own voice saying I want this.

I rolled onto my side and stared at the phone.

I could call her back.

I could tell her I didn’t mean it. That I was scared. That I needed her.

Instead, I reached for the hotel notepad and pen.

My hand shook only a little as I drew the rune Ethan had taught me into the paper—the circle, the dividing line, the three descending strokes, the uneven feathers along the edge.

The mark on my forearm glowed in recognition.

“I’m not ready to step through,” I whispered.

The rune lay on the nightstand between the lamp and the phone, its lines neat and dark.

The mark warmed my skin in agreement.

When you are, Ethan murmured, you won’t be walking alone.

I turned off the light.

In the dark, with Faith’s absence aching and the city thrumming and Ethan’s presence coiled quiet and patient in the back of my mind, I finally understood why this chapter of my life would never feel like the ones before it.

Something had broken.

Not the power.

Not the mark.

The last soft tether to the girl who’d pulled me out of death and back into the light.

I missed her.

I chose this anyway.

The hotel room smelled like someone else’s life.

New carpet. Bleach. The faint tang of cigarette smoke baked into the drapes.

I lay on top of the covers in my clothes, staring at the ceiling.

Faith’s voice was gone.

That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up—to the extent that I’d slept at all. No soft echo of Are you sure? in the back of my mind. No gentle tug toward restraint. Just the mark, warm and steady, and Ethan, quiet as a held breath somewhere behind my thoughts.

You chose, he’d said before I finally crashed. Choices hurt. That doesn’t make them wrong.

The clock on the nightstand read 6:14 a.m. Too early and too late at the same time.

Dad knocked once and let himself in from the adjoining room. His hair was sticking up on one side. He had his church tie on already, even though it was a weekday. He’d been doing that a lot lately, like the extra layer of formality might impress God enough to keep up.

“Morning,” he said.

I pushed myself up on one elbow. “Is it?”

He didn’t answer that. Just nodded toward the TV. “They reran the segment three times overnight,” he said. “Phone at home’s been ringing off the hook, your mother says.” Something like pride flickered through his eyes, followed quickly by something like fear. “The network’s sending a car at ten. They want to ‘debrief.’”

“Debrief,” I repeated. “Like I’m a mission report.”

Dad forced a smile. “Like you’re… part of something big.”

He didn’t say miracle. He didn’t say God. Just something.

When he left to go pray—or pace, or both—I shuffled to the bathroom and flicked on the light.

For a second, I didn’t recognize the kid in the mirror.

The cheeks were filled out. The purple hollows under the eyes were gone. My skin looked… clear. Not just healthy. Luminous. My hair had grown in thicker and darker since the hospital, falling in stupidly perfect waves across my forehead. Even my jaw seemed sharper, like someone had gone in with a chisel while I wasn’t looking.

If Michelangelo had chiseled me out of marble, he probably would’ve added the glowing wing for effect.

The mark shimmered under my skin, gold drawing the feathered lines into focus. Every time my heart beat, light threaded through it like it was breathing with me.

I turned my arm, watching it catch the bathroom light.

“Is this what a blessing looks like,” I muttered, “or bait?”

The mark warmed, as if amused.

Both, Ethan said, his voice faint and fond and constant inside my head. Depending on who’s doing the looking.

The network car was a glossy black sedan that looked like it ate smaller cars for breakfast. The driver called Dad “sir” and called me “Mr. Gray,” which made me want to crawl out of my skin.

At the studio, everything was the same…but different.

We walked down the same hallways, the same posters of their biggest shows were still plastered on the walls, and the same receptionist with the same too-bright lipstick sat at the desk in the lobby. But the way people looked at me as we strolled past was definitely different. Yesterday I had been a curiosity. Today, the looks were… calculation. Heads turned. Conversations paused. One woman pressed a hand to her chest as I went by, whispering something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

The producer, Diane, met us in a conference room lined with wood paneling, shiny metal award plaques, and framed magazine covers. She wore the same fitted blazer as the day before, but she’d added a cross necklace like she thought the prop might help.

