Chapter Text
Kieran was fourteen when he first received his Soul Mark.
He was locked in a cell, the cold, damp walls rose up blocking any ray of sunlight that might reach him. Stains of old blood and mold spread on the concrete, they seemed to form gaunt faces that silently watched him. The shackles around his thin limbs carved his skin painfully, and the sting of the whipping across his back reminded him with every movement of what happened when someone tried to escape the clutches of the Phantom Scythe.
He hid deeper in the corner of the cell, trying to conserve some body heat. The cold made him aware of how lonely he was in the middle of that pack of wolves, how much he missed his mother. Oh, if she saw him right now, if she watched what those men had done to her only son, she would die of pain.
He still remembered her kind face. Sometimes if he closed his eyes, he could even hear the sound of her voice in the wind. The wind wasn't blowing in that cell, but he still tried to tune his hearing and evoke the memory to help him endure that night.
He was about to fall asleep when a warm tingling began to spread through his chest, soft and comforting as a hug. And there, above his heart, a beautiful silver moon appeared.
He knew what that mark meant. His mother had told him about it many times, her eyes shining with emotion and affection as she explained what it was like to have a soulmate.
"Is the person with whom you can share everything, your complement, your support, half of your heart and your soul, your right arm and your equal. It is the star that guides you and the warmth of your bonfire, the beginning of your thoughts and the end of your path" she had said.
And he would have thought his mother was exaggerating, if it hadn't been for the fact that he had seen the kind of love his parents had for each other when he was younger. Apparently fate had chosen a person to unite his soul, his future was not yet lost. There was hope to get out of there and find her.
He touched the soft moon with the fill of his fingers, exploring its touch. Maybe it was part of his imagination, but at one point he could even feel a second heart resonating in time with his own, singing to him with each beat that he was not alone. The cold ceased to envelop him and a blanket of tranquility settled on his shoulders allowing him for once to sleep without nightmares.