The utter fool. A commander too big for his own mind—swollen with rank, drunk on the illusion of strategy. Playing God, Devil, and advocate in the same breath, as if any man should dare wear all masks at once. He dragged the whole damned marsh into his vision of glory, a fray born crooked, destined to fail before the first blade left its sheath.

  God help him? No. Better he be struck dead before another order leaves his lips. Men like that send boys into death for the taste of it—for the rush, the power, the blood that isn't their own.

  I’ve seen them. Fought under them. Killed because of them. Killed for them. Sent with nothing but lies and powder, told to carve meaning from slaughter and call it duty.

  But my life is mine to give and mine to take. No captain, no God, no flag will tell me otherwise. Let him rot in his fortress of lies. Let his soul fester with the ghosts he’s summoned. And let this cursed earth swallow every last inch of this mad world that would drag the living down into its grave.

  I spit on his command.

  I spit on his name.

  And I spit on the sky above that dares to watch in silence.

  He would not be the end of me.

  I would get out of here.

  But—I needed my tool.

  What a shitstained blunder. Losing my charm. A relic, a compass, a lifeline—call it what you will, it was mine, and now it was gone. I’d find no safe passage through this thickening hell without it. No path unpoisoned, no road untouched by madness.

  What road was safe now? The skies bruised black with stormblood, the forest coughing up its entrails—wet and stinking—and the screams, the shrill, rattling screams from throats that no longer remembered how to be human.

  No. A tool was never more needed.

  And I had never felt so bare.

  “Hurry the fuck up, Elrik!”

  He was dragging his whole life behind him like a damn mule. Satchel, axe, bundles of God-knows-what strapped and cinched like we were marching to the edge of the world. Sour bastard. I told him the walk would be short.

  But Elrik trusted nothing now. Not after the children-things started hunting. Not after the third night without sleep. Always one ear cocked for the suckling moans, the bone clicks in the thickets. Always ready to run. As if running ever helped.

  He’d have to find his courage again. Or rot in his own filth like the others.

  “I’ll hurry when you tell me your goal!” he snapped. “What nonsense are you dragging me to? Out of the walls like this?”

  His voice pitched high with doubt and fear, but there was steel behind it too. Good. Better a panicked man who could still swing than one praying to shit himself clean.

  I turned on a coin and leaned in—close enough to see the veins map across his liver-spotted mug, close enough to smell the stale campbread and fear on his breath.

  “I’ve gotten us through woods, through marsh, through nearly twenty years of digging for dirt and holy scraps.”

  My voice didn’t rise. My words were enough.

  “You’ve gotten through it because you followed me.”

  I jabbed a finger into his chest, just once. Hard enough to remind him. “So listen to my wisdom, you ragged dog.”

  I leaned closer, until the bristle of his beard scratched my cheek. Past his shoulder, the bastion still loomed—shadows moving on the parapets, guns and pikes swaying like reeds in a poisoned wind.

  “Some motives can’t be said aloud, you stubborn oaf,” I whispered. “Not when walls still have ears, and some of those ears belong to men that might as well be beasts.”

  I leaned back just enough to take in his face—red, sour, boiling. Good. Let that fire replace the fear. Let him burn instead of tremble.

  “So part on me this wisdom before I part you.” he growled, fists clenched, knuckles cracking open with fresh cuts.

  “Calm your temper,” I said, voice low as the grave. Then I yanked him forward by the collar, close enough for the sweat to mingle. “But keep that vigour. Let it show. Let them see it. They'll think we’ve soured. That we’re parting ways.”

  I glanced past him—up to the walls, the bastion’s grey edge etched against the bruised sky. Movement. Raised guns, pikes swaying.

  “They won’t bother looking for a pair of squabbling wives.”

  His scowl twitched. Almost a smirk. “Lead me to the goal, you curdled fool. Tell me what needs this charade.”

  Kesselbruck had never been our goal before.

  Never worthy. Too risky. Too many crones perched in windows and old hounds sniffing after strangers. Too zealous by half—men and women who prayed with knives in their belts and fire behind their eyes. Always watching. Always waiting for sin to step wrong.

  Yes, too close to the fort, of course. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The worst was what they worshipped.

  God was not enough for them. No, they’d found something else. Something closer. A more earthly quarry. Hidden away, protected by piety and paranoia both. Far from the fort’s reach. Far enough that no one would bother them—and no one would hear the screams, if it came to that.

  And now?

