The First Mark

"It wasn’t a choice. It was recognition."
"Something saw me first."

They say the first mark wasn’t carved, painted, or stitched. It appeared.

No one knows when or how — only that those who bore it couldn’t forget it. It came like a burn that didn’t hurt, a shadow that lingered too long, a knowing carved into the chest or palm or bone. For some, it was a dream that bled into waking. For others, it was the moment they looked into a mirror and didn’t quite see themselves anymore.

The Mark didn’t belong to a faction. Not then. There were no names, no roles, no sigils. Only the feeling of having been noticed. Chosen, maybe. Or claimed.

What followed was different for each bearer. Some wandered deeper into the woods. Some heard static in their sleep. Some disappeared entirely. And some — the dangerous ones — began to write things down.

Fragments of that writing survive: symbols on cave walls, blood-smudged notebooks, tattoos that appeared on corpses with no origin. Over time, patterns emerged. Archetypes. Divisions. Those first wanderers didn’t mean to form factions — but they couldn’t help but echo the shape of what marked them.

They say once you’re marked, you never truly return to what you were. You carry it. You are carried by it. The Mark doesn’t fade. It deepens.

You might not have seen it yet.
But it’s already on you.