Siv felt something touch his side. Wait, wasn't he dead? Siv opened his eyes, staring at a sky covered in clouds.
"Boy, get up." A man stood above him, pressing his boot into Siv's cracked ribs. Wait, they weren't cracked anymore. Siv didn't feel the pain.
"Damn you, I'm trying to die here." Siv pushed the foot away from him. The man sighed.
"Not today, boy." A strong hand grasped Siv's wrist and unceremoniously pulled him up. The man's skin was dark, but his forearm was covered in chain... tattoos? that seemed to draw in the light around them, creating such a dark black that it contrasted against the man's skin. They were like nothing Siv had ever seen before.
"What do you want from me?" Siv said, annoyed now. Strangely, the pains of hunger seemed to have lessened. His ribs were numb to the pain-- no, the pain was gone somehow. How could that be?
"Come with me, boy. You have been marked." Siv drew in a sharp breath. The Marked were mythological. Everyone had heard of them, of course, even street urchins like him. They were those who gained the power of God. "You may ask questions later. Come with me, now."
Siv held back a barrage of questions that lit up in his mind. He was... marked. How could that be? Him?
...
10 minutes later, after a hurried walk through the outskirts, Siv arrived with the man, who's name he had learned was Taln, at a tavern. The tavern, like most these days, was near empty. The keeper nodded at Taln, giving the disheveled boy with him a strange look. Siv must've been quite a sight, ratty clothes and dried blood from his rat on his chin.
"Bring me two servings of whatever you have, as well as a loaf of bread." Taln brusquely instructed the tavern keeper. Throwing Siv a glance, he said: "And draw a bath for the boy."
Siv sat across from Taln at a table in the corner. "Can I ask questions now?" he asked impatiently. Taln nodded. "Why am I marked? Why did God choose me of all people?" Taln was silent for a moment, his steely gray eyes staring into Siv's.
"God is dead. He has not marked you, but rather one of His Aspects." Taln said briefly, as if that explained everything.
"W-what do you mean God is dead? What is an Aspect?" Siv was shaken. He had never really placed much faith in God, because he hadn't ever received any help from him. Hearing he was dead, however, was a shock.
"God, as most people know it, is only an Aspect of a greater God that once was. It is common now for many people to worship a God, but among those like us, Aspects are considered gods themselves." Taln stopped as the innkeeper approached with two mugs filled with water. As he walked away, Taln continued. "That is, the original God is dead, but gods have been born as Aspects of His power. You have been marked by an Aspect of God. To be specific, the Aspect of Suffering."
Siv shivered. That did not sound like something he wanted to be marked by.
"There are countless Aspects, and countless powers granted by them. One of mine is to locate others with the Aspect of Suffering." Taln drank again. "You can think of each Aspect as having its own aspects of branching similarities. The Aspect of Suffering provides an overarching power, and subsets of it provide different abilities."
"What is your subset?" Siv asked, after greedily taking in all that Taln was telling him. It wasn't often he got the chance to learn.
"I am a supplicant of the Chained God." As he finished saying the name, the world seemed to darken around them. "I do not know what you have been marked by specifically, other than the Aspect of Suffering."
The innkeeper approached now, with two steaming bowls of stew. "The bath is drawn in your room, sir." The polite man placed the bowls in front of them and left. Siv looked in awe at the wonderful meal that was in front of him. He had never, in all his life, been so glad to see food. While this "marking" business had taken the edge off of the hunger, Siv was still starving. He dug in greedily, and Taln also set into his own stew. There was silence between them for a time.
"So why me? How do I know what my subset is?" Siv asked, as he drank the rest of the broth in his bowl. Seeing this, Taln called for another bowl for Siv.
Taln gestured at his own skin. "Something like my tattoos. Mine is fairly on the nose. Chains and the Chained God."
Siv had not checked himself for any new markings. He looked around at his exposed skin, and lifted his shirt, craning his neck to try and look at his own back.
"Alternatively, you can find someone with an appraisal skill. Those blessed by the Aspect of Order often have something like that." Taln said. "Though, luckily for you, I've got a piss poor excuse of an appraisal power that only works on those Marked by Suffering."
Taln gestured for Siv's arm. He held it firmly by the wrist, and grabbed his dagger from the sheath. Siv hurriedly tried to pull away, but at a glower from the older man, let the blade lightly cut his skin. A drop of blood came out, and Taln collected it on the flat of the blade. he brought it up to his mouth, and drank it.
Siv looked at him, mouth agape. "What the hell?! Why would you do that?" he said, incredulous.
Taln said nothing, looking at the boy with an unreadable expression. A frown furrowed his brow.
"Why are you looking at me like that? You just drank my blood, you batshit crazy old man!" Siv said, sweating under Taln's intense gaze.
"You are... Marked by Death."