Arden Lowe's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sassafras had gone dark, one window at a time, and Arden Lowe had watched every light die. She stood at the treeline in her mud-caked uniform, still as a fence post, never blinking. Twelve houses. Twelve souls she had taken by watching their last light go out. One window still burned somewhere in the town. She meant to claim that final soul too. But she did not know which house held it, and the town held forty dark houses to hide one flame. Each night she guessed wrong. She fixed her eyes on a black window and waited for a light that never lit. The living soul slept elsewhere, safe, while she wasted the dark. Nights were short. Dawn broke her power. If she chose wrong until the town emptied on its own, the last soul might die of age or leave by the road, and her claim would slip away. So tonight Arden did not watch. She walked. Her boots sank in the wet ground at the town's low edge, where the water pooled black between the roots. She would find the soul, not wait for it. The swamp answered her steps. The water bulged. A vast shape rose from the muck, wide as a barn, its swollen flesh dripping green weed. Moss hung from its jaw. One yellow eye rolled toward her and fixed. The creature had guarded this low water long before Arden came to the treeline. It did not want her crossing. Arden did not run. She could not be drowned or bitten. She stepped into the black water and walked straight at the eye. The leviathan lunged. Its jaws closed on empty air where a living thing would have been. Arden passed through the cold of its breath and kept walking. The creature could not hold what it could not touch. But the beast was not only a wall. It was a nose. It swung its heavy head and sniffed the wind, hunting warm blood the way Arden hunted souls. Its bulk turned north, toward the edge of the sleeping houses. It smelled something living. Arden followed the swing of that great head. She climbed out of the water and walked where the leviathan pointed. The creature dragged itself half onto the mud, straining toward one house at the end of the row. A low house. A shut house. Dark like all the rest. Arden stopped before it. She watched. She waited. A light bloomed behind the curtain. Gold and small. A candle, lit by a hand that could not sleep. The last soul in Sassafras sat awake behind that glass. Arden knew the house now. She fixed the window in her mind and did not blink. But the leviathan crouched in the mud beside her, drooling, its yellow eye fixed on the same warm light. It wanted the blood inside. She wanted the soul. Only one of them could reach the house first.