It never began with fire, screaming, or death.
It began with the sound of fingernails scraping against the inside of a coffin.
And the realization that the child buried three days ago was still trying to claw her way home.
The graveyard dirt was still warm, and beneath it, something vast and wounded stirred. Even with autumn’s chill seeping through his clothes, the earth held fever.
Not soil and clay, but
something poisoned, corrupted.
Not earth anymore.
Something that…
Remembered.
Deep beneath the graves, the bedrock writhed in agony. Each stolen soul, each violated child, each drop of innocent blood had sunk into the foundations like acid, burning away whatever clean purpose the land had once served. The stones themselves whispered of pain, of order twisted into abomination.
Leizar pressed his palm against the fresh mound where they’d buried little Sera Millhaven. The earth pulsed like a heart.
Beneath his fingers, something tapped back-soft, rhythmic, desperate.
Tap tap tap.
Tap tap tap.
Ice sluiced through his veins. Delicate as a child knocking at a bedroom door. Patient as someone who had been waiting, waiting, waiting to be heard.
“She’s hungry,” the figure said behind him, voice thick with satisfaction. “They always are, after the Hollowing.”
Pale fingers carved symbols in the air-shapes that bent space until Leizar’s eyes watered to follow them. Not the gentle benedictions of the churches, but something older, hungrier. Signs that made shadows writhe and the earth shudder beneath his knees.
Leizar jerked his hand away. The tapping continued. Around them, seventeen other fresh graves trembled with the same desperate rhythm. Children’s graves. All buried in the last month. All still moving.
“The mushrooms feed on what’s left of them.” The figure knelt beside Sera’s stone, robes pooling like spilled ink, devouring the moonlight.
“Flesh rots,” he whispered. “But terror-terror lingers. Sweet on the tongue.”
He caressed the headstone with almost an obscene tenderness. “Would you like to hear her scream, boy? They keep screaming for days. Such sweet music. She calls for her mother every hour. Mama, please let me out. Please let me die properly this time.”
The earth split.
Not a crack, but a wound.
A tiny hand thrust upward, bone-white and smeared with grave dirt and something wet that smelled of copper and rot.
So small. So perfect. Sera’s hand-with the scar on her thumb from helping her mother with the kitchen knife. The hand that had waved goodbye to him only four days ago.
It groped blindly for warmth that would never come.
The dark figure pressed a pulsing, black-veined mushroom into her palm. She clutched it hungrily, dragging it back into the earth.
The silence that followed was worse than the tapping. The trees held their breath. Insects stilled. Even the wind died.
“Eighty-three down,” the figure whispered. “Seventeen to go. And then…” His eyes glowed with terrible devotion. “Then we’ll see what pretty sounds you make when we hollow you out too.”
Leizar’s shadow writhed against the moonlight. For a moment, just a moment, something deep in the darkness writhed back.
“Run along home, little lamb,” the figure purred. “Kiss your daddy goodnight. Tell him I send my regards.”
Leizar didn’t run. He watched with grim, almost satisfaction as the coffin lids rattled while children clawed to be let out, to be fed, to die properly this time. The poisoned ground seemed to heave under his feet, as if the earth itself was trying to vomit up what had been forced into it.
A hallowed voice on the wind whispered to him. “Embrace the darkness inside. Come home to me. The light hides the truth.”
“Your truth.”
Around the graves, more mushrooms sprouted from the poisoned soil, and as he watched, they began to grow eyes. Not human eyes, but something older. Hungrier. Eyes that had watched the world’s birth and would witness its ending, patient as stone and twice as cold.
He bent down and picked up a morel growing beside Sera’s grave-but when he touched it, the mushroom writhed with maggots, its flesh turning black and rotten. He stumbled backward, tripping over a gravestone, tearing knees on the jagged marble.
The graveyard began to fade, reality bleeding away at the edges like ink in water. His consciousness was being pulled back, a violent wrench of connection dragging him from whatever hell his shadow had walked into.
Leizar woke screaming.
The sound tore from his throat like something alive trying to escape, raw, animalistic and full of terror. In his right hand, he clutched a mushroom-but not the clean morel he’d seen in the vision. This one writhed with fat white maggots, their bodies pulsing as they burrowed through the rotting flesh of the fungus. The smell hit him like a physical blow: death and decay and something worse, something that made his stomach turn and his mouth fill with bile.