  Now the whole stinking town was barred up. Chained from within. The bastion’s gaze fixed on the next horror down the valley. Too many eyes turned away.

  And that meant we could strike.

  I had gotten my charm from similar circumstances. Not from calm trade or priestly gift, but blood-earned, fear-earned—from a place like this, thick with rot and dread. But this… this was a different beast.

  We could see the hut now. Squatting just past the marsh, where the trees began to crowd each other like beggars at a funeral. A crooked thing, half-sunk into the muck, its roof sagging under moss and time. The path to it—thin, half-lost beneath the sucking mud—was barely a path at all.

  But not hidden enough.

  We crouched in the reeds, listening. The rain had not yet come, but the clouds were full and near. Their bellies hung low, sagging with threat.

  We listened. Not for birdsong or breeze. For things unspoken—skittering limbs, whispered clicks, the breathless hush of watchers too still to be men. And for hooves. Too-curious hooves. Riders who might come too close, asking too many questions with rifles strapped across their backs.

  No one could witness this. Not if we wanted to live long enough to regret it.

  The clouds would cover us. Rain would come soon, surely, and with it, the fort would hunker down behind its righteous stone. That gave us a window.

  I moved. Quiet. Focused.

  But Elrik tugged me back, hand like a vice on my sleeve.

  “Halt. We wait a heartbeat more.”

  I turned, jaw clenched. “I know you fear every step, Elrik. It's simply in you. But time is running out.”

  “Wait.” His voice tightened. “We look for signs. To see if it’s awake.”

  Fine. Very well. I looked.

  The trees held still—no twitch of limb, no wrongness in their sway. The wind touched them and nothing else. The waters moved, but not unnaturally. No sudden shifts. No smell of copper or rot. Birds still chirped. They flew unhindered.

  No buzzing in the ears. No nosebleed. No clenching at the chest or twitching in the limbs. I glanced at Elrik—skin still the same wine-red hue, jaw set, eyes clear. No mark on him.

  “It will not be any clearer,” I muttered. “If you prefer to let me do all the work, then stay.”

  “You’ve grown more stubborn by the day,” Elrik sighed. “It only suits you when you deliver.”

  “I implore you, Elrik—if you find it in you to lift my burden, then do it. Until then, fester in silence.”

  The marshy trail answered with a shudder that crawled straight up my spine. Cold, sucking mud that remembered too much. It was the Mad Hunt all over again—the giggle in the bones, the feeling of something watching from just beyond the trees, licking its teeth behind a veil of rot.

  Something was waiting. To take my life, or turn it inside out. Or maybe just tear out my liver and leave the rest.

  Elrik clung to my pack now, letting me drag him across what ground I thought was safe.

  Above us, crows skittered like bones shaken loose. The clouds congealed to black. Rain was coming, and with it, motion. Things always moved when the skies turned sour.

  We reached the edge. The precipice. That downtrodden shack they dared call holy. It sagged with mold and time, half-eaten by vines, tucked into the rootline like a secret long left to rot.

  I stopped.

  I whispered.

  “I will not enter without clear signs. We will not enter without the silence of the grave. Touch nothing. Move only when I say.”

  Elrik nodded. His face was stone, but his hand tightened on the strap. He knew what we were doing. He knew what we risked.

  The Saints were a curse. Always had been. Death in a human shape—when they even bothered with the shape.

  Sometimes it was worse.

  A baby, crib-bound, singing psalms in a grown man’s voice—notes trembling, throat too soft to hold the sound. A man with frostbitten fingers snapping off one by one, then growing back with the same bruised tips. A girl who screamed without pause, high and jagged, but her mouth never moved.

  Cursed, not sanctioned. Don’t let the robes and prayers fool you. Just because they don’t shit fire or sprout the horns of the Deceiver doesn’t mean they’re clean. They kill, confuse, control—that’s their miracle. Fear made flesh.

  The few not wracked by agony claim to speak to God. Claim he shaped them this way. Chose them. Blessed their wounds, their warped forms, their unholy endurance. Said it pleased him.

  Oh, what work they do.

  What pleasures they bestow.

  Death, and madness. All of it. Wrapped in gold-thread vestments and the hollow promise of divine purpose.

  We were to visit God's greatest mistake.

  His name was Sebastian. Once a peasant. Lived plain—harvesting what he could, foraging what he could not. A small life, dirt-worn and quiet. That should’ve been the end of it.

  But a local spinster found him in the marsh.

