Remington “Rem” Riley's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

Rem did not go into the cave that night. The storm drove him back to the lodge, the axe warm against his palm the whole way down. But the red pull would not leave him alone. It tugged at his arm through breakfast, through the woodpile, through every empty room. He knew the axe belonged to his family. He did not know why it wanted the mountain. No living relative had ever told him. So he went looking for the ones who could not speak. His relatives had left the lodge to him, and they had left their things too. Rem climbed to the storage room under the roof. Boxes filled the space, stacked and gray with dust. He opened them one by one. Old ledgers. Cracked photographs of men who had his dark eyes. A bundle of frayed winter clothes, the mittens patched, the scarf worn thin. He set the clothes aside and kept digging. At the bottom of the last box he found a battered room key. Dark red stains ran down the metal, dried and old. It did not fit any door he knew. Beneath it lay a leather book, water-swollen, its pages stuck together. Rem pried them open with his thumb. The handwriting was small and slanted. His grandfather's name was signed inside the cover. Page after page described the same mountain from the guest's journal, the same jagged silhouette. His grandfather had written about the axe. Rem read it twice to be sure. The axe was forged to kill a creature that lived in the caves. His family had hunted it for generations. Each hunter carried the axe up the mountain. The red glow marked the beast's blood, and the blood called the iron home. Rem's hands went cold. The last entry named a date, then broke off. His grandfather had gone up the pass and never come back. The room key, the stains, the vanished guest. The pattern was not new. It had happened before. He stood and looked out the small window. The mountain sat black against the clouds, its cave mouths dark. He understood the pull now. The axe was not lost. It knew exactly where it wanted to go, because his family had always answered it. Every one of them had walked up that pass. Most had not walked down. Rem gathered the worn coat and mittens from the box and pulled them on. He clipped the stained key to his belt. Then he lifted the axe. The red glow bloomed the moment his fingers closed on the handle, brighter now, steady, aimed at the mountain like a needle. He no longer walked blind. He knew what he was hunting, and he knew it had killed his own blood before. He opened the door and started down the stairs toward the pass.