He hurled the thing across the room, watching it splatter against the wall, leaving a dark stain that seemed to move in the candlelight. Maggots scattered across the floor, their pale bodies gleaming wet in the darkness.
His screams brought footsteps pounding up the stairs, and then Issac burst through the door, still in his nightclothes, black hair wild with sleep. His face was pale, eyes wide with the kind of fear that comes from knowing something terrible has finally begun.
“Leizar!” Issac crossed the room in three strides, his hands hovering over his son but not quite touching, as if afraid of what he might feel. “What happened? What-”
Then the smell hit him. Death. Grave dirt. The sweet corruption of things that should stay buried. Issac’s face went ashen, and his hands began to tremble.
“My boy,” he whispered, and there was something broken in his voice. “What have you done?”
Leizar looked up at his father through tears he didn’t remember shedding. His whole body shook, and when he tried to speak, only a strangled sob came out. He held up his hands. Both palms were black with grave soil, crescents of dirt under every nail, and the stench of death clinging to his skin like oil.
“The children,” he managed to whisper. “The children are still moving.”
Issac closed his eyes for a moment, his face cycling through emotions-fear, grief, and something that might have been recognition. When he opened them again, his expression was carefully controlled, but Leizar caught the terror lurking underneath.
“Come on,” Issac said, his voice gentle despite the tremor in his hands. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He scooped Leizar up in his arms like he was still eight years old, and Leizar didn’t protest. He pressed his face against his father’s shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of woodsmoke and leather, trying to wash away the memory of corruption with something clean and safe.
Issac carried him down the hall to the bathroom, his steps careful and measured, but Leizar could feel the tension in his father’s body, the way his muscles coiled like a man preparing for a blow.
The bathroom was cold, but Issac’s hands were steady as he lit the candles and began running hot water in the copper tub. Steam rose in pale ribbons, and the sound of rushing water almost drowned out Leizar’s ragged breathing.
“Easy, my boy,” Issac murmured, testing the temperature with his fingers. “We’ll get you clean. Everything’s going to be all right.”
But even as he spoke the words, Leizar could hear the lie beneath them. Nothing was all right. Nothing would be all right again.
Issac helped him out of his nightclothes, his movements careful and clinical, but Leizar saw the way his father’s eyes widened when he saw the dirt ground into his skin, the way it clung to him like it was alive.
“Into the tub,” Issac said softly. “The water will help.”
The hot water stung against Leizar’s skin, turning the clear bath murky brown as the grave dirt began to wash away. Issac knelt beside the tub, his sleeves rolled up, a bar of harsh soap in his hands.
He began to wash Leizar’s hair, his fingers gentle but thorough, and Leizar felt some of the tension begin to leave his body. This was familiar. Safe. His father’s hands working soap through his hair, the warm water washing away the nightmare.
But then Issac’s fingers found something else. He went very still, his hands tangled in Leizar’s dark hair.
“What is it?” Leizar asked, turning to look at his father.
Issac didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he worked his fingers through Leizar’s hair more carefully, and when he pulled his hand away, his palm was full of dirt. Not the clean soil from their garden, but the same black, corrupted earth that had clung to his hands. Grave dirt that shouldn’t exist outside of dreams.
“Just dirt,” Issac said quietly, but his voice was strained. “Must have gotten in through the window.”
They both knew it was a lie.
Issac continued washing, his movements becoming more urgent now, as if he could scrub away whatever was happening to his son. But as the water ran over Leizar’s body, more evidence appeared.
Scratches on his knees, fresh and bleeding, as if he’d fallen on rough stone. The scrapes were shallow but real, and they stung in the hot water. When Issac saw them, he made a sound low in his throat-not quite a gasp, not quite a moan.
“I fell,” Leizar whispered, remembering the shadow stumbling over the gravestone. “In the… in the dream. I fell.”
Issac’s hands stilled on his shoulders. “Dreams don’t leave marks, my boy.”
The words hung between them like a confession. Dreams don’t leave dirt under fingernails. Dreams don’t put grave soil in your hair. Dreams don’t give you cuts and bruises and the stench of things long dead.
