Capricorn didn't move.
Not when Aries whispered his name.
Not when the priest began to stammer prayers half-snatched from holy scrolls.
He simply stared.
That harbinger mark no, that wound wasn't a warning. It was a memory. A prophecy branded into stone before mortals learned fire.
And now it was here. In Quorva.
On his mission.
"Cap," Aries said again, quieter. "You know what that thing is."
He nodded, barely.
"Then what the hell is it?"
Capricorn didn't answer. He stepped forward, sudden sharp and slammed his fist into the mark.
The wall shattered. Symbol and all, consumed in a violent, angular collapse of Soel-seared debris.
Dust rained down.
The priest stumbled back.
Aries flinched.
Capricorn stood in the fallout, hand still raised, eyes shadowed in the swirl.
"No one can see that symbol," he said. Each word landed like a decree. "It would unravel what little control these people have left."
Aries stared. "But why? What was it?"
"It's not a god's mark. Not even the Apostles'. This… belongs to them."
The priest paled. His hand moved defensively, as if the very thought might attack him.
Capricorn lowered his hand, slow. "They follow a traitor god," he said, his voice laced with iron and something colder. "But not even he commands them."
"They're not from now," Capricorn went on. "They come from before. Before the Soel system was bent into chains. Before the gods ruled by names."
He turned to Aries, and for a moment, the storm inside him cracked.
"They don't kill for belief. Or war. Or balance."
A pause. A breath.
"They are the god-killers.".
Silence wrapped them like a shroud.
They weren't supposed to be unsealed.
But that mark didn't lie.
And if it had returned
So had they.
Then
A flash in his mind. Not divine. Not memory. Instinct.
Golden hair falling like firelight, wild and untamed.
She stood above him — robes torn, blood on her knuckles, eyes calm.
He lay on the stone floor, breath ragged, surrounded by robed figures chanting her name.
Her name.
He remembered the way she never looked at him.
Only past him.
Like he was beneath even her memory.
Now, in the present, Capricorn's jaw tightened.
"Why now?" he muttered.
"After all these years… why the hell am I thinking about her?"
he paused for a second remembering the girl in the alley
"no it can't be"
In the alley. The stillness. Her posture.
Capricorn snapped his gaze toward the direction they'd first seen her.
"I need to go back," he said. "To the alley."
Aries squinted. "That girl?"
He didn't wait.
His boots hit stone hard, leaping to the rooftops again—sprinting across broken spires like a storm dressed in judgment.
The city bent beneath him, wind screaming louder now, drawn to the mark like prey to flame.
Then—
He reached the alley.
Where the girl had knelt.
But the place was wrong.
Too still.
Too… clean.
No blood on the bricks. No smear on the stone. No sign of her at all.
He crouched slowly, fingers grazing the spot where she'd been.
In a city choking on rot and neglect—this one place was scrubbed.
Meticulously.
Someone had cleaned this.
He closed his eyes.
Replayed the moment.
Golden hair. Kneeling. Stillness like prayer or sacrifice.
She had been there.
He'd dismissed her. A bystander. A witness, at most.
But now…
His breath hitched again.
Maybe the girl with the wild curls wasn't just part of stealing the fruit.
Maybe she wasn't just watching the shadow walker.
Maybe she had something to do with him.
Or worse
Maybe she had something to do with all of it.
He stood. Slower this time. Thoughtful. Heavy.
And left.
But not without one last glance at the ground.
The dust there didn't settle like the rest of the alley.
Capricorn moved. Fast.
Faster than before.
The city blurred beneath him spires, smoke, rusted bells, children's screams. Quorva groaned with every gust of wind, but none of it mattered.
Not now.
Not after that mark.
He vaulted over rooftops, boots grinding against broken shingles, leapt across yawning alleys, descended into flame-lit corridors where beggars huddled under the bones of temples.
He didn't stop.
Not until he reached it.
The temple of Quorix.
Two towering statues loomed over its blackened gate one with six arms, the other with a bleeding eye. Between them, a maw of marble stairs split upward like a jaw waiting to swallow a fool.
Capricorn charged through.
The guards at the entrance barked his name, but he didn't slow. They scrambled aside, fear twitching in their eyes.
Inside, incense choked the air. Gold and bone lined the walls. A choir of chained acolytes sang hymns in falsetto agony. At the far end of the hall, raised high above cracked offerings and kneeling zealots, sat him.
Quorix.
The god of logic.
His mouth was stitched shut with light, his voice projected only through will. The chair he sat on bled slowly, eternally, into a basin of law-sealed glass. His body looked mortal, but wrong—arms too long, eyes too narrow, robes that flickered between eras of design.
