Stryker's Arc

Chapter 13 of 16

Stryker sat with her back against the wall and listened. Croaker shifted beside her, testing the rope around his wrists. Through the doorway in the next room, voices rose and fell. The elders had arrived. She recognized their rhythm from the village—slow, deliberate, measured against decades of silence. She pulled herself to her feet and moved to the doorway. The elders stood in a circle around a cloaked figure who held the Scaled Gem up to the light. Behind them, a massive tree rose from black water pooling at its roots. Forty gnarled branches twisted upward, each one wrapped in tattered cloth. The elders argued about the curse—how many years it had held, whether the gem would break it, what would happen to the families still bound by it. The cloaked figure pointed to a stone monument near the tree. Names carved deep into its surface, covered in creeping moss. Stryker saw her grandmother's name at the top. Below it, terms written in old script: the gem delivered within forty years, or the curse passes to the next generation. The elders wanted the gem destroyed. The cloaked figures refused. They'd waited too long to let it go now. Stryker stepped into the room. Every head turned. She looked at the monument, then at the gem in the cloaked figure's hand. She said her grandmother had tried to deliver it but failed. The curse had already passed. The elders went silent. One of the cloaked figures lowered their hood and studied her face. After a long moment, they nodded. The deal would be honored—if Stryker completed what her grandmother couldn't. They would lift the curse in exchange for one more task. Stryker asked what they wanted. The figure gestured toward the deep marsh. Something still lived in the ruins. Something that had broken free when the gem started glowing. They wanted proof it was dead. Stryker looked at Croaker, then back at the figure. She agreed. The cloaked figure cut the ropes from her wrists and placed the gem back in her hands. The curse wasn't broken yet. But now she knew the price.