“Then what’s happening to me?” Leizar asked, and his voice was very small.
Issac was quiet for a long moment, his hands moving mechanically as he finished washing his son. When he finally spoke, his voice was heavy with something that might have been guilt.
“I don’t know,” he said. And for the first time in Leizar’s memory, his father sounded afraid. “But we’ll figure it out. I promise.”
He helped Leizar out of the tub, wrapping him in a thick towel, rubbing warmth back into his chilled skin. The bathroom was warm now, filled with steam and the scent of soap, but underneath it all was still the faint smell of death, as if it had soaked into the very walls.
Issac helped him into a fresh nightshirt, his movements careful and gentle, as if his son might break apart at any moment. The fabric felt strange against Leizar’s skin, too clean, too normal after what he’d experienced.
They walked back down the hallway together, Issac’s hand resting protectively on Leizar’s shoulder. The house felt different now, as if shadows lingered in corners that had been bright before. Every creak of the floorboards seemed too loud, every whisper of wind against the windows too deliberate.
“Will you stay with me?” Leizar asked as they reached his room. “Until I fall asleep?”
“Of course, my boy.” Issac’s voice was soft, but Leizar caught the way his father’s eyes kept darting to the stain on the wall where the mushroom had hit, the dark mark that seemed to pulse in the candlelight.
As Issac tucked him into clean bedclothes, Leizar wanted to ask about the children. About the figure in the graveyard. About why his shadow could touch things and bring back proof of places he’d never been.
But the words stuck in his throat, heavy with implications he wasn’t ready to face.
Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to pretend that the warmth of his father’s hand on his forehead could keep the darkness at bay.
But even as sleep began to take him, he could feel it waiting in the shadows of his room-patient and hungry and growing stronger with each passing hour.
And somewhere in the darkness, seventeen children tapped against their coffin lids, begging to be let out, begging to be fed, begging to die properly this time.
Leizar woke to the scent of honey buns and bacon drifting up from the kitchen below. His eyes fluttered open, expecting to find his father still keeping vigil in the chair beside his bed, but the room was empty. Pale morning light filtered through the tall windows, casting everything in shades of gold and amber that should have been comforting but felt somehow wrong, as if the light itself had been tainted by what had happened in the darkness.
The door opened without a sound, and Issac stepped inside carrying a wooden tray laden with food. His black hair was neatly combed, his clothes fresh and pressed, as if the horrors of the night before had been nothing more than a shared nightmare. But Leizar caught the way his father’s eyes immediately went to the wall where the mushroom had struck, the way his jaw tightened when he saw the stain that remained despite his obvious efforts to clean it.
Issac sat on the edge of the bed without a word, setting the tray carefully on the nightstand. The smell of warm bread and sizzling meat should have made Leizar’s mouth water, but his stomach churned instead. Everything felt too normal, too carefully arranged, like a stage set designed to convince him that last night had been nothing more than a terrible dream.
“Eat,” Issac said quietly, reaching for a piece of honey-glazed bread. “You need your strength.”
Leizar tried to lift his hand to take the food, but his fingers trembled so violently he couldn’t control them. The shaking started in his fingertips and traveled up his arm, making his whole body quiver like a leaf in a storm. He stared at his own hand in horror, remembering how steady it had been when he’d reached out with darkness to touch the corrupted mushrooms.
Issac’s expression softened with something that might have been grief. He took Leizar’s shaking hand in both of his own, steadying it with gentle pressure. “Easy, my boy. I’m here.”
With his father’s help, Leizar managed to eat a few bites of bread and a strip of bacon, though everything tasted like ash in his mouth. Issac never commented on the trembling, never asked questions about the night before, just patiently helped him eat until the worst of the shaking subsided.
“Come on,” Issac said finally, setting the half-empty plate aside. “Let’s get you dressed. We have bow practice this morning.”
“I don’t think I can-” Leizar began, but Issac cut him off with a gentle but firm shake of his head.
“You can. You will. Some routines need to be maintained, especially when everything else feels uncertain.”
Issac helped him into his clothes-brown leather pants, a deep green tunic that brought out the unusual silver of his eyes, boots worn soft with age. Each piece of clothing felt like armor, a shield against whatever was happening to him. But as Issac laced up his boots, Leizar found his gaze drawn inexorably to his own shadow, cast long and dark across the wooden floor by the morning light.
