Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 35 of 44

The three-headed elk carried Bailey and Tyrek deep into the swamp before dawn. Bailey's mother's pages named one place to close the seal for good—the deep water, where his uncle stayed bound. But the pages did not say how. They only said the seal could shatter if he guessed wrong. Bailey clutched the rolled parchment and felt the thing in his chest press against his ribs. He needed a record of how his mother first made the seal. Without it, he would arrive at the deep water blind. Rufus met them at the water's edge, red beard damp, waders sunk to his knees in mud. His cousin had been searching the old ground his mother once used. "Found something," Rufus said. He heaved a slab of gray stone from a sling on his back and set it down. The stone was cracked into six pieces, held together only by its own weight. Faint marks ran across its face. "It was buried under her floor. I couldn't read it. Figured you could." Bailey knelt and pressed his bare hands to the tablet. The old tongue woke under his skin the way it always did. The marks sharpened into words. His breath caught. The tablet showed the first sealing—his mother's hands, the entity forced small, the words she spoke to bind it inside a living cage. Bailey read the closing rite twice, slow, tracing each fractured line so no piece went missed. Then he reached the last panel, and the stone lied to him. A deep crack split the final words in half. The rite ended mid-phrase. "It's broken here," he said. "The last words are gone." He looked up at Rufus. "If I speak it wrong, the seal breaks early. It said so." Cora crouched beside him, cracked wand in her fist, robe stained. His sister set her hand over the shattered corner and closed her eyes. "The stone's still whole underneath," she murmured. "The crack didn't take the marks. It just hid them." She worked a thin thread of magic into the fracture. The dust lifted. Beneath the break, worn but there, the final marks surfaced. Bailey read them. The rite was complete now, every word in his head. He knew how the seal was first closed. He knew he could close it again—but only at the deep water, spoken over the thing itself, with his own life the cage that held it. There was no version where he stayed whole. To shut the seal for good, he had to lock it inside himself forever. He rolled the tablet's memory tight in his mind and stood. Tyrek watched him, arms crossed, waiting. "You have it," Tyrek said. It was not a question. "I have it," Bailey said. "And I know what it costs." He mounted the elk. "Take us to the deep water."