  He had been gone six days.

  Chewed. Torn. One leg missing, face half-rotted. The stench of something long dead clung to his skin. And yet—

  He spoke.

  Couldn’t move. Muscles blue, sinew slack. But his eyes flickered. His mouth begged.

  Kill me. End me.

  They did him no such honor.

  They hid him. Made him a home. Called it sacred. Came to him for blessings, for marriage rites, touched his flesh as if it still bore the warmth of heaven. They prayed with fingers brushing bone.

  He never stopped begging. Not until his tongue blackened, shriveled to leather. Not until his lips peeled off and his jaw unhinged from bone.

  Only then—only then—did those soulless hags see fit to bury him.

  But, I am not convinced they killed him.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  I stepped forward, measuring each length I strode. Moss where it behooved, stone where it held, water where I had no choice. The trail was a vein of sickness beneath my boots, pulsing cold. The hut loomed nearer.

  I peered through the crooked door.

  Darkness inside. As crestfallen within as without—no altar, no sign of sanctity, just decay and disuse.

  A single shaft of light pierced through the ceiling—through a hole some foraging bird must have torn in the thatch.

  It landed on bone.

  White. Speckled with mold. Clothed in moss like a shroud.

  I scanned the corners. Checked the floor. Sniffed the air.

  No movement.

  The rot smelled old. Earthy. Not the rot that promised devilry.

  No sound but thunder far off, dragging its boots across the horizon.

  A warning. Or a promise.

  I entered.

  Inside, I could see the form of Sebastian more clearly.

  There was nothing left.

  Not flesh. Barely bone. A scatter of brittle limbs and the curve of a ribcage that had forgotten how to hold breath. If this was a burial, then it was a mockery—no rest in life, half-death, or death. No peace. No end.

  I stood still. Watching.

  Like when the floorboards creak without your step.

  Listening. Feeling.

  Waiting to see if something reached back.

  But no twitch. No shift in the air. The bones lay quiet. Dead, maybe. Or… something worse. The ghost might’ve slipped out through the thatch, flown off with the birds and the fog.

  Or maybe—just maybe—it had never left. Just trapped. Pinned like a beetle in a cabinet. A prisoner of its own cold, white frame.

  The silence was deep. Almost respectful.

  But I knew better than to trust it.

  “Enter, Elrik. We begin.”

  And lo, he did. Already unpacking. Knees in the dirt, fingers moving with the practiced indifference of long familiarity. The bag gave up its contents: the last of our herbs—withered, sour-scented—the knife with the crooked handle, the axe.

  Tools of unholy precision. Not made for healing. Not even for killing. Tools meant to extract meaning from suffering born beyond the veil of nature.

  Thunder groaned again. Closer. Louder. The storm circling its prize.

  “This will need to be hurried,” Elrik muttered, wiping mud from the blade with the hem of his sleeve. “I will not shelter near this mess for any price.”

  “Focus. Listen. And work.”

  I touched the bone. Just a finger. Just enough.

  There.

  A pulse. A tremble. Not warmth—not quite—but a tingle that ran the length of my arm, like touching iron under lightning.

  Sebastian’s soul, or what else remained, may not have flown. It may never have been freed. Something lingered.

  “It is solid,” I whispered. “I feel the hum.”

  Elrik nodded once. Grim, sharp.

  “Then we bless God,” he said, “and take what we must.”

  I grabbed a bone. A femur, I think. Could’ve been mistaken for a branch—bleached, hollow, brittle where life once pulsed. Lighter than it should’ve been. Lighter than death ought to be.

  My knife slid through it easy. Too easy. The marrow was long gone, replaced by something else. The air turned sour fast—wet, coppery, like spoiled breath trapped in a jar. The herbs helped, but not enough. My head burned. My eyes swam. But the cut was made.

  Elrik had readied the vessel. Clay, lidded, thick with old soot. Filled with lantern oil—thin, acrid, just potent enough to bind what the living could not name. I dropped the slice in quick, before the essence of that cursed bone could take hold and start whispering.

  The oil caught it. Held it still. It would fester in there, tight and simmering, until commanded.

  “We leave!” I gasped, lungs already clawing at the miasma that filled the hut like a sickness come alive.

  We burst out, hands to our faces, as if we’d just fled a tanner’s den mid-boil. The wind hit us clean—cold and sharp.

  The light of day hit me like a lash. The clouds still roiled, still promised filth and thunder, but they couldn’t sour my mood now.