The shadow flickered at the edges, writhing slightly even though Leizar sat perfectly still. He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry as parchment. This thing that had been part of him his entire life, as natural as breathing, now filled him with a terror so deep it made his hands start shaking again.
“Ready?” Issac asked, standing and brushing off his hands.
Leizar nodded, not trusting his voice.
“I’ll wait for you downstairs,” Issac said quietly, moving toward the door. “Take your time.”
After his father left, Leizar sat for a long moment staring at his shadow on the floor. It moved wrong, shifted when he was still, writhed at the edges like something alive. He forced himself to stand, to move, to pretend that everything was normal even though nothing would ever be normal again.
He descended the grand staircase that curved down through the heart of the manor like the spine of some great beast. The steps were carved from dark wood that gleamed with decades of careful polish, each one broad enough for three men to walk abreast. Portraits lined the walls, stern-faced ancestors with eyes that seemed to track his movement, though Leizar had never been told who any of them were.
The manor itself was a monument to wealth and power that had no business existing alone in the deep woods. Four stories of elegant stonework and carved timber, with towers that reached toward the sky like grasping fingers. The main hall he descended into could have housed half the population of Darrows Hollow, its vaulted ceiling disappearing into shadow despite the massive chandelier that hung from chains as thick as a man’s arm. Tapestries covered the walls between towering windows, depicting scenes of hunts and battles from ages past, their colors still rich despite their obvious age.
Every room spoke of nobility, of generations of accumulated wealth and influence. The marble floors were inlaid with intricate patterns of gold and silver, the furniture carved from woods so rare they probably cost more than most families saw in a lifetime. Crystal decanters caught the morning light and threw rainbows across walls paneled in mahogany that had been polished to a mirror shine.
It was beautiful. It was impressive. It was completely, utterly wrong.
Leizar found his father in the workshop, bent over his familiar workbench. Issac’s hands moved with practiced precision as he worked on the recurve bow, stretching the new string taut and securing it with careful knots. The bow itself was a thing of beauty, crafted from yew wood that had been seasoned for years, its curves following the natural grain in perfect harmony.
Leizar hated it.
He hated the weight of it in his hands, hated the way his fingers never quite found the right grip on the string, hated the frustrating hours spent trying to hit targets that seemed to mock his every attempt. Most of all, he hated the disappointment he sometimes caught in his father’s eyes when another arrow went wide.
“There has to be another way,” Leizar said, the words coming out before he could stop them.
Issac looked up from his work, his silver eyes searching his son’s face. “Another way to what?”
“To learn to fight. To defend myself. I hate the bow, Dad. I always have. I’m never going to be good at it.” Leizar’s voice grew stronger with each word, desperation bleeding through. “What about swords? You have them hanging on the walls. Couldn’t you teach me swordwork instead?”
The change in Issac was immediate and terrible. The color drained from his face, leaving his skin ashen. His hands stilled on the bowstring, and for a moment he looked like a man who had just heard his own death sentence.
“No,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “No, we stick with the bow.”
“But why? You know I’m hopeless with it. I could be better with a blade, I know I could. Please, just let me try.”
Issac’s hands began to tremble. He set the bow down carefully, as if afraid he might break it, and gripped the edge of the workbench until his knuckles went white. When he spoke, his voice was hollow, distant.
“The bow is safer. More… controlled. A sword requires you to get close to your enemy. To feel their blood on your hands.” He looked up at Leizar, and there was something broken in his eyes. “Trust me, my boy. Some paths lead to places you can never return from.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand. You need to trust me.” Issac’s voice cracked on the last word. “Please. Just… trust me.”
Leizar wanted to argue, wanted to push harder, but something in his father’s expression stopped him cold. Issac looked terrified, not of him but for him, as if the very mention of swordwork had opened some door that should have remained forever closed.
The memories will surface. And everything Issac had fought to protect will crumble like ash.
Issac stared at his son for a long moment, seeing the desperation in those silver eyes, the need for something beyond the bow that had frustrated him for so long. Finally, he sighed and stood from his workbench.
