Rylan Foil's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The woman climbed into the passenger seat of her wagon without asking if he was coming. Rylan followed. She didn't offer her name, and he didn't give his. The road ahead stretched east, and somewhere at the end of it was the merchant who sold luck—if his curse didn't catch up first. They reached the village an hour before sunset. The chapel stood at the crossroads, or what was left of it. The roof had collapsed inward, the steeple lay broken across the snow, and the stained glass window was shattered into colored fragments scattered across the steps. People knelt in the ruins, heads bowed, dressed in wool cloaks and leather coats against the cold. They'd built a memorial from the rubble—stones stacked carefully, candles flickering in the wind. Someone had carved names into the largest piece of fallen timber. Rylan stopped walking. The woman beside him touched his arm. "You passed through here three days ago," she said quietly. "Asked about the merchant at the inn. The chapel fell that night." An older man rose from the kneeling crowd and walked toward them. He carried something wrapped in cloth. He didn't speak, just unfolded the fabric to reveal a child's wooden toy—a carved bird with painted wings, cracked down the middle. Behind him, the other villagers stood. Their faces weren't angry. They were empty, like they'd already spent everything they had and only grief remained. The man held out the toy. "My granddaughter was inside," he said. "She went in to practice her singing. The roof came down on her." He pressed the toy into Rylan's hands. "You did this. Everyone says you did this." Rylan looked at the broken bird, then at the ruined chapel, then at the faces watching him. He could deny it. He could say curses don't work that way, that correlation isn't cause, that he never touched the building. But the watch in the woman's pocket had frozen solid. The bridge had fallen. The shelf had collapsed. And now a child was dead because he'd walked past a chapel three days ago. He closed his fingers around the toy. "I'm trying to end this," he said. "I'm hunting the merchant who can break the curse. That's all I have." The man's expression didn't change. "Then you'd better catch him," he said, "before you kill anyone else." The woman tugged Rylan's sleeve, pulling him back toward the wagon. The villagers didn't follow. They just returned to their kneeling, their memorial, their names carved in fallen timber. Rylan climbed into the wagon still holding the broken bird. The woman took up the reins. "The merchant went through here too," she said. "Two days before you. He's close now." Rylan nodded. He couldn't fix what he'd broken. But he could finally catch what he was chasing—and he had to, because the next collapse might be worse.