Silent Salt's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Silent Salt knelt in the snow of Everfrost, black armor dull beneath a gray sky. He had come this far hunting the Beast whose whispers once ruined him. But the trail had gone cold days ago, and the cold inside him was worse. His gauntlet rested on the hilt at his hip, yet he could not make himself rise. "Oh, what a tableau," came a voice like silk pulled across glass. Shadow Milk strolled across the frost, dragging a colossal silver fork behind him. Its prongs carved a thin pink trail in the snow. "The great Devil of Silence, reduced to a kneeling prop. Such a generous word, hunter, for a man who cannot stand." He lifted the giant fork high. "Allow me to give your sorrow a shape." He drove the fork down. Three prongs punched through the plate of Silent Salt's shoulder and pinned him to the frozen ground. Silent Salt did not cry out. He stared at the silver shaft rising from his body like a monument, and felt the grief settle into him as something solid at last. Shadow Milk bowed and walked away, leaving the fork standing in the snow. Silent Salt remained beneath it, pinned, awake, and finally unable to pretend the wound was old.