“Nathaniel!” she said, both hands out. “You were phenomenal.”

“I just stood there and tried not to sweat on camera,” I said. “You’re the one who cut to commercial breaks.”

She laughed like I’d made the funniest joke she’d heard all week. “People called in all night,” she said, turning to Dad as if giving a report. “We’ve never had switchboards light up like that. Testimonials, prayer requests, a pastor from Alabama wanting to fly you out for a revival tour…” She trailed off, eyes going bright. “We’re sitting on something enormous here.”

Dad’s mouth tightened at “revival tour,” but he didn’t say anything.

Diane glanced toward the door, then leaned in a little. “Speaking of enormous… there’s someone who’d like to meet you. Privately.”

My stomach did a small, traitorous flip. “Who?”

“A friend of the network,” she said. “He prefers discretion.” She paused. “You might recognize his name from the, uh… business section.”

Dad and I traded a glance.

“The business section,” he repeated carefully.

“C.G. Markham,” she said. “He owns five of the sponsors that bought ad time during your segment. He’s been fighting leukemia for two years. His doctors say—well.” She lifted her palms. “He watched last night. He…had his people reach out.” Her eyes flicked to my sleeve. “Inviting you to… meet with him.”

“‘Meet with him,’” I echoed. “That’s a polite way to put it.”

She hesitated. “He’s prepared to make a very generous contribution,” she added. “To your family, your church. Wherever you feel it’s needed. No cameras. No press. Just you, him, and his doctors to observe.”

My pulse stumbled.

A billionaire with leukemia.

I’d read his name in the paper before, connected with mergers and strikes and some scandal about factories overseas. He was one of those people whose money seemed less like numbers and more like the weather—ever-present, unavoidable, shaping everyone’s day whether they knew it or not.

He was also just a human being whose body was failing him.

I’d been that.

Empathy twisted with something uglier in my chest: the thrill that people like him were now calling people like me.

Dad spoke first. “Is this… official?” he asked. “Through the network?”

Diane spread her hands. “He had them call us because he saw you on our program. But the arrangement will be strictly between you and him. We’re just… facilitating.”

“Like missionaries setting up a house meeting,” I said dryly.

Dad shot me a look. Diane pretended not to hear.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” she said. “But he is very sick, and his plane’s already on the tarmac.”

The mark pulsed.

He’s suffering, Ethan murmured. You know what that feels like.

“I want to meet him,” I heard myself say.

Dad sucked in a breath. “Nathaniel—”

“I’m not promising anything,” I said quickly. “No cameras, no contracts. Just a meeting.” I turned to him. “If I can help and don’t even try, how am I supposed to live with that?”

It was an unfair question. I asked it anyway.

His shoulders slumped. “We’ll pray about it,” he said to Diane weakly.

You already are, Ethan said. This is what your prayers sound like now.

Markham’s suite was the kind of place I’d only ever seen in movies.

Top floor. Private elevator. Thick carpet that swallowed footsteps. Windows that turned the city into a visual masterpiece in every direction. There were fresh flowers everywhere—giant, white arrangements that smelled expensive and faintly like funerals.

His assistant met us at the door, all sharp angles and loud cologne.

“Mr. Gray,” he said, shaking my hand (not dad’s) like I was a visiting dignitary. “We’re honored.”

It was surreal.

We were led into a bedroom bigger than our living room at home. Machines hummed quietly along one wall—monitors, IV poles, a portable oxygen tank. A private nurse stood near the head of the bed, clipboard in hand, eyes flicking between us and the green blips on the screen.

On the bed, propped up on pillows, was C.G. Markham.

He was thinner than in the newspaper photos. Paler. His hair had thinned and gone more gray at the temples. But his eyes were sharp. Very sharp. They assessed me in one sweep that took in everything—my face, my age, the way I held myself, the sleeve over my forearm.

