My breath stops. My heart stutters once, twice, then slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape the memory that just clawed its way back in.
The boy I was screams inside my skull.
Fourteen years old. Skin slick with sweat and tears. Begging. Breaking. The weight of Marek’s body pinning me down while he laughed and took what he wanted, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but silence and shame.
I feel it all again—the tearing, the helplessness, the way he whispered“my perfect little crow”like it was a gift. I remember him because…he was the first. It was the most pain I’ve ever felt in my life.
The painted face on my skin cracks. Something inside me rips wide open. And the thing that crawls out of the fracture isn’t Reth anymore. It’s something older. Something that has been waiting in the dark for thirteen years, feeding on every scream I swallowed, every night I woke up tasting blood and shame. It smiles behind the black slash of my mouth.
I drop the karambit; the scream that rips out of me isn’t human.
Reality becomes a void, and I’m on him before I know I’ve moved, fists slamming into his face with every ounce of buried rot he and so many after him had caused. Bone crunches under my knuckles. Blood sprays across the white paint on my cheek. I hit him again. And again. And again. His nose flattens. Teeth crack. I’m snarling, spit flying, the black slash of my mouth stretched wide like a wound.
“Look at me!” I roar, grabbing his hair and wrenching his head forward so hard something in his neck pops. “Look at me, you sick fuck!”
His eyes are swollen slits, blood pouring down his face, but I force them open with my thumbs, digging one into the socket until he’s screaming and thrashing against the wires.
“Who the fuck am I? Tell me! Look at my fucking face and tell me who I am!”
He can’t answer. He can only gurgle and sob, body convulsing in agony, blood gushing out of his one eye, piss soaking through his trousers and pooling beneath him. The pain has fried his brain.
For one heartbeat, the rabid thing inside me pulls back just enough for me to see it. He has no fucking clue who I am. The boy he broke is nothing but a forgotten toy to him.
He doesn’t remember. But I do.
I. Fucking. Do.
Something inside my chest goes very, very still. I release his head. It thuds back against the concrete, and I step over him, drop down, and straddle his chest, my knees pinning his shoulders to the floor. The wires cut deeper into his wrists as his arms strain uselessly above his head. I lean down until my painted face is inches from his ruined one, until all he can see is the black void of my eyes and the jagged grin of my mouth.
“I’m the boy you killed,” I whisper, voice soft, almost tender. “And now I’m taking back what’s owed… you sick fuck.”
I reach for the karambit, teeth biting into my bottom lip, and press the tip just outside the edge of the crow’s wing, the blade meeting flesh with cold, intimate precision. Marek’s chest heaves, ribs straining against the open wound I haven’t even started yet. His good eye is wide, glassy with terror, the other swollen shut and weeping red. He’s whimpering now, a high, broken sound that vibrates in my bones. It’s violence that feels like peace over water, like the calm that comes once you’ve accepted your fate, no matter how grotesque.
I don’t speak again. I start cutting.
The first incision is slow, deliberate, a perfect outline around the tattoo. The skin parts like wet silk under the blade, blood blooming immediately, thick and dark. Marek’s scream is guttural, animal, tearing from his throat in raw bursts that echo off the stone walls and die in the dark. His body convulses, the wires biting deeper into his wrists and ankles, fresh blood welling up around the metal in bright rivulets. I ignore it.
I hook the blade under the edge of the skin and peel. The sound is wet and obscene—a slow, ripping tear, like pulling fat from raw meat. The crow’s wing lifts in one long, ragged strip, the inked feathers stretching and distorting as the flesh separates from muscle. Marek’s back arches off the floor, spine bowing so hard I wonder if his vertebrae crack. God, I hope it does. His mouth opens in a silent howl, throat working around nothing but air and blood.
I keep going. I have to. Violence is a compulsion, a scab that demands picking even as the wound spreads.
The beak comes next. I carve around it, fingers sinking into the warm, slippery meat to hold the skin taut. The face peels away last, and the skin comes free, and the warm, wet flap curls against my palm like a dead thing still trying to breathe.
For one heartbeat, I feel the boy I was screaming inside my chest—small, broken, finally holding the monster’s mark in his own shaking hands. And beneath the rage, something colder settles in, the sick, hollow satisfaction of knowing I just tore a piece of my hell out of his body and made it mine.
The scream that breaks out of me is like vomit of hot glass and broken teeth. It’s a sound I’ve never heard before.
Marek jerks violently beneath me, his head bobbing as he chokes on air and blood and evil.
Then… nothing. His body goes still, his cries suddenly quiet.
“No.” I slap his face, wait for a reaction, but there’s none. “No!” I hit him again, and again. “Wake the fuck up!” My voice is shredded, barely human. “Wake the fuck up! I’m not done! I’m not fucking done with you!”
His head lolls to the side, one eye glassy and empty, the ruined face slack. No flinch. No breath. No more screams.
“No! No! No! No!” I slam the karambit deep into his chest. “Wake up! Wake the fuck up!” The rage doesn’t boil. It implodes. Turns inward like a black hole sucking everything into itself. With both hands, I hack the blade downward, feel it tear through flesh, scraping bone, and I don’t stop until his insides are pulp and on the concrete like something rotten, just like the boy who had his humanity turned inside out, left for a life that’s crueler than death.
My chest heaves. My hands shake so hard the blade slips from my fingers and clatters to the floor. I’m still straddling his corpse, knees in the blood and piss and gore, the painted mask on my face feeling like it’s melting off.
