-From the Chronicles of Humankind  - 

They say the Horned Man walks the world marked by more than flesh.

Upon his skin lie sigils older than memory,

inked not by mortal hands,

but by the weaving of fate itself.

No two who have seen him describe the markings the same.

For his tattoos do not rest;

they stir,

shift,

wake

as the path before him changes.

Some speak of spirals of shadow curling across his arms,

like smoke reaching for a forgotten fire.

Others swear they saw runes glowing faint and cold,

pulsing with the rhythm of the hidden world.

And a few, the oldest storytellers, whisper of lines that slither and reshape,

as though the ink remembers ancient beasts

and longs to take their form again.

When destiny turns,

the marks turn with it.

In moments of silence, they lie still,

as if only sleeping,

but when power stirs in his blood,

the tattoos awaken.

They crawl across his skin like living constellations,

rearranging themselves into omens

only the wild can read.

Vines twist into antlers.

Spirals fold into eyes.

A serpent becomes a path.

A rune becomes a warning.

And when fire claims him,

when he sheds the man-shape to walk as the Stag,

his tattoos blaze like embers,

lifting from his skin in drifting sparks

that scatter into the night like stars torn free.

The wise say the marks are not decorations,

but prophecy.

An ever-changing map of who he was,

who he is,

and who the world will require him to become.

For the Horned Man does not choose his fate.

He wears it.

And it speaks through ink and shadow

for any who dare to look closely enough.