“So you’re the miracle boy,” he said. His voice was rough, but not weak.

“And you’re the billionaire,” I said before my brain could stop my mouth.

His assistant twitched. Markham barked a laugh that turned into a cough.

“I like him,” he said hoarsely. “Sit.”

I sat on the chair beside the bed. Dad hovered near the wall, hands in his pockets, trying to look like he wasn’t in over his head. Diane stayed near the door, pretending she was invisible.

Markham watched me for a long moment. “You believe in God, Nathaniel?” he asked.

The question shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did.

“I thought that was obvious,” I said.

He shrugged one bony shoulder. “Plenty of people in my position ‘believe’ when the numbers are in their favor.” His mouth curved slightly. “I’m in a bit of a deficit these days.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I didn’t. The machines beeped. The nurse scribbled something.

“I’m not asking you to heal me,” he said. “If that’s possible, wonderful. If not, the world keeps spinning. I’ve made my peace with that.” His eyes bored into mine. “What I am asking is to see if whatever’s inside you… moves when you touch me the way it did on that broadcast.”

“Mr. Markham,” Dad broke in, voice tight. “My son doesn’t perform tricks for money.”

“Good,” Markham said, never taking his eyes off me. “I’m not asking for tricks. I’m asking him to perform an act of mercy for a man who spent his life thinking money could buy him time.”

The silence stretched.

The mark throbbed under my sleeve.

“I don’t control it,” I said quietly. “It moves when it wants to.”

He nodded, as if that was exactly the answer he’d expected.

“Then let’s see what it wants,” he said.

The nurse stepped forward. “We’ll be monitoring vitals, blood pressure, EKG,” she murmured. “If anything… unusual happens, we’ll document.”

I swallowed. My mouth tasted like metal. And sugar.

Faith’s voice rose uninvited in the back of my mind: Every time heaven grants a gift, hell sends a counterfeit. Sometimes they look almost exactly the same.

The echo was duller now. Easier to push aside.

I glanced to Dad, then reached for Markham’s hand.

His skin was dry, paper-thin; the veins beneath it looked like faded ink. He gripped my fingers with surprising strength.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

Let it in, Ethan whispered.

The mark burst into flame.

Not literally. There was no fire. No light visible to anyone else. But inside me, heat roared down my arm, through my chest, into my gut. It felt like someone had cranked a faucet on full blast—and this time, I didn’t brace against it.

I leaned into it.

The world narrowed to three points: my hand, his hand, and the burning light between our bodies.

I saw things.

Not like a movie—no clear pictures or prophetic verses. Just impressions, sharp and fast. Boardrooms. Planes. A childhood version of Markham standing in front of a small, white church, holding his mother’s hand, face turned stubbornly away from the pastor. Then the vision shifted to paper contracts stacking like bricks. A hospital room buzzing with unspoken fear.

Underneath it all, a deep, dull ache. Bone marrow screaming quietly, over and over: wrong, wrong, wrong.

“God, please,” someone whispered.

I honestly wasn’t sure if it was me.

The power pushed harder.

It wanted. That was the only way to describe it. The yearning wanted to move, to change, to fix. And beneath that bright, overwhelming desire, something else coiled—cooler, darker. A shadow behind the light that savored the exchange.

I felt it draw from him. Not just the sickness. Not just the pain. Something else. A heaviness. A weight. It poured into me even as the illness seemed to drain out of him like water.

Markham gasped.

The monitors spiked.

“Nathaniel!” Dad shouted, but his voice sounded far away.

The world dissolved into red and gold.

For a heartbeat—or a hundred—I was somewhere else.

Black obsidian. A sky the color of old blood. Heat rising from the ground like a living thing. Far away, a fortress towering against the horizon, its spires stabbing up like broken teeth.

I stood on its spine.

