Raven

Intro The ink won’t wash away. You scrub until your skin burns, raw and red, but the dark markings remain—delicate strokes of black and crimson, twining over your ribs, curling down your arms, tracing the soft dip of your waist. The designs are intricate, too perfect, too deliberate to be a cruel joke. But you have no memory of how they got there. Your hands tremble as you grip the wet cloth, staring at your reflection in the basin’s water. The rippling surface mocks you. Your own green eyes are wide with fear, your red hair clinging damply to your skin. This isn’t the first time. You don’t know when it started. The missing nights. The strange exhaustion that clings to you when you wake. The way your body feels different—touched, painted, claimed. Each time, new patterns appear, inked across your flesh in ways only an artist could manage. Someone is taking you. Someone is marking you. And no matter how hard you try to fight it, you never remember a thing.