Page 11 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

The Pale Man

I don’t remember how I even got back home. One second, I’m in his fortress still smoldering and shaking. Next second, I’m in my apartment—door locked, lights off, and my body aching. The city is still alive out there, but inside this apartment everything suddenly feels too silent and still.

I strip out of the shirt I didn’t realize I was still wearing—his shirt—and throw it in the sink like it’s laced with something toxic. Maybe it is, maybe I am.

I open a bottle of whiskey with trembling hands and drink straight from it.

The burn barely registers. My skin feels too tight.

Like I can’t settle inside it. I move around the apartment, trying to convince myself everything’s fine.

The walls are the same, the air is the same, but something has shifted.

I can feel it .

I sit on the edge of the bed now and stare at the notebook that has become my new sketchbook.

The lamp flickers beside me and I can hear the faucet dripping when it wasn’t before.

I try to ground myself, but my thoughts keep screaming in the relative silence.

I keep repeating it over and over again…

“You set this fire, Vescari,” I whisper aloud, voice raw. “But if I burn, I’m taking you with me.” The words taste like ash as they exit my mouth.

I open the sketchbook with shaking fingers.

No fire this time. No rage. Just curiosity leading to compulsion.

I flip through the pages slowly until my hands hesitate on a page I once again don’t remember drawing.

There it is again, the same symbol I couldn’t stop sketching for days.

The one that feels like a wound stitched into the paper.

I trace it with one fingertip and it hums under my skin as if it’s alive.

My breath hitches as I snap the book shut and stand, pacing, trying to anchor myself to the mundane.

I wash a glass, fold a blanket, and recheck the locks. Nothing is helping to shake this feeling that something is wrong. I glance at the door because something is wrong. I know it.

A knock of three short raps causing me to freeze.

No one ever knocks this late. I wait but it’s only silence now.

I inch forward,pressing my ear to the solid door, and wishing it had a peephole.

Nothing. My heart races, and I back away slowly.

Knock. Knock. Two this time. Sharper. Like they know I’m listening and waiting for me to invite them in or some shit.

I spin toward the balcony, heart pounding. Nothing but shadows and headlights down below. The city keeps moving, unaware that something here has shifted. “It’s fine,” I whisper. “You’re just paranoid. You’re just…”

Out of nowhere, the TV clicks on. Static crackling across the screen like the universe is trying to tune itself until it finally cuts to the live news station.

“…mystery outbreak reported in three major cities…” The camera shakes.

A female reporter in a hazmat suit tries to speak clearly over the sound of sirens and confusion.

People are being loaded into ambulances behind her.

Panic blooms in the background like mold.

She stumbles over the next line. “Symptoms appear sudden…neurological, possibly sy stemic…patients are reporting hallucinations, respiratory distress, and…”

The screen jitters again. I take a step forward, unconsciously.

Like I’m being pulled behind her through the chaos, until I notice someone walks across the frame.

Tall. Pale. Clean Suit. Every movement is precise, too precise.

The camera wobbles again. A man screams. An EMT drops something.

The footage swings and he turns, facing the camera dead in the center.

His eyes shift to the color of glacier melt. Skin like marble. Hair almost white with no expression written on his face. It’s like he’s looking right at me. I stagger back a step.

The image blurs and glitches until it’s frozen.

The TV turns black. “No Signal” written across the screen.

I stand there, breathing hard with clenched fists.

Something cold crawls under my skin. I move toward the window; crack it open for air.

The city’s still out there but it feels farther away than it did five minutes ago.

My phone vibrates. There’s no caller ID, no notifications, just pulse like vibrations .

Another fucking knock at the door, sounding the same as before. “Fuck this,” I whisper to the room. I don’t go to the door this time.

I’m about to grab a knife from the kitchen when something behind me creaks from the balcony.

The sound is metallic, soft, but deliberate, like the sound of weight on a railing.

I grab the closest thing with heft, an empty wine bottle, and hold it like a weapon.

The room’s quiet. Too quiet. Then I see him.

Through the sheer curtain, framed in pale city light and shadow, a man stands on my fucking balcony.

Hands clasped behind his back. Just standing there patiently.

“Fuck no,” I whisper. “Nope. Not tonight.” I can’t look away.