“All right,” he said quietly. “But not with real blades. Come on.”
They walked outside into the cool morning air, where frost still clung to the grass in shadowed patches. Issac picked up two sturdy branches that had fallen from the old oak near the manor’s entrance, testing their weight and balance. He handed one to Leizar, who took it eagerly, his face lighting up with the first genuine excitement Issac had seen from him in weeks.
“It’s just a game,” Issac said, taking his position several paces away. “Basic movements. Nothing more.”
“I understand,” Leizar said, gripping his makeshift sword with both hands.
“No, you don’t,” Issac replied, and there was something sad in his voice. “But you will.”
They began slowly, Issac showing him simple defensive positions, how to hold the stick, how to move his feet. But as they sparred, something changed in Issac’s movements. He became fluid, graceful, moving with a speed and skill that seemed impossible. Where moments before he had been a patient father, now he moved like something else entirely.
Leizar tried to match him, swinging his stick in clumsy arcs, but Issac flowed around every strike like water. When Leizar overextended on a particularly wild swing, Issac’s stick came down across his chest with a solid thwak that sent him stumbling backward. The impact broke Issac’s branch in half, leaving him holding nothing but a short stub of wood.
For a moment, something fierce and wild flashed in Leizar’s silver eyes. He lunged forward, his stick raised high, ready to strike his now-unarmed father. But Issac simply wasn’t there anymore.
He moved so fast that Leizar couldn’t follow the motion, twirling around him like a dancer, like magic given form. Before Leizar knew what had happened, his stick was flying from his hands and he was tumbling to the ground, Issac’s weight bearing him down onto the frost-covered grass.
“Got you!” Issac laughed, his fingers finding Leizar’s ribs and tickling mercilessly. “Surrender, you villain!”
Leizar dissolved into helpless laughter, squirming and trying to escape his father’s playful assault. They wrestled in the grass like children, all pretense of sword training forgotten in the simple joy of the moment. For a few precious seconds, the horrors of the night before seemed very far away.
Then Leizar rolled backward, pushing himself up onto his knees in the same position he’d taken beside Sera’s grave. The same position he’d knelt in when he’d pressed his palm to the corrupted earth and felt something tap back from below.
The memory hit him like a physical blow. The graveyard. The figure in the shadows. The earth splitting open to reveal Sera’s desperate, reaching hand. His darkness touching the mushrooms and watching them turn to ash.
A frightened yip escaped his throat, high and animal and full of terror. His whole body began to shake, not just his hands this time but everything, as if the memory was trying to tear him apart from the inside.
Issac understood immediately. He pulled his son into his arms, holding him tight against his chest while Leizar trembled like a leaf in a storm.
“I’m sorry,” Issac whispered into his son’s silver hair. “I’m so sorry, my boy.”
They stayed like that for a long moment, father and son kneeling in the frost-covered grass, while the morning sun climbed higher in the sky and the shadows grew shorter around them. When Leizar’s shaking finally subsided, Issac pulled back just enough to look into his eyes.
“It’s time for your bow lesson,” he said gently.
Leizar’s face twisted with frustration and something deeper, darker. A low growl escaped his throat, barely human, and for just an instant his shadow seemed to writhe and darken around them both.
Issac helped his son to his feet, brushing damp earth from their clothes with gentle efficiency. The morning sun had climbed higher, warming the air and burning away the last traces of frost, but Leizar felt cold from the inside out. The memory of kneeling beside Sera’s grave clung to him like a stain he couldn’t wash away.
“Come,” Issac said quietly, his hand resting on Leizar’s shoulder as they walked across the manor grounds toward the archery range. Their boots pressed into the soft, dew-dampened grass, leaving dark impressions behind them. The air was cool and sweet, carrying the scent of moss and distant pine, but underneath it all Leizar caught something else, something that made his stomach turn.
The scent of earth. Of things buried too shallow.
They weren’t walking toward tranquility. They were walking toward another lesson in control he didn’t want, and Leizar’s stomach churned with familiar dread.
Behind the manor, past carefully tended flower beds and low garden walls, lay a weathered clearing that had been worn smooth by years of use. A single straw-stuffed target stood at the far end like a forgotten god, its surface splintered and torn from countless arrows. Leizar hated it, hated the way it stood there, patient and accusatory, waiting for him to fail again.
