Protagonist: Sora Wakisaka’s Scar
Sora Wakisaka is sixteen, and his family’s lived in the Obsidian District forever. For Sora, home has always meant faded walls, busy docks, and the black veins lacing almost all old stone here. He hates those jagged lines, though lots say they’re pretty, because he knows what they can really do.
His dream? Leaving for proper city life one day. Mixing with the living, not the old slowly dying or odd types who play with the dark water. But Sora’s left arm gets little wounds almost every week. People at school joke about how clumsy he is. His sister Hana worries, but he claims it’s not a problem. Secret: The wounds won’t heal, and at night, odd branching marks grow past his elbow. If you had a line like that moving across skin, would you tell?
One Friday after school the marks crawl up to his collarbone, burning hard. Freaked out, Sora runs out, down alleys covered in black-purple stains. At the flooded west pier, he runs into Yui Kobrashi, a new transfer who picks at scabs and recites folk tales. ‘You woke it up?’ she says. Her left palm shimmers—something alive moves under the skin. Sora is speechless.
The Plague Unfolds
Sora and Yui walk along an odd narrow street. At a wall of rusted pipes, she grips his shoulder. ‘Watch.’ Rushing water brings strange decay with it—moss changes color, garbage merges together, and raw blistered hands reach out through cracks—not people, more like grown shells writhing, asking for help in muffled voices. Hana appears. She looks for Sora before their shift at the noodle stand, but sees the wall move. Her eyes widen.
Yui pulls up her sleeve. Greenish flesh with dark tendrils snaking below light. ‘You’ve got the Mark now. It chooses the worried, those who fear needles or dark water. That’s why I’m here. Want to see how we can live with it?’ Would you go, or freeze?
They watch the tendrils around Sora’s wrist. When Yui splashes a black tear-shaped liquid on Sora’s arm, the tendrils grow into patterns that pulse. They burn a little, then sad shapes of faces appear between the veins. Kimu’s father, Sou’s daughter, all who vanished last winter are in there. These aren’t hallucinations.
‘If we move too quick or resist, we’ll splinter. Let it breathe. Let it eat some light,’ Yui whispers.
The Body Bends
By midweek, Sora’s marks take the shape of twisted symbols. Blood seeps out, even if he doesn’t scratch. He finds he can shift the patterns with thought—raise bumps, slip off or put back pieces of skin like soft clothes. These don’t heal, yet they don’t bleed much either.
He meets Sumi, the local nun, who lost half her jaw to the creeping dark sickness. She teaches Sora that every marked person who resists breaks sooner. “Don’t use mirrors now. Hide yourself until you change for good,” she tells him.
Yui introduces him to her friend Ryo—Ryo has no hands left, but fingers looped into long tendrils able to grip rails and swing past crowds. He laughs about it, but his teeth are full of purple grout, and sometimes little new mouths grow on those tendrils, saying different things at once.
No one talks much in public. At midnight, some veined kids hang from lampposts, testing if their bones will stretch longer, or break softly with a pop. Sora avoids the city square now. But when he sees the marks growing across his sister Hana’s wrist at dinner, he throws his bowl. “Why you too?”
Hana’s answer is simple. “Nobody’s safe. Everyone gets this, sometime.” A chill climbs Sora’s spine.
Search for Origin
The city blames foul pipes beneath the school yard. Two teens, insect collectors before their veins knotted up, run an online group ‘Veinlink’ mapping family trees and comparing symptoms. The Mark sometimes fades with sleep, but never fully. Sora is sure water’s to blame. Experts from outside district come to give talks behind plastic shields but use words too soft for Sora’s taste. “It’s a new fungus,” they shrug.
He decides to break into the chemical company at the center of the Blackvein outbreak. Sora thinks there must be a buried barrel or expanse of mutant sludge underground. Yui supports him; Hana doesn’t. A janitor with a shapeless head lets them enter Friday at dusk, after nobody checks IDs. Inside, storage lights flicker. More strange decay lines the beams. As Sora sneaks past storerooms, pain jolts his arm and a thick black hand grows from his chest; fingers made of tangled veined rope feel around for a heartbeat out of his chest.
“Do you feel hot, too?” Yui asks. Sora wants to scream but can’t—a new mouth opens at his throat. Lips silenced, still he shivers. “You’re healing,” Yui says. Is she right?
Cliffhanger Breakdown
The further down, the more flesh on his body shifts and peels. Sora looks to Hana—now she’s gone. They find a tunnel lined with stacked bodies, grown into roots. Some still blink.
At the end of the tunnel, screeching water fills the hall; every part of Sora’s skin tingles—parts writhe without clear shape. He tries calling Hana’s name. Four more mouths on his right side all scream for him together. Steam pipes break, stray liquid hits them, and both teens drop to their knees. The last shot: Sora watches his own arms split at the lines, his body dividing in two, as a shape steps out from the other half of him. He isn’t sure which Sora is real anymore.
Cut to black.
