Willow's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

The village square was quiet when Stryker arrived with the last cultist. The chains rattled as the turtle stumbled forward, wrists bound with swamp rope. Stryker stopped at the edge of the square and stared at the memorial stone. Willow stood beside it. She was alive. Her hands rested on iron shackles piled at her feet—the beast's chains, broken and empty. The memorial bore her name carved deep beside the cultists', but she stood beneath the twisted willow tree as if she'd never left. Stryker's grip loosened on the rope. The cultist fell to his knees. Willow met Stryker's eyes. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. The beast was free. The elders were gone. And she had walked out of the shrine's trap alive, carrying the chains that had bound the creature she'd been ordered to capture. Stryker nodded once, then led the cultist toward the stone. Whatever had happened in that chamber, Willow had found a way out—and the village would have to carve a new story into the memorial now. Willow turned from the stone and walked toward the edge of the square. Behind her, the abyss at the center of the village yawned dark and deep, its mouth framed by moss-covered stones. She stopped at its edge and dropped the chains into the void. They vanished without a sound. The cult was finished. The beast was free. And for the first time since the elders had bound her to that oath, Willow had no orders to follow.