He hated everything about this place, about these lessons, about the weight of expectations he could never seem to meet.
“Wait here,” Issac said, glancing back toward the manor. “I need to get your bow from the workshop.”
As his father’s footsteps faded toward the house, Leizar stood alone in the clearing, the morning silence pressing against him like a weight. He looked down at his shadow cast long across the dew-dampened grass, and for just a moment it seemed wrong, twisted, as if it belonged to someone else entirely.
The shadow writhed at the edges, and deep within its darkness, two points of red light flickered like embers. Not his eyes reflected, but something else looking out from within the shadow itself, something that recognized him and was pleased by what it saw.
Then Issac’s returning footsteps crunched on the gravel path, and the shadow snapped back to normal, just a boy’s outline cast by morning sun.
Issac emerged from the manor carrying the yew recurve, polished to a warm gleam, elegant in its deadly simplicity, a weapon of legacy and precision that had been crafted by masters and seasoned by decades of careful use. The new string gleamed like silk in the sunlight.
Leizar took it with two fingers, as if it were a snake that might strike without warning. “Why do I have to learn this fucking thing?”
But even as the words left his mouth, his hands wrapped around the bow’s grip with desperate intensity. Not with anger this time, but with the memory of those red eyes watching him from within his own shadow. The bow felt solid, real, weighted with purpose he could understand even if he couldn’t accept it. It was the only thing that felt substantial when everything else seemed to be dissolving into nightmare.
Issac said nothing at first. He simply set down the leather quiver, its contents rattling softly, and moved behind his son. With gentle but firm hands, he straightened Leizar’s shoulders, nudged his feet into proper position, adjusted the angle of his stance with the patience of someone who had performed this ritual countless times.
“Your hands are shaking,” Issac observed quietly.
“I’m fine,” Leizar lied, but his knuckles had gone white around the bow’s grip.
“Because control starts where comfort ends,” Issac said finally, his voice carrying the weight of hard-earned wisdom. “And right now, you’re very uncomfortable.”
“I don’t want control,” Leizar whispered, but his grip on the bow tightened further. He hated the weapon, despised everything it represented, but it was wood and sinew and string. It was real. It couldn’t show him red eyes or whisper voices or turn mushrooms to rot at his touch. “I want to be in the woods. I want to breathe without someone watching every move I make.”
The irony wasn’t lost on him. Something was always watching now.
Issac’s voice remained calm, almost gentle, though Leizar caught the slight tightening around his eyes. “The bow isn’t judging you, son. You are.”
Leizar wanted to throw the weapon as far as he could, wanted to watch it arc through the morning air and shatter against the stone wall. Instead, he held it like a lifeline, like the only anchor keeping him tethered to something that made sense. His hands might shake, but they wouldn’t let go. He nocked an arrow with mechanical precision, not caring about form or technique, only needing the familiar ritual to keep the terror at bay. He just pulled back the string and released.
The thunk of wood striking wood echoed across the clearing, but the sound was wrong, too far to the right, too high. The arrow had slammed into the outer frame of the target stand, missing the straw center entirely. It wobbled there, pathetic and askew, a visible reminder of his failure.
He stared at it, and disgust rose hot and bitter in his throat.
Issac’s hands trembled slightly as he reached for another arrow from the quiver. The calm mask he’d worn for ten years was starting to crack, hairline fractures showing around his eyes. He’d felt his own magic stir during their earlier conversation about swords - power he hadn’t touched in a decade, awakening like something hungry and desperate.
“Try again,” he said, his voice too careful, too controlled, like a man walking on ice that might shatter beneath his feet.
Leizar’s breath hitched with barely controlled emotion. He drew another arrow, his grip on the bow so tight it trembled, and this time he forced himself to look at the target. He focused on the center ring, on the solid reality of straw and wood, on anything that felt more real than the whispers at the edge of his hearing.
He missed completely.
The arrow sailed past the target and buried itself in the soft earth beyond, disappearing into the morning shadows like his hopes of ever mastering this cursed skill.
“I hate this,” he whispered, but his knuckles remained white around the bow’s grip. “This isn’t me. This isn’t who I am.”
