Elara saw it. Her face went pale. "You've been marked."

The rain stopped. The world went silent.

It had been your father-in-law. The man who never forgave you for the divorce.

The rain came down in greasy, black ropes, soaking into the cracked asphalt of the interstate. You adjusted the strap of your worn hiking pack, the weight of three cans of beans and a half-empty canteen feeling like lead. In the distance, the city skyline was a broken jaw of shattered glass and rusted rebar.