The rain hadn't started yet, but Kael could smell it in the air. Heavy, metallic, laced with something faintly bitter—like the scent of old coins dug up from a grave. Every step he took was deliberate, not because he feared being followed, but because the ground itself felt… alive. The earth under his boots was warm in places, cold in others, as though the land had been burned and frozen in the same breath.
He was heading away from the Ruined Hollows, yet the Hollows did not seem to be leaving him. Every tree he passed leaned slightly inward, their skeletal branches reaching toward him like a congregation bowing before a passing god. The fog slithered along the ground in slow coils, not dispersing, only shifting to watch him move.
The whispers were the worst part.
They had begun when the monolith in the Hollow cleared itself of ancient runes and spelled his name. At first, they had been faint, like the memory of a voice speaking across a dream. Now they were constant. Low, patient, and far too articulate to be madness.
Bone Scroll… Bone Scroll…
The sound wasn't loud, but it pressed against him the way cold water presses against skin beneath ice.
Kael tightened his grip on the strap of his scythe, trying to ignore it. The woman in black feathers had said the words like a warning, but the whispers made them sound like a promise. His name written on it. His life already tied to it. The question was not if he would find it, but when.
The forest thinned gradually until the black shapes of trees gave way to the outline of something manmade. Moss-covered cobblestones peeked from beneath the soil—what had once been a road, cracked and broken by roots. Kael followed its path until the scent of smoke, long gone cold, reached his nose.
A village lay ahead.
Or what was left of one.
Charred beams jutted from collapsed houses like ribs from carcasses. Roofs had caved in under the weight of time and rain. No firelight. No sound but the faint patter of moisture sliding from leaves. Kael stepped into the main street, boots brushing against brittle remains of baskets, tools, and fragments of pottery.
Then he saw them.
Corpses. Dozens of them. Lying exactly where they had fallen—mid-step, mid-reach, mid-breath. But they had not rotted. Their skin was pale and smooth, their hair untouched, their clothes preserved. And each bore the same spiral brand, burned into the flesh above their hearts. The same mark the old man had carried before he turned to a husk.
They all faced him.
Even in death, their glassy eyes seemed aware, following his every move.
Kael crouched beside the nearest body, tracing the edge of the burned spiral with one finger. The skin was cold, but wrong. It was not the cold of the grave. It was a cold that waited.
"You're late," a voice called from above.
Kael looked up sharply.
A boy sat perched on the roof of a half-collapsed house, his bare feet dangling, a knife longer than his forearm in one hand. Pale hair fell across one eye, and his smile was faint, deliberate. It was the same boy Kael had seen before—the one who wasn't truly a boy at all.
"You again," Kael said, rising to his feet.
"Me again," the boy replied, sliding down from the roof with effortless grace. "You move slowly for someone in such a hurry."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "You've been following me."
"Not following," the boy said, pacing in a slow circle around him. "Waiting."
"For what?"
"For you to stop pretending you don't want it."
Kael's pulse quickened. "Want what?"
The boy's gaze sharpened, and his voice dropped to a near-whisper. "The Scroll. The one calling your name."
Kael didn't speak.
"You've heard it," the boy continued. "In your dreams. In the silence between your breaths. You know it belongs to you."
Kael took a step closer. "Then give it to me."
The boy tilted his head in mock sympathy. "It's not something you can be given. It has to be claimed. Taken from the one who holds it now."
Kael's fingers brushed the hilt of his scythe. "And who holds it now?"
The boy's smile widened, revealing teeth too sharp for a child's mouth. "The Second Harbinger."
The name sank deep into Kael's bones. He remembered the shadow-wrapped figure in the Hollow clearing, the mask split clean down the center. It hadn't moved like a man. It hadn't even breathed like one.
"What is it?" Kael asked.
"Something older than your pact," the boy replied, stepping closer until his voice was a ghost against Kael's ear. "Older than the first breath of this world. He has carried the Scroll since before the first grave was dug. If you want it, you'll have to bleed for it."
Lightning flashed across the sky, and for a split second, Kael thought he saw movement among the corpses—fingers twitching, heads shifting. Then the moment passed.
"And when I take it?" Kael asked.
The boy's eyes gleamed. "Then you won't just be the fracture. You'll be the wound."
Kael opened his mouth to reply, but the boy was already stepping backward into the mist. His body unraveled into black threads of shadow, dissolving into the fog until only the echo of his words remained.
"When you're ready… the Scroll will find you."
The rain finally broke, heavy and cold, soaking Kael's cloak in moments. He looked once more at the corpses, at their unwavering glassy stares, and for the first time, he thought he understood what they were doing.
They were waiting.
Not for salvation. Not for release.
For him.
And somewhere in the heart of the storm, the whispers grew louder.
Bone Scroll… Bone Scroll…