Aric opened his eyes.
Sunlight filtered through the trees, spilling across the ruins in pale gold. The sky was clear. Birds called from somewhere beyond the broken walls, their songs so ordinary that they seemed out of place.
He turned his head and found Eryx sitting nearby, his back against a crumbling stone wall. A strip of cloth had been tied around his injured shoulder. His face was swollen, and dried blood darkened the corner of his mouth.
He was watching the trees.
"You’re awake," Eryx said.
Aric swallowed. His throat felt raw. "How long?"
"Since the sun came up."
"You stayed awake?"
Eryx glanced at him. "Couldn’t trust the place enough to sleep."
Aric tried to sit up. Pain tore through his arm, and he stopped with a sharp breath.
"Don’t," Eryx warned.
"I need to get up."
"You need to stop making your injuries worse."
Aric looked down at his arm. It hung close to his body, held there by the makeshift support they had fashioned during the night. The pain was worse than he wanted to admit, but he could not remain on the ground.
"We can’t stay here."
Eryx pushed himself to his feet and crossed the few steps between them and offered his good arm.
"Lean on me."
Aric accepted it. When he tried to stand, his knees nearly folded. Eryx caught him and held him until he found his balance.
Together, they began moving through the ruined village.
In daylight, the place looked even more empty. The houses that had seemed warm and welcoming beneath their lanterns were now heaps of broken and rotting wood. The paths had cracked apart, and weeds grew through the gaps. Trees had pushed their roots into old foundations, splitting walls that had once sheltered families.
And the bones were everywhere.
A skull lay beside a fallen doorway. A hand protruded from beneath a collapsed beam. Small ribs rested among the weeds, pale against the dark soil.
Aric slowed his pace.
The night before, he had seen the village disappear. He had watched its people fade with it. But he had not understood what they were until now.
They had been dead long before he and Eryx arrived.
"Keep your eyes ahead," Eryx said quietly.
Aric tried. His gaze kept returning to the bones.
They passed the remains of a house whose roof had fallen inward. Near the broken wall, a skeleton lay curled on its side. Its bones were thin and brittle, and its fingers remained closed around a small leather journal.
Aric stopped.
Eryx followed his gaze. "What is it?"
"A journal."
Aric crouched carefully, keeping his injured arm against his chest. The skeleton’s fingers had stiffened around the cover. He eased the journal free, one finger at a time. A few flakes of bone crumbled beneath his touch.
The leather was cracked. Its edges had darkened with age, but the pages were still bound together.
He opened it.
The first entries were written in neat, careful lines.
Something is moving in the forest beyond the village. We heard it after midnight. The dogs would not stop barking, and the children woke up crying.
I told my daughter it was only an animal.
She asked if animals could open doors.
I told her no.
I hope I was right.
Aric turned the page.
Day Five.
The Miller’s boy has gone missing.
They searched the woods until nightfall. His father came back alone, carrying the boy’s shoe.
His mother is still waiting at the door. She keeps asking if anyone has seen him.
I wanted to tell her to come inside. I wanted to tell her he would return.
I could not make myself say it.
The next entry had been written several days later.
Day Twelve.
It took my little girl.
Aric’s eyes paused on the words.
She was playing by the old well while I was inside preparing supper. I heard her laughter floating through the open window, and then the sound vanished. I was gone for only a minute. Only a single minute. I searched until my feet bled into the soil. I screamed her name until my throat tore. There was no answer.
I found one of her ribbons caught on a branch.
It was the yellow one she wore because she said it made her look like the sun.
I was gone for only a moment.
Only a moment.
I still hear her laughter in the empty corners of the house.
The handwriting remained steady, but water had smeared the ink in dark spots across the page.
Aric turned another page.
Day Twenty.
It mocks our grief.
At night, we hear children crying outside the walls. Sometimes we hear our own names. Last night, I heard my daughter calling for me.
She sounded cold and frightened.
I ran outside without shoes. I called to her until my throat hurt.
There was nothing there.
When I returned, my husband sat beside our daughter’s empty bed. He had heard her voice too.
Aric lowered the journal slightly.
Day Thirty.
We sent my husband to the capital. He promised he would return with help.
I begged him to stay and that he shouldn’t leave but he had made up his mind.