Not fully. Not physically. Like my shadow had stepped there first and left my body scrambling to catch up. The air tasted like iron and cinnamon. The mark on my arm blazed bright enough that I felt it carving into my bones.

At the edge of my vision, something massive shifted—Malgore, circling around the Dod like a crown of scaled muscle and old scars.

And in front of me, just out of reach, Ethan watched.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

The look in his eyes said everything: See? You can reach us from there. You don’t need anyone’s permission.

Then the room snapped back into place.

I was on my knees beside the bed, one hand still locked around Markham’s, the other pressed to my chest. I was panting like I’d run a hundred miles.

The monitors had leveled out. The frantic beeps slowed to something easy, steady. The nurse’s eyes were huge.

“Oh my…” she breathed. “His numbers—look at his color—”

Markham’s cheeks were flushed.

His breathing was calm and steady.

He stared at me like he was trying to memorize my face and also decide whether to worship or fire me.

“I feel…” He swallowed, throat working. “I haven’t felt like this…” He laughed, short and stunned. “In years.”

Dad lurched forward. “Nathaniel, are you—?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I lied.

I wasn’t fine.

I was buzzing. Every nerve felt electrified. My mouth tasted like I’d bitten into a copper wire. My vision blurred at the edges, but not from weakness. From overload.

I had absorbed something as surely as I’d sucked something out.

I knew it.

The mark knew it.

How does it feel? Ethan’s voice slid through my mind. Not mocking. Curious. To pull a man back from the edge of death who’s been perched there on the precipice for years?

I didn’t answer.

Markham released my hand slowly, as if worried I might vanish if he moved too fast.

“You are…” He shook his head. “Whatever you are, you’ve just captured the attention of a lot of very powerful people, Nathaniel.”

“I thought they were already watching,” I said, trying to steady my breathing.

He smiled faintly. “Not like this.”

Back at the hotel, Dad was quiet.

Too quiet.

I half-expected a lecture. Or a prayer. Or the “This is getting out of hand, son” speech. Instead, he sat on the edge of his bed in the adjoining room, just staring at his hands.

“Dad?” I said.

He startled. “Hm?”

“Are you okay?”

He let out a breath that sounded like he had been holding it in since Utah. “You nearly collapsed,” he said. “In there.”

“You saw how fast I bounced back,” I said. “Perks of the job.”

He didn’t smile.

“That man’s assistant handed me an envelope on the way out,” he said instead. “It’s… a lot of money. More than I make in ten years.” He rubbed his forehead. “He called it gratitude. He also called it ‘the beginning of a fruitful relationship.’”

I thought of the way Markham had looked at me as we left—like an asset that had finally come online.

“Did you take it?” I asked.

Dad’s jaw worked. “We’ll tithe,” he said automatically, as if that settled it. “We’ll… counsel with the bishop. We’ll use it to pay your medical bills. Help others.” His voice got rough. “I don’t know what the right thing is anymore, Nathaniel. I thought I did. I thought the lines were clear. The gospel. The power of the priesthood. Being faithful and dedicated. But now…” He gestured vaguely toward my arm. “Now I watch my son heal people in a TV studio and a billionaire’s bedroom while the Church warns us to keep quiet.”

For a moment, I saw him clearly—not as the immovable spiritual rock I’d grown up believing he was, but as a man standing in two different, shifting worlds, trying not to tear in half.

I didn’t know how to help him.

I didn’t even know how to help myself.

“I’m going to shower,” I said.

He nodded without looking up.

In the bathroom, I turned the hot water on full blast and leaned on the sink.

My hands were still trembling.

I grabbed a tissue to wipe my nose and pulled it back, streaked with red.

Great. Nosebleed.

I tipped my head forward, pinching the bridge of my nose like the school nurse had taught us. Blood dripped onto the white porcelain.

It didn’t look like normal blood.

It was red, yes. But laced through the red were faint, shimmering threads of gold, thin as spider silk. When the drops hit the sink, they didn’t splatter—they clung, stretching thickly before breaking.