The words hung in the air between them, raw and honest and desperate. Leizar took a step toward his father, the bow still clutched against his chest like armor. Every instinct screamed at him to drop the weapon, to run, but something deeper kept his fingers locked around it. It was solid. It was real. It couldn’t change into shadows and whispers.
“I can’t let go of it,” he said, his voice cracking. “I hate it, but I can’t let go. Something’s wrong with me, Dad. Something’s very wrong.”
Issac’s expression cracked completely, raw fear bleeding through. His own hands were shaking now as he moved closer, desperately trying to maintain the routine that had kept them both safe for ten years. “Then we don’t let go,” he said, his voice tight with barely controlled panic. “We hold on. We keep doing what we’ve always done.”
His movements were too precise, too careful, like a man performing a ritual that might save his life. When he positioned Leizar back into stance, his touch lingered longer than necessary, as if he were afraid his son might dissolve if he let go.
He leaned in close and whispered in Leizar’s ear, his voice cracking on the words. “Act as if it has its own will. You are simply a conduit for its power.” The familiar instruction felt like a prayer now, like something he was saying to convince himself as much as his son. “Like you’re reuniting it with its lost family.”
“Again,” he said, but the word came out strangled. His hands guided his son’s shoulders back with movements that had grown mechanical, desperate. He was clinging to the routine as fiercely as Leizar clung to the bow.
“You’re fighting it,” he murmured, but his own voice was fighting too, fighting against the knowledge that everything was falling apart. “Not everything that feels wrong is against you.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth. He was lying to them both, and they both knew it.
He circled to Leizar’s side with unsteady steps and tilted the boy’s chin up with trembling fingers. “Breathe slower,” he whispered, the instruction barely audible. “Not from fear, but from choice.” Even as he spoke, his own breathing was ragged, desperate. “Let it settle inside you like a memory you’re not ready to speak out loud yet.”
The irony wasn’t lost on either of them. They were both drowning in memories they couldn’t speak.
Leizar stared ahead at the target, his lips pressed into a thin line. But he didn’t resist this time, didn’t pull away from his father’s guidance. His hands were still tense, his shoulders rigid with suppressed emotion, but his chest rose and fell with slower, more deliberate breaths.
Issac’s voice cracked as he tried to sound encouraging. “That’s it. Now let the bow do what it was made to do.” The words felt like a funeral dirge.
And Leizar loosed the arrow.
This time, it struck near the center of the target, embedding itself in the straw with a satisfying thunk that echoed across the clearing. Not perfect, not the bullseye that Issac could hit with casual ease, but close enough to count as success.
Leizar didn’t celebrate, didn’t smile or show any outward sign of satisfaction. He simply looked at his father, searching those silver eyes for approval, for recognition, for some sign that he had finally done something right.
Issac nodded once, the gesture small but significant. “Now take it with you.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Issac’s tone carried the finality of iron, the weight of non-negotiable command. “You’ll carry it. Into town. On your back. With the quiver. You don’t have to use it, but it’s yours now. Accept that responsibility.”
Leizar stared at him, his breath coming sharp and fast, his jaw aching from how tightly he clenched it. The bow felt heavier in his hands now, weighted with significance he didn’t understand. But something in his father’s expression brooked no argument, no further resistance.
“Fine,” he said finally, the word bitten off like a curse.
He slung the quiver over his shoulder, feeling the weight of the arrows shift against his back like a burden he hadn’t chosen but couldn’t refuse. The bow itself he carried with careful attention, no longer treating it like an enemy but not yet accepting it as a friend.
Issac stepped back, watching his son with that mixture of pride and calculation that had become so familiar over the years. “Go collect your mushrooms,” he said quietly. “But take the bow with you. And Leizar, don’t damage it. I’ll know if you do.”
Leizar didn’t respond with words. He simply turned away from his father, pausing only to grab the wicker collecting basket from beside the garden gate. The bow slung across his back and his heart heavier than it had any right to be, he stepped beyond the neat rows of violet hyssop and carefully tended patches of sage, where moss-darkened stones gave way to untamed soil and the promise of sanctuary.
