My back had hurt for about two weeks since my first ever contract. Falling over twenty feet down onto what used to be a wall did wonders for its coloration, bruises aggressively making themselves known by the time I arrived at the airport that would have me fly back to Orlando. For the first week, I took things slow: I was, honestly, exhausted as all hell, and I needed to heal up before I could do much else. I read, I sat at my computer, performed most of my usual routine... but I also had something quite intriguing to occupy my mind amongst it all.

After I had woken up from my first sleep since my return, all I saw as my eyes opened were glyphs. Unknown runes, symbols consisting of lines twisting and turning and ending and beginning, as an ultimately wriggling, almost alive, ever-shifting mass. Many of these glyphs weren't even two-dimensional - and some went further and folded in ways that didn't make the smallest bit of sense to me. This was the only thing stuck in my vision that delirious morning, kind of like a dark, inverted, eldritch version of stars appearing in one's eyes after hitting your head.

I had a feeling that this was my reward for that contract's successful completion. The phenomenon was strange, yes, but not at all hostile or malicious - yet, at least. The glyphs, as I got used to them, receded to the edges of my vision, but they were still there when I focused on them, and I could also sense a foreign curiosity that wasn't my own. It was mixed with an echo of hunger and, perhaps, a small amount of satisfaction - satisfaction that I, somehow, inherently knew had something to do with me.

The hunger unnerved me, but it wasn't really a physical thing; it wasn't flesh that this strange force craved.

As time passed, I found myself sometimes drawing in my no-longer-empty grimoire. It was funny how that moniker fit it now, given that I'd developed a new intermittent habit: I would sometimes sit, pick some glyph I spotted at random from the corner of my eye, depict a motionless iteration of it on one of the grimoire's pages, and then look it up on the internet. Nothing tended to come up whenever I did that, so I instead attempted to turn the glyph in question into a proper drawing. Some were pretty easy to transform, but with others I had to lean on my well-trained imagination.

Another noteworthy event happened a week later. While I was hanging out with some friends, one of my fingers caught on a sharp bit of fence or something, which resulted in a shallow cut. Not noteworthy on its own, of course, but what was noteworthy was that the foreign glyphic force becoming interested in my blood for a moment. The glyphs grew a bit more agitated, and then came a strange sense of almost disappointment in response to this injury. It began waning after a while, though... only for the disappointment to get sharply replaced by hunger when another person spilled their blood next.

I didn't care much for the guy who got hurt. Shane was just a coworker of Mark, one of my friends, so he would invite himself along if he saw us. But, as he got carted away to an ambulance while the others watched and listened to his pained whimpers, I gave into the impulse to sneak over and check the scene where he'd essentially shredded his palm up close.

The glyphs suggested that I place my palm within the small puddle of blood that had been left there.

I did, once I ensured I wasn't seen.

I was surprised to see how most of the blood started flowing towards my hand, darkening and turning into those familiar goddamn glyphs.

As the black, writhing blood was absorbed through my palm with a strange, somewhat tingling sensation, the ambulance with Shane took off towards the hospital. I was done with my 'investigation' before anyone could notice, although what I noticed was that I could stand a bit straighter. These glyphs, they seemed to be interested in other people's blood for some reason, and when I gave them a decent offering of it they rewarded me in return: I was no longer bothered by the pain and aches plaguing my back and shoulders. Oh, said pains were still there - but they were in the background, muted. I doubted that the effect would last, but damn was it a relief in the meantime.

Anyway, by now my back has pretty much fully recovered. I even started doing some basic exercises. Tomorrow, I will be joining June - another friend, back from our school days - to give a proper shot at parkour. I had to roll my eyes at her amused reaction when I told her about wanting to try it, but she wouldn't really understand. Yes, I didn't tend to give much thought to physically-intensive things in the past, but given how I almost fatally fucked up in the first contract I'd ever been to I needed to make an effort to get better - otherwise, my days were numbered.

I won't let it come to that. Thia Fall will make her mark.