His face, it’s the same one from the news, the same one I’ve sketched in the margins without knowing.

Glacier eyes. Silver-blonde hair, cut short.

Wire-rimmed glasses that do nothing to soften the chill of him.

He looks like a man born of frost and lab notes.

Then he moves, slowly. He raises a single hand and places it against the glass, claiming the space.

I step forward when the curtain sways and I realize the balcony door is unlocked.

I know I didn’t leave it that way. I’m about to scream and take off running when the lights suddenly flicker.

Not once, but twice until they go out and all that's left is complete darkness.

I grab my phone. Turn on the flashlight and point it at the glass. He’s gone.

“No. No. No,” I say, spinning around because he’s now inside, standing between me and the exit. “Lux,” he says calmly. I throw the bottle and he catches it like physics bend to him out of respect. “That’s not necessary,” he murmurs.

“Get the fuck out.”

“You opened the door.”

“No, I didn’t…”

“The first one,” he says, stepping closer. “The real one.” His voice isn’t threatening. It’s worse. It’s clinical. Dissecting.

He walks the room like he’s taking notes and I’m a lab rat trying to bite the hand with the clipboard. “Who the hell are you?”

“You already know.”

“Guess again, Frostbite.” That gets a flicker of something. A curve of his lips. Almost a smile. He stops just in front of me. The movement feels invasive. He then raises one gloved hand and peels the leather from his fingers.

“This will be uncomfortable,” he says, and touches my hand. Just the tips of his fingers against mine. The cold hits first. It feels deep, almost cellular. My body stiffens and my vision blurs, until it collapses.

FLASH.

A hallway. Stark white walls, sterile and suffocating. The fluorescent lights overhead buzz with a constant, stuttering flicker, like they're trying to blink something away. The air hums with that too-clean chemical tang that burns the inside of your nose.

Then I see her, a younger version of me, too small, and too pale lying still in a narrow hospital bed.

Tubes snake from both arms, feeding into separate machines that hiss and click like they're alive. Her. Me? My chest rises and falls too slow, too careful. A steady beeping cuts through the silence, each one a tiny metronome counting down to something I don’t want to know.

The walls feel like they're closing in…watching. I can't move. I’m not sure why I’m here but it looks like I’m dy ing and yet there’s an eerie smile that remains on my face. Someone leans over me and whispers a single word.

FLASH.

I gasp and stumble back right into the arms of this strange man who just showed up uninvited. He catches me with steady, almost gentle, hands. I scream while pushing myself out of his arms and off his body. “What the fuck was that? What did I just see?” He straightens his suit jacket, unfazed.

“A memory. Or marker.”

“You’re insane.”

“No,” he says. “I’m constant.”

“Get out of my apartment.”

“Of course.” He walks to the balcony, opens the door, but before stepping out, he looks back. “You were not dying in the vision, Lux.” His eyes still locked on mine, cold but certain. “You were evolving.” Then he’s gone.

The door’s still wide open. The wind sneaks around the frame, cold and sharp. Grabbing it with numb fingers, I slam it shut and lock it, before doubling back and wedging a chair under the handle for good measure. Because that’ll stop whatever the fuck he is .

My heart won’t slow down. I drag myself to the kitchen and splash water on my face.

It doesn’t help. You were not dying. His words echo in my head like they belong there.

Like they always have. I glance at my hand, the spot where he touched me still tingles.

It’s not cold anymore but something about it feels wrong. It is wrong in a way I cannot shake.

I move through the apartment like I’m underwater. My sketchbook-style notebook is on the bed, open to a blank page, though I have no recollection of leaving it that way. I sit. Stare at it. Then, slowly, like something inside me is being dragged forward by a string I can’t see, I start to draw.

Lines flow before I know what they’re becoming.

A circle. A fracture. A line down the center.

A branching spiral. The hint of rot curling through beauty.

It’s a symbol…new, precise. Not Riven’s.

This one is different. Sleeker. Sharper.

It feels like it’s been sitting in me all along, waiting for the right moment to surface.

I don’t remember learning it, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing.

Regardless of whether I remember where it came fr om, my hand knows the shape instinctively, like muscle memory.

When I finish, I stare at the page, breathing hard. “What the fuck is happening to me?” The symbol stares back. Silent.