  We had a compass.

  Not yet heeding. Not yet ready. But in time, it would listen. In time, we could travel where we pleased—where others wouldn’t dare.

  “You may thank me when you deem it necessary, Elrik,” I called, voice still hoarse from the rot. “I seldom do wrong, but when I do, I right them rightly.”

  Thunder cracked again—closer now. Wetness thick in the air. A storm preparing to make good on its threats.

  “Follow,” I muttered. “Kesselbruck will keep us dry if we hide thoroughly.”

  I stepped forward, boots splashing shallow in the churned mud.

  Only my footfalls answered.

  That piss-poor excuse of a man always lingered. Always had to stare too long, listen too long, question too much.

  “Elrik, move.” I turned.

  He wasn’t facing me.

  He stood turned toward the hut, staring. The entrance had clouded again—shadowed, sunless, as if the day itself had drawn back in fear.

  “Stop gawking and follow before I beat some sense into you!”

  No response. No twitch of the head. No shift in posture.

  Fuck. Fuck.

  He better have gone deaf, or stupid with age. The alternative was not welcome.

  Not now.

  “Elrik! Listen here! Find my voice, you whoreson! Do not follow what has found you!”

  I moved—fast. Two strides, hand out, caught him by the collar and yanked.

  He stumbled, fell. I saw his face.

  Pupils blown wide. Eyes black as pitch. No light. No mind.

  By the Devil’s shit.

  Something had him.

  The bones. The old souls of rotten hags. Or some other thing—something we hadn’t seen, hadn’t felt, hadn’t accounted for.

  And then—

  He stood.

  Quick. Effortless. As if the fall had been a lie.

  He turned. Silent. Paced for the hut.

  No.

  “LISTEN TO ME! HEED ME! HEED ME!”

  But he didn’t.

  Damn this old fool to hell. Careful when it pleased him—measuring herbs like a priest, stepping with the caution of a dying man—but now? Now, when it mattered?

  No time.

  I drew my arm back, turned the hip, and let the fist fly. Felt the pop in my knuckles as it landed. A clean crack across his skull.

  He folded into the mud. Boneless. Limp.

  And he stood again.

  A gash above the brow, blood pouring freely down the nose, over lips gone slack. But his eyes—black.

  He met my gaze with something I had never seen in him.

  Fury.

  He reached for his axe. Raised it high.

  I remembered the runes on it

  God gave me thunder, to slay and maim the foul.

  The old bastard swung, but I was faster—stepped in close, caught his arms mid-arc, the axe frozen above us like a question not yet asked. I rammed my brow into his face. Felt the shock in my teeth, the pain bloom behind my eyes.

  He didn’t flinch.

  Didn’t blink.

  This thing was strong. Whatever power held him had left his sight, but not his body. He moved like a man freed from hesitation. No pause. No mercy.

  Fuck.

  Sebastian, you useless fucking corpse. You doomed us.

  Elrik roared.

  “Doomed you? What do you know of doom?”

  Shit, he could hear me. Sense me.

  His presence was overwhelming—filling the space like smoke, like a scream that refused to end.

  He was supposed to be bones. Nothing more. Powerless, dead, a tool, nothing more.

  And now the fucker moved with Elrik..

  He dropped the axe—just let it fall—and brought his fist across my ribs like a hammer swung by judgement itself. Something gave. The breath fled my chest in a single brutal gasp.

  “Oh, you shit-eating sinner!” he bellowed, spittle flying, teeth red.

  “Not fit for the rule of God nor Devil! I have felt Purgatory in life and death! I have suffered like the Savior did!”

  His voice cracked as he shouted, but there was no break in him. Only wrath—Like a bellow of hate, moving with Elrik's dry mouth. The kind that echoed with a dozen voices, a dozen centuries, all screaming through one ruined throat.

  "YOU DEFILE ME! Defile my being, my remains! I must go whole to Heaven! This man will take me there—carry me to the servants of the One Who Forgave. The Eternal Protector."

  Elrik crouched over me, knees in the mud, fingers locked around my throat. The pressure was cold, measured. No shaking. No hesitation. A strength meant to end.

  "You will not sour my ascension. You have tainted the earth too long."

  And with that, he saw fit to end me.

  The calloused hands of my meek companion, now engines of execution, tightened around my throat.

  You sorry sack of bones.

  I shall end you.

  As my vision dimmed, I did what I had to—what I had longed for on worse days.

