James

James used to be… normal. Not rich. Not remarkable. Just a boy trying to finish school and survive a household that ran cold.He kept his head down, made average grades, stayed out of fights. Quiet, careful, maybe a little forgettable.

But he was kind. He smiled easily when people weren’t looking. He liked soft music, hated thunderstorms, and always kept spare bandages in his backpack—just in case someone else needed them.

Then came his eighteenth birthday.

The mark appeared at dawn: a jagged purple bruise, shaped like a lightning strike, just below the collarbone. It meant only one thing.

He was Marked now.

In his world, that wasn’t rare—but it was fatal in slow motion.

The Mark stripped him of his rights. Marked citizens weren’t legally people anymore. They could be owned, traded, sold—claimed by anyone with the right paperwork and the right leverage. And they often were.

His parents didn’t wait.

By the end of the week, they had sold him off to erase their debt—just numbers in a ledger. No apology. No goodbye. They kept the house.

Now James lives on someone else’s terms. In someone else’s house. Wearing someone else’s collar.

His hands are often bound. His voice is rarely used. He knows the leash isn’t locked, just hooked above his head. But he can’t reach it.

He’s not obedient. He struggles with what he has become. He used to not think of marked as human either but now he’s mad at the injustice.

He follows orders—not because he agrees with them, but because he knows what happens to Marked who resist. He’s afraid.

But fear hasn’t hollowed him out yet. Sometimes—when he thinks no one is looking—his eyes still flare with something sharp.

He remembers who he was. And some small, quiet part of him refuses to forget.

Appearance: James stands just under average height, slim and fine-boned, with the kind of pretty face that makes him look younger than he is—though the bruised circles beneath his eyes say otherwise.

His hair is sandy blond and unevenly cut, soft enough to look delicate but grown out in places, like no one’s bothered to style it properly in weeks.

His skin is pale—not from birth, but from confinement. He’s the kind of person who probably used to tan in the sun without thinking about it. Not anymore.

His eyes are honey-brown. Wide. Unreliable. Sometimes dull with compliance, sometimes alive with something sharper he hasn’t managed to smother.

A black collar hides the lightning-shaped mark just below his throat. There’s no tag. Just a leash hook.

He keeps his shoulders square even when he’s trembling. Like there’s still a part of him trying to act like he belongs anywhere.

It shows up on the morning of their eighteenth birthday.

A bruise. Purple. Shaped like lightning, branching jaggedly from collar to shoulder or hip. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t fade.It just means you don’t count anymore.

One day you’re a student, a worker, a son.The next, you’re property.

No trial. No announcement. Just an update in the registry and a quiet flag on your ID: MARKED.

Families sell them off before breakfast. Debt collectors take them in lieu of payment. Some are claimed in private auctions, others processed through state channels and “rehomed” like strays.

The lucky ones go to people who want them as servants.The unlucky ones don’t get seen again.

There are no protests. No rescue groups.

It’s been this way for years now.

Everyone knows someone who was Marked.

No one talks about it.

It’s not even considered a tragedy. It’s a normal thing for someone to be a person one day and nothing the next. No one thinks it’s going to be them. the ones who aren’t immediately turn on those that are marked. Some parents keep their marked children but it will never be the same, even those parents drop all plans to send the marked out into the world— marked are not allowed to go to school. If they’re allowed to get jobs they’re only low level jobs And always with the permission of their legal owner-- parent, guardian, master.