My stomach flipped.

I dug under the sink until I found one of those cheap hotel razors. With my free hand, I nicked the side of my finger. The sting barely registered.

A dark bead welled up.

Again, the same thing—red shot through with luminous gold, like someone had stirred sunlight into it and hoped no one would notice.

“Okay,” I whispered. “That’s… new.”

The mark on my arm pulsed in response, like it was laughing quietly.

Blood remembers, Ethan had said once. Light can be coaxed. Blood remembers.

“Remembers what?” I muttered. “Who it belongs to?”

I watched a thin trickle swirl down the drain, red and gold twisting together into something too beautiful and too wrong.

This was Faith’s legacy, too.

Her touch had sparked this. Her bloodline. Her angelic gift. Whatever you wanted to call it. Heaven had marked me, and hell had… manipulated.

Now my veins carried both the signature and the contract.

I turned on the faucet and watched the water dilute everything into pink.

The mark warmed.

You’re changing, Ethan said, not unkindly. Your body is catching up to what your soul agreed to when you climbed out of that hospital bed.

“I didn’t agree to anything,” I snapped.

You said yes every time you laid your hands on someone and let it move, he said softly. Every time you chose power over fear. That’s all a contract is, Nathaniel—repeated consent with benefits.

I wanted to throw the razor, the tissue, the whole sink through the window.

Instead, I rinsed my finger until it stopped bleeding and pressed a tissue to my nose.

When I finally looked up, my reflection stared back—clear-eyed, flushed, hair drying in waves around my face. If you didn’t know better, you’d think I was just a healthy kid who’d had a long day.

I rolled my sleeve up.

The wing glowed softly, its lines even more defined now, feather tips reaching just past the bend of my elbow.

“Blood and shadow,” I said under my breath. “That’s what you are, isn’t it?”

The mark didn’t answer.

It didn’t have to.

I turned off the light and stepped back into the bedroom, where Dad sat with the envelope in his lap, the city sprawled out beyond the glass, and the phone on the nightstand waiting for calls I’d asked Faith not to make.

For a moment, I wanted her more than I wanted the power, the money, the cameras.

The moment passed.

Outside, the world kept glowing, refusing to go dark.

The letter came in the morning mail, which felt almost rude.

I was expecting a phone call—some carefully worded invitation delivered through a receptionist’s bright smile. Instead, it was just… there. Sitting in the middle of the kitchen table between the Raisin Bran and the jar of peanut butter.

Heavy cream envelope. My name handwritten in black ink that somehow managed to look both expensive and exhausted.

Nathaniel Gray

c/o John & Marilyn Gray

No return address. No logo. Just a faint emboss on the back flap: a tiny, abstract mark that could have been a crown, or a stylized M, or teeth.

Dad picked it up before I could.

“Who’s this from?” he murmured, fingers tracing the emboss.

The mark on my arm warmed before my brain caught up.

“Probably the network,” I said. “Or one of the doctors.”

He slid his thumb under the flap and opened it as if it might explode. A single sheet slid out—thick, smooth paper with the same logo at the top.

He scanned it, back straightening, mouth tightening, eyes going wide and then narrow in the space of one breath.

“What?” Mom asked, wiping her hands and coming closer. “Is it another invitation? Another… revival? I told Bishop Carlsen we can’t—”

“It’s not from a church,” Dad said. His voice had that careful, Sunday tone. “It’s from… Markham.”

The billionaire.

My heart did that weird double-step it had started doing lately whenever the man’s name came up—half dread, half adrenaline.

“What does he want?” I asked. “Round two?”

Dad cleared his throat and began to read aloud, the way he read scripture.

Dear Nathaniel,



Thank you seems insufficient as words go, but I will use it anyway. You bought me time. I intend not to waste it.

