Willow's Arc

Chapter 6 of 12

Willow circled back toward the cypress shrine. The salamander had paid for information about her, but she didn't know what he planned to do with it. The elders might already know she'd found the gem. She kept her hand in her pocket, fingers wrapped around the glowing crystal. She reached the shrine as twilight settled over the village. The wooden platform stood empty, but fresh claw marks gouged the mud near the entrance. The beast had returned while she was gone. She knelt and traced the marks with her finger—they led beneath the shrine itself, to a gap between two foundation posts she'd never noticed before. She crawled forward and found stone steps descending into darkness. The passage opened into a chamber carved from swamp rock. Moss glowed faintly on the walls, casting enough light to see by. At the center stood an altar made of bleached bones spiraling upward like a tower. Beast scales littered the floor around it, fresh ones still wet from the water. This was what drew it back. Not the elders. Not their rituals. This place. A stone tablet leaned against the far wall, symbols carved deep into its surface. She recognized the elder's mark at the bottom—the same one they pressed into their scrolls. The inscription above it was simple: "The beast returns to what it protects. We take what it guards." Willow stepped closer and saw a depression in the altar's base, the exact size and shape of the teal crystal in her pocket. The elders hadn't sent her to catch the beast. They'd sent her to drive it away from this chamber so they could claim whatever the crystal unlocked. She turned and climbed back toward the surface, leaving the gem in her pocket. The beast wasn't the threat. The elders were.