Dirt, Bones, and Other Inheritances
The morning started with the sound of something clawing at a headstone.
Neiki didn't bother to check which grave. He simply rolled over on his creaky floor mattress, threw a hand over his face, and groaned into his palm.
"It's too early to deal with this."
The cabin he called home sat crooked at the edge of the graveyard, as if it had been dropped there by mistake. Its roof slouched under the weight of rot and wetness. The walls breathed with the cold air of something that had never been truly empty. Bones clattered in windchimes just outside the door, and a large skull hung at the center of the warped doorframe, marked with deep scratches that looked disturbingly like fingernails.
One of Neiki's own additions.
Not for charm.
Not for welcome.
For warning and to scare weak undead.
He sat up slowly. His long, thick black hair was half-braided from the night before, the rest spilling down his back in uneven waves. He tied it into a rough ponytail, looping it through a carved bone hairpin that scratched faintly against his knuckles. Then he shrugged into his coat—a dark, leather lined with stitched scraps of bones and teeths . More hunter than scholar. More crypt-walker than hero.
His necklace of finger bones clacked softly as he moved, each piece carved, etched, and smoothed by hand. His arms bore thin black tattoos, glyphs of protection inked across his forearms and curling to his chest , some are remnants of a binding ritual he'd agreed to under protest. Bone anklets rattled faintly when undead energy was detected at his ankel, less decorative and more practical; they made it harder for ghosts to sneak up on him.
And at his hip, tucked beneath folds of cloth, sat the one thing he never let out of reach:
A small, worn leather pouch, sealed with a rune-stamped bone clasp. It pulsed faintly with stored energy, raw, shifting, and unpredictable. The pouch could trap a whisper. It could pull a soul. If he tried hard enough, it could even kidnap someone body and all.
He never did.
Mostly because the last time it tried to take him, it took a week to crawl back out and he bore grudges.
He lit a lantern. Not that he needed it. The graveyard was always dim, no matter the hour. The mist that clung to the earth like wet gauze never lifted fully, and the trees growing in twisted loops along the boundary blocked any direct sunlight. A place of death, forgotten even by those who built it.
Neiki found it peaceful.Odd jobs like collecting and piecing fragments, burying restless bones, maintaining runic seals, and occasionally uncovering relics or ancient scripts kept him busy. It was a routine, a system and definitely not a bad life.
Or at least, it hadn't been.
Not since the Bone Collector died.
Now the quiet had turned brittle. The dead were restless. Shadows moved at the edges of the path like someone walking just out of sight. Sometimes, he heard weeping. Sometimes, worse—nothing at all, except the weight of eyes pressing into his back.