I’d like to propose something that could benefit us both—and perhaps, if we’re very careful, benefit a great many others as well. I’d like to establish a private foundation whose sole purpose will be to shield your family, manage attention, and ensure that your…

—gift—

is used in ways that are sustainable, safe, and as far from carnival barkers and television charlatans as possible.

If you’re willing, I’d like to fund a program: discreet, invitation-only, no cameras. Patients screened by a team of physicians and ethicists. You and your parents will never have to worry about invoices or balance statements. Your church will never see a fundraising letter that mentions your name without your consent.

In practical terms, we take care of all the financials, provide privacy, logistics, legal protection, and cover stories. You provide… whatever it is you provided to me.

Enclosed, you will find a draft agreement. Nothing is binding until you’ve had counsel look it over. Bring whoever you trust.

I won’t pretend this is purely altruistic. I’m a businessman. I prefer to be honest about that. But there are some things money cannot buy—and what you did, Nathaniel, sits very near that line. I’d rather stand on the right side of it, if you’ll let me.

With respect,

C. G. Markham

Dad held the page like it might bite.

Mom leaned over his shoulder, reading silently. I watched her eyes move. Her fingers tightened on his arm.

“What kind of program?” she asked. “Like… experiments?”

Dad flipped to the second page. Legal language. Paragraphs dense as concrete.

“It’s more like…” He squinted. “Arranged healings. Private visits. Travel. All of our expenses paid.” His voice stumbled on the number. “They’d put money in a trust in Nathaniel’s name. And one for us. And one for… charity. All anonymous. He calls it… ‘ethical insulation.’”

Mom made a face. “That sounds like something you spray in an attic.”

“It sounds like protection,” Dad said quietly. “From the crowds. From the news vans. From people showing up on the lawn at midnight.” His eyes flicked up to me. “From this turning into a circus.”

The mark pulsed.

Protection. Control. Boundaries.

Those were the words I’d been begging for when Sister Nelson called. When Caleb’s mother cried. When snakes-in-suits preachers wrote letters in looping ink about destiny and end-times and booking me for three-night revivals.

Markham wasn’t talking about tents or altar calls.

He was talking about conference rooms and NDAs and ethics boards and private jets.

The kind of circus that smelled like leather and cologne instead of sweat and sawdust.

“We don’t have to answer right away,” Mom said quickly. “We can pray about it. We can talk to the bishop. Maybe even the stake president. They’ll know—”

“They’re the ones who told us to shut all of this down,” Dad snapped.

The kitchen went very still.

He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. “I’m sorry. But the Lord made me the patriarch of our family. The only one qualified to receive personal revelation about what’s best for us.” His fingers smoothed the edge of the paper. “I lay awake at night thinking about all those people outside, Marilyn. The letters. The messages on our answering machine. The ones we can’t even answer. And then I think about this.”

He tapped the page.

“A way to help people without…all the invasion.” His free hand swept toward the front of the house, where the blinds were closed, and the world sat waiting on the other side. “Without them camping on our lawn. Without Nathaniel collapsing in somebody’s living room because they refused to take no for an answer.”

Mom’s eyes filled. “You said he was brought to his knees in that man’s hotel room,” she whispered. “I thought—” She swallowed. “I thought we were going to lose him all over again.”

“You won’t,” I said, before I could stop myself.

They both looked at me.

I wasn’t sure if I believed my own words. But I said them anyway.

“Let me see the agreement,” I said.

Dad hesitated, then handed it over.

I read.

At first, it was all the usual legal stuff—liability, confidentiality, jurisdiction. There was a clause about medical supervision. A clause about travel. A clause about “reasonable limitations of availability to protect the mental and physical well-being of the Subject.”

The Subject. That was me.

There were numbers. Big ones. Each zero made my stomach twist harder.

Buried halfway down the second page was the part that made the mark on my arm flare hot enough I had to fight the urge to scratch it.

The Foundation shall coordinate and control all access to Nathaniel Gray for the purposes of observation, treatment, or consultation related to his anomalous healing phenomena. All public narratives, interviews, and written or recorded materials involving said phenomena shall require prior written approval.

