Chapter 1384: Story 1384: He Marked
I didn’t notice the mark at first.
It was small, hidden beneath my collarbone—half bruise, half burn, shaped like the crescent of a jaw.
It wasn’t a bite.
It was him.
The world ended, and people got hungry—for food, for warmth, for touch.
He got hungry for sothing else: permanence.
We found each other in a flooded church, scavenging the sa can of peaches. I let him have it. He offered a flashlight. That’s how love begins now. Trade-offs.
We traveled together after that—just two lonely ghosts with skin.
He was soft-spoken, always alert. Too alert.
I mistook vigilance for care. Maybe that’s on .
He never asked to stay.
He never had to.
His fingers said everything when they traced the edge of my jaw at night.
“You’re safe with ,” he whispered once.
And maybe I was.
But safety isn’t freedom.
The mark ca during a fever dream of a night.
We’d cleared an apartnt tower, found wine in the broken minibar. We drank.
He laughed, I cried. The world spun too fast.
We kissed like we’d never get another chance.
I didn’t rember the pressure of his mouth on my chest.
Didn’t rember the heat of his lighter.
Didn’t rember the exact mont it stopped being about love and started being about proof.
Next morning, the skin there was raw.
He called it an accident.
“I was drunk,” he said. “You leaned too close to the fla.”
But he looked too proud when he said it.
Like he’d carved his na into a tree.
Only the tree was .
I should’ve run then.
But you know what’s worse than being marked?
Being alone.
Weeks passed. We fought together. Slept together. Hid together.
He never hit . Never shouted.
Just… claid space.
In rooms. In beds. In .
One night, we took shelter in a museum.
Art still clung to the walls—portraits of people who mattered.
He stood behind while I looked at them.
“You’re the only masterpiece left,” he whispered.
And his fingers brushed the mark.
Like a signature.
The infection took him two days later.
Bitten during a bridge ambush.
He hid it. Told it was a scratch.
He smiled too much. Kissed too long. Slept too close.
When I woke, he was gone. Left a note:
“You’re mine now. Forever.”
I found his body in the museum foyer.
Tangled in the arms of a headless statue, bleeding from the eyes.
He’d turned. Then turned again.
I sat beside him for an hour.
Then I burned the whole museum down.
The mark never faded.
Not fully.
I cover it with cloth. Sotis paint. Sotis ash.
But in the mirror, I always see it.
Not a scar.
A warning.
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