The forest had always been his refuge, the one place where he could breathe without feeling measured, without the weight of expectations pressing down on his shoulders like stones. Even with the bow’s unfamiliar weight across his back, he felt some of the morning’s tension begin to ease as he stepped beneath the canopy of oak and pine.
Here, among the towering trees and soft carpet of fallen leaves, he could almost forget about shadow walking and corrupted mushrooms and the terror that had filled his father’s eyes. Here, he was just Leizar, collecting fungi for the kitchen stores, following paths he’d walked a thousand times before.
The golden caps grew in a small clearing not far from the manor’s grounds, their bright surfaces catching what little sunlight filtered through the leaves above. Beautiful, innocent, normal. He’d harvested them dozens of times without incident, filling his basket with their perfect forms while the forest hummed with quiet life around him.
He knelt beside the largest cluster, setting his basket down in the soft earth. His hands moved with practiced ease, selecting the finest specimens, checking each one for signs of rot or insect damage. This was simple work, peaceful work, the kind that let his mind drift and settle.
His fingers closed around a particularly perfect golden cap, its surface smooth and unmarked.
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, sliding through the trees like poison smoke.
“The light hides the truth.”
Leizar’s hand clenched involuntarily, crushing the delicate mushroom between his fingers. The flesh turned black at his touch, writhing with the same maggots he’d woken with that morning. The corruption spread to the other mushrooms in his basket, turning them all to rotting, writhing masses of decay.
He lurched backward, overturning the basket and sending the corrupted fungi spilling across the forest floor. Where they touched the earth, the grass withered and died, leaving black stains that seemed to pulse with their own malevolent life.
“No,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “No, not here. Not in my place.”
But even as he spoke, he could feel the forest changing around him. The birdsong died away to nothing. The gentle rustling of leaves in the wind fell silent. Even the buzzing of insects faded until he was surrounded by an unnatural quiet that pressed against his eardrums like a physical weight.
His shadow writhed at his feet, longer and darker than it should have been in the dappled light. At its edges, he could see other shadows moving, shadow-children with their hands pressed against invisible barriers, their mouths open in silent screams.
Seventeen of them.
Leizar ran.
He crashed through the underbrush without regard for stealth or safety, branches tearing at his clothes and face as he fled toward the manor. The bow bounced against his back with each desperate stride, its weight a constant reminder that nowhere was safe anymore.
Behind him, he could hear them following, the soft whisper of shadow-feet on shadow-ground, the gentle tapping of shadow-fingers against shadow-coffins. But when he risked a glance over his shoulder, there was nothing there but empty forest and the echo of his own terror.
He burst from the tree line and ran across the manor’s grounds, not stopping until he reached the archery range where Issac still stood, methodically collecting the arrows they’d left scattered across the clearing.
Issac looked up at his son’s wild approach, taking in the torn clothes, the scratched face, the way Leizar’s chest heaved with panicked breathing. His expression shifted from mild concern to sharp alarm as he saw the terror in those silver eyes.
“What happened?” Issac demanded, crossing the distance between them in three quick strides.
“They’re in the forest,” Leizar gasped, clutching at his father’s shirt with trembling hands. “The shadows. The children. They followed me. The mushrooms turned black when I touched them, and the voice, it said the same thing as before, about the light hiding the truth, and I can’t make it stop, I can’t make any of it stop.”
Issac’s hands came up to frame his son’s face, steady and warm and real. “Breathe,” he commanded. “Look at me and breathe.”
Leizar stared into his father’s silver eyes, seeing his own fear reflected there but also something else, something solid and unbreakable that he could anchor himself to. Slowly, his breathing began to steady, though his hands continued to shake.
“They’re gone now,” Issac said quietly. “Whatever you saw, whatever you heard, it can’t reach you here. You’re safe.”
But even as he spoke the words, Issac’s gaze flicked toward the forest edge, and Leizar caught the worry that flickered across his features. His father was afraid too. Maybe not of the same things, but the fear was there, real and sharp and growing stronger with each passing hour.
As they stood there in the fading afternoon light, the forest behind them silent and watching, a hallowed voice on the wind whispered to them both. So soft that neither father nor son was sure they’d heard it at all, but it settled into their bones like ice, like prophecy, like the promise of things to come.
“Embrace the darkness inside. Come home to me. The light hides the truth.”
“Your truth.”