The mark did not appear immediately.
That was what unsettled him most.
He moved away from the broken stillness and walked for a time without incident. The land returned its usual responses—wind tugging at grass, insects resuming their uneven rhythm, stone answering footfall with familiar resistance.
Nothing followed.
Nothing pursued.
His body loosened a fraction, not into comfort, but into routine. The Blood Sigil cooled to its baseline warmth, observant and quiet.
He reached a shallow descent where rain had cut a narrow groove through the soil. Crossing it required either a longer path around or a careful step across the gap. The jump was short. Manageable.
He hesitated.
Not from fear.
From calculation.
The longer path would cost time and energy. The direct step carried a small risk—slip, twist, scrape. Neither option felt correct. Both felt acceptable.
He chose the step.
His foot landed slightly off-center. The soil crumbled, just enough. His weight shifted too late.
He fell—not hard, not far—but wrong.
His knee struck first, then his palm. The impact drove breath from his chest in a sharp, involuntary release. Pain arrived clean and immediate, unfiltered by warning.
The Blood Sigil warmed—after.
It stabilized him as he rolled to his side, reducing the secondary damage, slowing the spike of pain without erasing it.
He lay still, counting breaths.
This time, he did not wait for the world to finish reacting.
He sat up and examined the damage.
The scrape along his palm had reopened, dirt pressed into the wound. His knee bled lightly, the skin split in a thin line that stung with every movement. Nothing severe. Nothing urgent.
But visible.
He cleaned the wounds as best he could with water from his flask, wincing as grit loosened. The sting sharpened, then settled into a dull insistence.
A mark.
Not symbolic.
Physical.
He bound his knee with a strip torn from his sleeve, testing his weight carefully before standing. The joint held, but movement now came with a reminder—each step registering the choice that had led here.
He continued on, slower.
As the hours passed, he noticed the difference the injury made. Small adjustments took longer. Descents required planning. The world did not accommodate him; it waited.
By afternoon, he reached a ridge overlooking a scatter of paths below—human paths, worn by repeated passage. People moved there in ones and twos, distant but distinct.
He stopped, instinctively gauging how visible he was from below.
The Blood Sigil remained neutral.
He realized then that the injury had changed something fundamental.
Before, mistakes were instructional.
Now, they were social.
If he moved poorly, someone might see. If he limped, someone might notice. The mark on his body extended outward, shaping how others would read him.
He adjusted his route, choosing cover where possible, not to hide the injury, but to manage its exposure.
As he descended, a voice carried up from the paths—laughter, casual, unguarded. It cut through his focus, sharp and human.
He misstepped again.
This time, he caught himself.
Not because the Blood Sigil intervened.
Because he had learned.
He paused, steadying his breath, letting the pain anchor him rather than distract.
The mark was doing its work.
By the time he reached the lower ground, the sky had begun to dim. He found a place to rest where stone and brush broke sightlines naturally. He sat and removed the binding to check his knee.
The blood had slowed. The cut would scar.
That knowledge did not trouble him.
Scars were records.
As evening settled, he felt the weight behind his sternum shift—subtle, familiar. The presence of his name pressed forward, closer than before, but still unsaid.
He understood why.
The name would not come from survival.
It would come from consequence.
He rewrapped the wound and stood, careful, deliberate, carrying forward with him the first mark he had chosen—
and the understanding that some choices did not end when the pain did.