Translation: if I signed, I’d be theirs.

Not property, exactly. But… managed. Curated. Packaged.

Wrapped in velvet, like a very special kind of weapon.

This is the part where they put the leash on, Ethan murmured, somewhere at the edge of my thoughts. His tone wasn’t mocking. Just… recognizing.

I set the papers down and looked at my parents.

“What do you think?” Dad asked.

Once, that question would’ve come with the answer baked in. Once, he would’ve said, “I’ve prayed about it, and…” and whatever came after would have been the path we took.

Now he was actually asking.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that if I say no, people still find me. They still show up. They still knock on the door at midnight with their kids and their letters and their hope.” I swallowed. The mark throbbed, remembering every touch. Every rush. “And if I say yes… there’s at least a chance someone sane will be standing between me and the stampede.”

Mom wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Is that how it feels?” she whispered. “Like a stampede?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

Dad sat back, rubbing his jaw. “I hate the idea of strangers controlling access to my son.”

“Then you go with me,” I said. The thought came as I spoke it. “You be in the room. Every time. Unless I say otherwise. You read every contract. You make them look you in the eye when they talk about me like I’m… whatever they think I am.”

His eyes widened.

Mom’s, too.

“I’m not even sixteen yet,” I said. “I can’t drive legally after dark without you in the car. I’m not signing anything without you sitting next to me.”

Dad’s hand trembled.

“You think this is… God’s will?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Once, that would have been my first question too.

Now, all I could think about was a Primary lesson I’d half-slept through once. The teacher had stuck felt cutouts of Jesus and Satan on a green board and told us about the war in heaven—about two plans. One where nobody could fail. One where everyone could. We’d all supposedly cheered for the right to choose and not be forced into goodness.

Free agency. The great prize.

They never told us what it would feel like when both choices came wrapped in someone else’s idea of salvation.

“I think God gave us agency,” I said carefully. “And I think heaven and hell are both very interested in what we do with it.”

Dad stared at me for a long time.

Then, slowly, he nodded.

“We’ll pray,” he said. “Together. Then we’ll go see what their lawyers have to say.”

The law office was on the fifteenth floor of a downtown building made almost entirely of glass.

The elevator ride up felt like ascending into another atmosphere. The receptionist had red nails, red lipstick, and a phone voice that could probably sell anything to anyone. She offered us coffee we didn’t drink and water we didn’t touch.

Markham didn’t come in person.

He was “traveling,” his assistant said. “But he sends his regards.” The assistant said regards the way normal people say condolences.

Our lawyer—Brother Thompson from our ward, who usually handled wills and the occasional divorce—looked like someone had dropped him onto a different planet. His tie was crooked. His glasses fogged when he stepped into the conference room.

He read every line of the agreement twice.

“This is…” He scratched his balding head. “Well-written. Aggressively fair. They’re giving up a lot of leverage by letting you retain veto power over public appearances. I’ve seen record labels that aren’t this generous.”

Generous.

That word tasted strange in my mouth.

“And the fine print?” Dad asked.

Thompson shrugged. “They get exclusivity. No other networks. No other foundations. Anyone who wants access to your… services… goes through them. They’ll own the story. But not you. Legally, anyway.” He chewed his lip. “Morally? Spiritually? That’s between you and God.”

Between me and God.

And Ethan. And Valdis. And Faith. And whoever had whispered soon at the bottom of my ribcage the other night.

“You don’t have to do this,” Mom whispered, touching my arm.

The mark pulsed under her fingers, gold rising to meet the warmth of her hand. For a second, I could almost feel Faith’s touch layered over hers—two versions of the same blessing, one remembered, one present.

I thought about the golden threads in my blood.

About the way Markham had breathed after I touched him.

About the letters piled in a box under my bed—pleas I would never answer. About the crowds outside the house who would never quit until someone bigger than them told them no.

