Ezthamic's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

Ezthamic returned to Veyra's Hollow with the creature's blood still drying on his hands. He wanted answers. The residents knew the eyeless hunters better than anyone, and one of them might explain why the things hesitated near him. But when he pulled back his sleeve to show the dark veins moving beneath his skin, the room went quiet. A woman backed toward the door. An old man raised a lantern like a weapon. They had seen those marks before, on the bodies they burned. "You carry it too," the old man said. "Whatever hollows them out. We won't bleed for your questions." No one would speak. Ezthamic left with nothing. Outside, the blood on his palm dripped onto a young Veinroot at the settlement's edge. The plant shuddered. It swelled and split. A towering crimson flower rose from the ground, petals folding open to reveal a ring of bone teeth around a wet, gaping mouth. Its black limbs stabbed at him. Ezthamic dove aside. His arm hardened and split, bone pushing out to form a blade. He drove it into the flower's stem. The teeth snapped shut on empty air. He struck again, and the bloom collapsed in a heap of dead petals. Where it fell, the earth had loosened. Ezthamic dug with his changed hand and found a heavy black casket wrapped in dark roots. A handprint was carved into its lid. He pressed his palm against it. The stone opened. Inside lay a curved mark of bone, and beneath it, words scratched into the lining: Do not trust what remembers you. He understood then. The answers were not in Veyra's Hollow. They were buried in the land itself, in the things that knew his face before he did. A shadow crossed the ground. Ezthamic looked up. A great winged predator circled overhead, its body black, its skull sheathed in ivory bone. Three red eyes fixed on him. It did not attack. It turned and glided toward the far horizon, where the sky bled red over a broken shape of curving ribs. Ezthamic gripped the bone mark and started walking. The residents would not help him. But the land remembered him, and it was pointing the way. Ahead, past the bleeding ground, the rib-shaped cathedral waited. Whatever lived at its center already knew his name.