Capricorn landed hard at the foot of the steps.
"My lord."
Quorix didn't blink.
Capricorn's voice cut through the chants. "I've found something. A symbol. Burned into the city's bones."
One of the choir faltered. A note cracked.
The room held its breath.
Quorix turned slightly. "A symbol," he echoed not with voice, but with thought.
Capricorn forced his fear down. "The forbidden symbol."
Silence. Real, this time. Even the chains seemed to stop rattling.
Then—
Laughter. Cold. Echoing through thought like broken glass.
"Old tales," Quorix said. "Myths for cultists and cowards. That mark has no power. It is a ghost of a ghost."
Capricorn stepped forward. "You weren't there. The air shifted. The priest nearly vomited. I nearly—" He cut himself off. Re-centered.
Quorix stood. A shimmer passed through his form—like someone wiping blood off a mirror.
"And you, my blessed hound, bring me fear instead of fruit?" His head tilted. "You, who bears my authority in the name of Viron himself?"
Capricorn's voice was sharp now. Desperate. "This is not the time for pride. That mark shouldn't exist. We need to alert the others Virion, Saphis, even Thariel. All of them."
The room seemed to twist at the names.
Quorix's posture changed—sickled back like a cobra. The light in the room darkened, sucked into the corners.
"You forget your place," the god said.
Guards moved in. Not to protect Capricorn to protect Quorix.
Capricorn didn't flinch. His aura rippled. The guards did.
One of them stepped back involuntarily.
"You wear my will like armor," Quorix said, stepping down one stair. "But armor can be stripped. Reforged. Worn by the next trained chimp I find pacing a battlefield."
Capricorn's jaw clenched. Soel burned faintly around his eyes.
"There is five days until the ritual and you want to come to me about a silly tale," Quorix said. "you have a job. Find the fruit. Nothing more."
Capricorn didn't speak.
He didn't move.
The tension snapped taut.
Then slowly—deliberately—he dropped to one knee.
The guards exhaled, barely.
Quorix turned away. "Dismissed."
Capricorn didn't rise.
And when he finally did speak, it wasn't for Quorix. It was for the floor beneath him. For the gods above. For whatever still listened.
"You don't understand what's coming."
"Not yet."
"But you will."
"When they return, no thrones will hold."
"Not yours."
"Not Viron's."
"Not even the stars."
"Because they don't seek justice."
"Or vengeance."
"They only exist to end what began."
The guards looked shaken.
Quorix didn't answer.
He had already vanished into the glow of his altar.
And as if the world itself was dismissing Cap, the third bell tolled loud and ominous BOOOOOOONG. Capricorn rose. And left.
But in his wake, the hall no longer felt holy.
It felt haunted.
He walked.
Dust curled in the air like incense, ghosting past the stillness. Behind him, the guards dared not speak his silence was too loud. His power too taut.
And yet, Capricorn's mind was far from the temple now. Far from Quorix.
It was a memory unbidden and unwanted.
A library, deep beneath the Virelian capital. Cold. Unlit. Long before he wore the Zodiac sigil. Before he was anyone.
Just a boy.
He'd found the book on a forbidden shelf, cracked and bound in what felt like dried skin. No title. Just a symbol.
That symbol.
He'd traced it with a fingertip, heart thudding, the ink strangely warm.
His old mentor, Master Varn, had found him crouched there—silent, awed, afraid.
"You shouldn't be reading that," Varn had said. Not angry. Just tired.
Capricorn had asked, "What is it?"
Varn had crouched beside him. Looked at the symbol, then at the boy.
"A scar," he'd said softly. "Left by something that never should've existed. A blade too sharp for this world."
Capricorn remembered frowning. "But what does it mean?"
Varn closed the book gently, reverently. "It means someone once looked at the gods and said: No."
He hadn't understood then.
Now, kneeling in an alley scrubbed of sin, staring at dust that didn't settle, Capricorn did.
Varn's final words echoed, soft and cracking:
"If you ever see that mark again… don't speak it. Don't trace it. Don't even look at it too long."
Varn's voice had dropped to a whisper then — not from caution, but from dread.
"Forget it. Erase it from your thoughts. Because if it remembers you…"
He'd paused. Not for drama. For fear.
"Then so will the ones who wear it. And they don't kill you out of rage. They kill you because you exist."
Capricorn opened his eyes.
And for the first time since taking his oath, he wanted to run.
From the thing that carves gods open
and leaves no name behind.