Chapter 5C: The Marking

The stage lights blazed like a furnace, their merciless glare stripping away every ounce of shadow and secrecy. My skin, marked with jagged ink words, seemed to glow under the harsh illumination. Each word mocked me, branding me with accusations I barely understood, marking me as something unrecognizable.

The air was oppressive, heavy with the mingled stench of sweat, fear, and the metallic tang of inevitability. Around me, the upperclassmen moved with practiced ease, their inked bodies a patchwork of defiance and allegiance to this grotesque tradition. Their laughter echoed through the room, sharp and biting, their camaraderie steeped in cruelty. They had embraced this system and made its savagery their own. The sight twisted my stomach, a knife of revulsion and envy—how could they be so at ease in this horror?

“This is for your growth,” my parents had said with maddening calm. Growth The word had clung to me, hollow and mocking, as if it could justify this. My shorn hair, my bare skin, the ink branding me like a vandalized wall—was this transformation? Was this what they wanted me to become? A canvas for their rules, their punishments, their twisted stories?

Each letter etched into my flesh burned—not physically, but in a way that seeped into my core. Every word carved away pieces of me I hadn’t agreed to lose. My body trembled, my breaths shallow and unsteady. I was the only freshman in this sea of older students, their inked bodies radiating an authority I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Then I saw her.

She was the girl from the hallway, the one I’d seen crying. I’d tried to offer comfort—futilely—before she’d vanished into the crowd. Now she walked through the room with a quiet resolve, her body bare under the glaring lights. Unlike mine, her skin was pristine, untouched by ink. The sight made her seem defiant, though the slump of her shoulders betrayed something else entirely.

Her gaze met mine, and something indescribable passed between us—a fragile flicker of recognition. My hand drifted to my chest, brushing against the place where she’d written her message earlier. Her words had been different—gentle, almost kind. In this sea of cruelty, they had been an anchor, however fleeting.