Through The Ashes

"Mark of The Revenant"

Something stopped her.

Her body had refused to obey, a foreign sensation running through her veins—warm, like molten metal, alive with energy. She could feel it pulse in her wrists, behind her eyes, in the place where she had been bitten. The virus, she had thought.

But it wasn't the same as what she had seen in others. She wasn't losing her mind. She wasn't slipping into madness or bloodlust. The heat in her veins didn't burn. It coursed through her like a second heartbeat, robust and powerful. And it was whispering to her. Urging her to stop.

Jorn had lowered the gun, her chest heaving with the weight of it all. The virus... it hadn't consumed her like she expected. Instead, it was already changing her.

The first few days, dark veins started to show around different areas of her body. At first, she thought it was the sign of the virus taking hold—the early stages of becoming one of them. But the black veins didn't spread like she had expected.

By the end of the week, her senses had been the next thing to alter. Her vision sharpened to a clarity that was almost unnatural. She could see every detail, every movement in the distance as clearly as if it were right in front of her. She could hear the faintest sounds—the rustle of leaves miles away, the whisper of wind shifting through the trees, even the quiet stirrings of life hidden beneath.

Then there was her sense of the Rot.

They had always been a sore presence in the world, a constant menace creeping in the shadows. But now, she could feel them. Not just hear them or see them—but sense their existence like a vibration in the air, a pulse that echoed in her very bones.

She could distinguish their movements, and track them even when they were out of sight—pinging them like a radar. She knew when they were near and when they were far, could almost smell the decay that clung to their skin.

It was overwhelming at first—the sensory overload, the intensity of it all. But Jorn adapted quickly. She had always been a hunter, always in tune with her surroundings. Now, it felt like the virus had enhanced those instincts, turning her into something more precise, more lethal.

Jorn spent days in the shadows, testing her abilities, pushing her new limits. The Rot no longer posed the same threat. Where once she had feared their numbers, now she felt almost... superior.

She could track them before they even knew she was there, pick them off silently one by one without them ever realizing. Her reflexes were sharper, her movements quicker. She no longer had to rely on her guns alone—her body itself was a weapon.

And then there was the camp.

From her vantage point high up of an old building, she could see it—her old junkyard home in the distance.

She had watched it for days, her eyes scanning the familiar figures moving between the tents and makeshift shelters.

She had seen Mara more than once, standing guard near the entrance, patrolling with the others, her form unmistakable against the twilight.

Jorn had wanted to go to her. The urge had been so strong, so visceral. But she had held herself back, hidden in the shadows, watching from afar.

She wasn't the same anymore.

And the virus, whatever it had done to her, had made her dangerous. She couldn't risk getting close—not yet. The black veins on her skin—they were constant reminders that she wasn't human anymore.

And her eyes.

Her eyes were once dark brown, teetering black. They changed too. A faded, silvery grey that reminded Jorn of the few Rotted that had gone blind. Except she wasn't.