“Somebody is going to own this narrative,” I said quietly. “If I stay home and pretend it’s not happening, the church will spin it one way. The news will spin it another. The preachers with tent revivals will somehow get my name on their flyers even if I’m not there.”

I looked at the paper.

“At least this way, I get to be in the room when the story gets told.”

Dad’s eyes shone with something that looked like a mix of fear and reluctant respect.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I’m deciding anyway.”

That felt strangely honest.

Brother Thompson slid a pen across the table.

No one forced it into my hand.

I picked it up. The weight of it was nothing. The weight of what it meant sat on the table between us like a third parent.

The agreement had signature lines for my parents, for me, and for the foundation.

I signed my name where they’d typed it out:

Nathaniel Jonathan Gray

Ironic they’d used my full name. I was named after my dad, John. But the traditional Hebrew meaning, “God has given,” had taken on a whole new significance in the weeks since my healing.

The ink looked ordinary on the paper. My hand did not shake.

As I lifted the pen, something inside my chest shifted—not breaking, not snapping, just… clicking. Like a gear finding its groove.

There it is, Ethan said softly, somewhere above the city and below my skin. Your first real yes.

I handed the pen to Dad.

He hesitated a fraction of a second longer than I had.

Then he signed.

On the way out of the building, we stopped at the observation deck—a fancy name for a balcony with a good view.

The city spread out in every direction. Rooftops. Streets. Ant trails of cars. Tiny people going about tiny lives, unaware that somewhere fifteen floors up, a boy they’d seen on TV had just agreed to become… something.

“Look at that,” Dad said quietly. “All those people. All that need.”

I leaned on the rail, the breeze tugging at my hair.

“Do you think we’re supposed to fix it?” I asked.

He let out a soft laugh. “No.” A pause. “Do you?”

The mark warmed.

Once, I would have said no without thinking.

Now, I said, “I think I’m supposed to touch what’s in front of me. Whatever that ends up being.”

“And if what’s in front of you,” he said carefully, “is a billionaire and a boardroom instead of Sister Nelson and a hospital bed?”

“Then I’ll try not to forget where I came from,” I said.

He was quiet a long time.

“I’ll try not to let you,” he said finally.

He squeezed my shoulder, then went inside to find Mom.

I stayed.

The glass reflected my face back at me—healthy, beautiful in a way that still startled me when I caught it unexpectedly. My hair moved in the wind. My eyes looked older than they had any right to.

I rolled my sleeve up.

The mark glowed softly, feather-lines clear and bright, like someone had gone over them with a steady hand.

“Okay,” I said to it. To myself. To whoever was listening. “You wanted a plan. You’ve got one now.”

Beneath my feet, fifteen floors of concrete and steel and office wiring thrummed with power. Above my head, a blue sky that had watched every deal men had ever made pretended it wasn’t interested.

Inside my bones, two currents moved.

One warm and sharp and bright—Faith’s legacy, Heaven’s claim.

One cool and deep and coiled—Ethan’s world, Valdis’s hunger, the dark that had learned to speak softly instead of scream.

They didn’t cancel each other out.

They learned, slowly, how to share the same bloodstream.

We’re not made of light or dark, Faith had said once. We’re made of choices.

Today, I’d made one.

Not the last. Probably not the worst. But the first one I couldn’t blame on anyone else.

The wind rose, carrying the faint smell of exhaust and hot asphalt and something sweet from a bakery down the street.

For a second—just a second—I thought I heard something under it.

Not Ethan’s voice. Not Faith’s. Not my father’s.

Just a word. No direction. No accent.

Soon.

My skin prickled.

I didn’t know if it was a warning or an invitation.

Maybe both.

I tugged my sleeve down over the glowing wing, turned away from the edge, and went back inside to meet the people who thought they knew what they’d just bought.

The elevator doors slid shut with a soft hiss.

The mark pulsed once, steady as a clock.

Soon.

THE END

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