Renni Ashfire's Arc

Chapter 10 of 12

The blood trail thinned as Renni climbed, fat drops giving way to a fine red mist on the leaves. She knew where it led. The golden stairs rose again before her, quiet in the slanted light, and at their foot she saw the place where the beast had stopped bleeding. The stone wall there was split with bright cracks, glowing faintly, as if a fire still burned inside the rock. Scorch marks fanned out where the wounds had closed. The shrine had done its work once more. She climbed the stairs with the runed blade loose in her hand. No satyr stopped her this time. At the door she knelt and drew a small flat stone from her pouch, the one she carried to sharpen her edge. She pressed her thumb to the blade and let the blood well, then dragged her name across the threshold stone in slow, steady letters. RENNI. A mark. A promise. If she did not come out, someone walking these woods would know who had gone in. She pushed the door. Inside, the shrine was warm and close, the air thick with old smoke and something sweeter under it. At the center stood a long carved box, lid open, its sides worked with gold and pale blue stone. The beast lay curled inside it, ribs rising slow, the wound under its jaw sealed to a pink seam. It was not dead. It was sleeping while the box mended it. Around the chamber, faint cracks in the walls glowed the same dull red as the stone outside. Renni stepped to the coffin's edge and set the runed blade against the beast's throat. She did not strike. She drew the edge down once, hard and clean, and the seam opened again in a black rush. The beast spasmed and was still. The glow in the walls guttered out. She stood a long moment in the dark, breathing, then turned and walked back through the door she had marked, leaving the shrine quiet behind her.