He never came back.
We sent a youth next.
He was a brave and eager young man.
?But he never returned either.
Day Forty.
Why does the king abandon us? We have written letters. We have begged on our knees. We have offered every coin we possess. There are innocent children here. There are mothers and fathers who only wish to protect their homes.
Why will no one save us?
Why can’t they grant us salvation?
Why are we left to rot?
The lettering grew frantic toward the bottom, as if the writer had pressed the pen so hard the tip bruised the paper.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Aric’s fingers tightened around the journal.
He could almost hear the voice behind those lines. A mother waiting by the road, watching every distant shape, still unable to surrender the hope that someone would come.
He turned the page.
Day Fifty.
It brought my family back to me.
My daughter’s small bones in her father’s bones embrace
They were on the doorstep when I opened the door. All that remained of them, arranged as though someone had carefully returned what they had taken.
I could not touch them.
I could not cry.
Why would it do that? Why would it bring them back only to show me what was left?
Day Sixty.
It keeps us trapped here.
Every road we take leads back to the village. We have tried walking through the forest. We have tried following the river. We have tried leaving at dawn and travelling until night.
We always return.
It watches us suffer.
It wants us to understand that we cannot escape.
The entries became less regular after that. Some pages were blank. Whole pages were left blank. Others held only a few words written in a trembling, fragile hand.
Then Aric found the lines that made his pulse freeze.
Day Seventy.
My body has become that of an old lady, I don’t know why but I know Salvation is not coming.
So I will bring salvation to myself.
The writing on the following page was jagged. Several sentences had been violently scratched out, tearing holes through the parchment.
Day Eighty.
It will not let me die.
I took a knife into the forest. I went far enough that I believed it could not find me. I pressed the knife to my flesh.
It found me.
It pulled the knife from my hand. It held me down while I fought and clawed at the dirt. I screamed until my voice failed completely.
When it released me, my heart was still beating.
Why?
The next entry had been written in a faded grey ink, as if by a hand that could barely grip the pen.
Day Eighty-Five.
It will not let me bring salvation to myself.
It will not let me leave.
It will not let me die.
What does it want from me?
Aric turned the page slowly.
Day Ninety.
Perhaps I have misunderstood.
Perhaps I was blind.
It has kept us here. It has prevented us from dying.
Perhaps the monster is the only thing that can end our suffering.
Perhaps it took our children because it needed them.
Perhaps it returned their bones because it wanted us to understand.
I do not know what I am writing.
I do not know what I believe.
I only know that I cannot bear this pain anymore.
Perhaps the monster is the only way to salvation.
Aric stared at the words.
The final page was filled with a single repeating phrase, crowded together in a frantic spiral
Day Ninety-Five.
He is salvation.
He will grant us peace.
He is salvation.
He is salvation.
He is salvation.
The words crowded the page. They were written again and again, some neat, some slanted, some so deeply carved into the paper that the pen had nearly torn through.
At the bottom, the final line stood alone.
He is salvation..
Aric closed the journal.
For a while, neither he nor Eryx spoke.
The Warden had not merely trapped the villagers. It had taken their children, returned their bones, and watched their grief turn into something broken. Then, when they had lost every hope of rescue, it had allowed them to believe that their tormentor was their saviour.
Aric looked at the skeleton beside him.
Its fingers had curled around the journal as though it had been the last thing the writer could hold on to.
A small, faded drawing lay near its hand. The paper had been folded several times. Aric opened it carefully.
A house. A tree. Three figures holding hands.
Two were tall and the other was small, with a crooked circle for a head and lines for arms.
A family.
A child had drawn it.
Aric looked toward the scattered bones beyond the ruined wall. A little ribcage lay among them, half covered by dirt.
His throat tightened.
"Eryx."
Eryx crouched beside him. "What?"
"Help me bury them."
Eryx looked at the little ribcage among the scattered bones.
He had read the journal beside Aric. Neither of them needed to speak about what they had learned.
Aric lowered himself beside the child’s remains and began clearing the dirt away with his good hand. Eryx knelt beside him.
They had no proper tools, no words that could make the loss smaller. So they began gathering the bones gently, one by one.
The village had been forgotten by the world.
But they would not leave its dead behind.