  I pulled my knife and stabbed.

  The sound of Elrik was pitiful. Somewhere between a dog being kicked and an old drunkard realizing his error. It burst out of him ragged and real.

  His eyes flickered.

  Something returned—barely more than a blink. A glint of his former self.

  Took you long enough.

  I’d driven the blade into his thigh. Might’ve scraped bone. I wasn’t sorry.

  I was only sorry enough not to knock his teeth out when I struck him with my free hand. A clean blow. Heavy.

  He dropped.

  My throat ached. My back ran wet with sweat and filth. But my fury stayed aloft—high, proud, like the towers the whores of faith built for their saints. False saints. Hollow gods in gilded skin.

  “You tainted this earth long before you turned to bone, Sebastian!” I spat, voice raw. “Spouting the same piss the pious whores shrieked when they denied your death! When they used your suffering!”

  I staggered forward.

  “I’ll end you myself. And I’ll piss on your bones when it’s done.”

  A pulse.

  A beat.

  In my skull. Behind the eyes. A creeping, drowning sort of dark that slid down the spine.

  I was the new target.

  A voice answered—not from Elrik’s mouth, but from my own mind.

  “You apostate! Nothing is holy to beings such as you!”

  The voice was iron dragged across stone. Ancient. Joyless.

  “You think Hell awaits? Red-hot tongs peeling your skin until judgment comes? No. I have lingered in the beyond. It is dark. I crawled back. I will find the promised reward—”

  The voice deepened. Broadened.

  “And you. Will. Take me there.”

  The pain hurt. My eyes burned. The throbbing ached behind them like old voices—forgotten companions, long dead, now sharpened into barbs.

  All of it was a test. No—a goad. A sneer. A baited hook meant to make me bow.

  But I would not bow.

  As the blackness closed in, as that wet cold spread through my spine like mold on bread, I spoke—not with prayer, but with vengeance.

  “I would heed no sorry sack of shit. Nor bones.”

  I said it like a litany, if a litany could foam with hate.

  “No. Your power is vain. It is faded. It is ended.”

  And then I gave him the sermon he deserved.

  “What power have you?” I spat. “What mercy do you think clings to you? You, a pile of rot and dust?”

  I could feel the pressure begin to slip. The voice wavered.

  “You tasted the darkness—and cried,” I sneered. “You crawled back like a worm. As if this living hell was somehow better? You call that strength?”

  The pain receded. The black pulled back. My fury fed the light.

  “You are no saint. No curse. Just a pitiful soul that refused to die cleanly. That festers where it should have burned.”

  I clenched my fists. I dared him now.

  “God sees nothing in you, whore-son. Sebastian. Your life is as null as your death. Embrace it. Be gone!”

  No silence followed—only the feeling of something withdrawing, bitter and beaten.

  And then, air. Light. Myself again.

  My mind lifted. The drunkard fog retreated, staggered back into the corners of my skull where it belonged. The world stopped spinning, and the weight—his weight—lifted from my chest like a dying storm.

  So that was it. A stern word was all it took. Not some rite, not some relic. Just a tongue sharp enough to name him for what he was.

  A mistake.

  I slapped Elrik on the chin with the back of my hand. Not hard, but sharp enough to bring him back.

  “Wake up, you useless dog. Tend to your leg.”

  He blinked. Winced. Pathetic. For a second I thought he might sob, hands trembling as they pressed to the wound. Let him. A child’s shame for a child’s failure.

  “Laying hands on me?” I barked. “Choking the life out of me? Weak-willed fool. So easily taken by voices in the dirt.”

  He was wrapping his thigh now. Cloth, belt, whatever he had. He muttered, eyes downcast.

  “It had me?” His voice was small. “What have I done?”

  “You did enough.”

  I turned from him. Reached for my powder horn. Poured a healthy heap near the entrance—enough to cook the floorboards—and lit the tinder. A low flame caught quick, hungrily, casting long flickers over the twisted bones of Sebastian the Dead.

  Still crouched near the door, I pulled out the flask. The oil. The fragment.

  I held it close to the fire.

  Put it to my ear.

  It sang.

  It hummed.

  Now, it was under me.

  I turned back. “Come, Elrik.” I hauled him up like a sack, steadied him on one foot as the flames licked the edge of the threshold.

  We watched as the shack began to smolder.

  “The tool is made,” I said, voice calm as a grave.

  “We make ready to leave another day.”