ZACHARIAH

The amber doors boomed behind us as Oji and I left. He told me that the Elemancers called it the Amaro Diado, or the Amber temple. Looking at it again, I could see it. Every surface worshipped the forest around us, as well as its true king. Raito Kenshi. The sun sunk toward the horizon, the dark trees casting long shadows over the forest below. The eyes of Kenshi’s likeness at the temple head shone, and the reflections of the trees themselves could be seen in the gemstone depths.

Steam trickled into the sky, catching the golden beams of early evening. Everywhere I walked in the village I saw Elemancers wandering into the main stony path. Mothers and fathers guided children down the main road occasionally, but I could count them on one hand.

Elemancers were not a fruitful race typically. Having a child was considered precious, and the entire village tended to care for them under their parents. None of the adults, children or no, were smiling this evening. They gazed about as if danger lurked in every corner. Their wide-eyed young gripped their parents' hands tightly, tucking into their sides.

Confusion flooded me as I saw there was nobody left in the hot spring pools. Everyone was filing out of their homes. Even the two workers of the forge had abandoned their post, the white light of the Source Flame the only inhabitant remaining.

Pausing, I heard a low and mournful song gliding gently on the air. The melody was sweet, making me want to sing along even though I didn’t know the words or tune. It held me rooted to the spot, desperate to hear the end.

The people of this village, each clad in a fine cloak, meandered toward the source of that song. Warriors were easy to see among them, their cloaks the deep red, green, white, and dark blue for the four Elements. Signifying their specialty. Amber runes were embroidered along some of their cloaks, signifying rank.

Arching my head, I saw where they were all going. Another standout structure stood further down the plateau, and I had to rub my eyes to make sure they weren’t playing tricks on me.

It was another grand tree, but not living. No. This one was made entirely of stone. Right down to the leaves. It had a huge opening in the center where the people were filing in.

And then I saw the colors. A billowing on the breeze.

Abandoned cloaks were tied on the branches. All the colors of Elemancy. Red. Blue. White. Deep green. Each looked as new as the day they were made. Not surprising given their immortal craftsmen.

Warrior’s cloaks. No longer needing use. My chest tightened when I realized what that tree was. Their burial site.

“Saddabuna,” Oji said behind me, making me start. Renjin followed tight on his heels, her eyes burning. She spared me one glance before shouldering past to follow the rest of the people. Oji hung back with me, drawing the hood of his white cloak up. The rest of the people were doing the same as the sun continued to fall.

“What does that mean?” I asked, my voice nearly a whisper. Other than the song, the village had gone quiet.

Oji closed his eyes as the song reached a new height, and he followed along for a few lyrics.

Opening his eyes, his gaze glowing like burning coals, he answered.

“It isn’t a word in Kaze I’ve had to teach you yet,” Oji said, a shadow falling over his face, “You’ve never seen how we saw goodbye to our dead.”

A muscle feathered in my jaw as more people gathered in the path, heading toward the tree made of stone.

“The best translation for it in the common tongue would be ‘The Wayfairing’, where we see the fallen to their ship to the Far Shore,” Oji explained, starting to walk across the path. I expected him to join the crowd, but insead he aimed for the tunnel leading out of the village.

I didn’t move, staring at the stone tree again.

Oji turned, his brow creasing.

“Come, BruneiI. I’ll walk you out. I want to get back before the ceremony starts. All of us are expected to come. I must not be late.”

Looking down, I clenched my fists. Us. He had said us, but apparently, that did not include me. No matter what Rhagav said about changing things, I was still a halfling. Even if Oji had taken risk after risk to ensure I could use Elemancy, speak Kaze, and knew as much about my culture as I could, I was still nothing to them. Unwelcome.

“No,” I said, voice cracking as I watched the shadows grow longer, “Part of my blood is theirs. I’ll stay.”

Oji held firm in his path, though his eyes were gentle.

“Zachariah I know your heart, but if you stay they’ll–” he said quietly before breaking off with a muttered curse. His eyes trailed over my shoulder just as another group came out of a lower tier of the Amber Temple. The Marks at my neck began to burn in the same moment, my hand flying to cover them.

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Four warriors each carried a coffin. At the head of each one was a torch of purple flames. There were seven coffins in total. I looked again and saw all the Elemancers were lining the road now. All the adults held a small flame in their cupped hands.

The pallbearer warriors were singing the same song as the choir at the stone tree. The words and melody made a raw place in my chest start to ache anew.

It sang of long lives brought to a sudden end. It sang of those left behind who should have seen a millennium with the fallen. Of rest, and seeking comfort. Of death and the life beyond. But I knew that part was entirely for the living.

If an Abyssal truly had killed them…well they left nothing behind to sail to the Far Shore. There was no purpose for this except for the living to say goodbye. The most thorough goodbye there was.

The procession led past us, and people filed afterward, joining in the song one by one. Some sent me glances, but most simply walked.

As one of them passed, I glanced at the head of one of the coffins, which were lidless.

My stomach roiled, even as the Marks began to throb again, the light briefly trailing to my eyes.

A dried husk of a corpse lay within, the warrior’s cloak folded with care at its feet. Mummified skin was where healthy flesh should have been. The face was still twisted with agony as if still trying to scream. Rigor mortis had set in before the bodies were discovered. I could tell by the fractured arm of this particular corpse as if it had happened while their arms were being folded across its chest in preparation for burial.

But none of that was as bad as their eyes. They were nothing more than two empty sockets, the skin fraying outward at the brow and cheeks. Like something had sucked them out of the skull. Somebody had tried to clean it, but I could still see the crusted blood in the canyons of the skin. The body looked like the shedding an insect would make when it grew. Hollow. Empty.

And it looked like it had hurt to become that way.

Pain, cold and sudden, radiated from my neck, an echo trailing to my back. It was strong enough to take my breath away. I fought to stay still even as one of my feet drifted forward, toward the coffins. I ground my molars, my fists clenched, and a cold sweat soaking my clammy skin.

What is this?

I’m so sorry, Zachariah.

I breathed through my nose, eventually calming the sensation enough to bring the world back into focus. Chasing the ghosts away through sheer will.

A sniff sounded next to me, distracting me from the cold.

Looking down, I saw a female Elemancer, a commoner from the color of her cloak, standing with her family. All their eyes were shining as the next coffin passed. Then the next. And the next. Everyone bowed their heads for every body that passed them, eyes shining.

I never realized how immortals would interpret death. Elemancers lived everywhere from hundreds to a thousand years. Death was uncommon for them. An unwelcome stranger. It was a small wonder that they mourned their own kind so hard.

I felt Oji's eyes on me at one point but didn’t say anything as I followed the warriors and kinsfolk. He wouldn’t dare disrupt this. I did, however, draw my own hood up as everyone else had done. I let out a grateful sigh as the last of the pain left me, whatever it had been.

The song was soaring now, the sound as tragic as it was beautiful. The closer we came to the stone tree, the larger it seemed. Tall as a titan. The entire village eventually filed inside. I stayed near the walls as Oji strode past. My eyes widened when I finally settled into a spot at the outer edges of the crowd. My hand traced one of thousands of carvings of small animal-like figures on the inner wall and realized they were depictions of the Other. Spirits of the forest bearing witness to this event as well. Eventually, I followed the gazes of everyone else to the sunken center of the room, the space like an amphitheater.

King Rhagav and my mother were stationed behind seven families, faces calm, yet grave. They stood at the center of the tree where a purple amethyst the size of a small building jutted from the ground.

A choir stood on a raised dais in the back of the tree, hollow on the inside and leading to the various branches, each the size of a road.

As the final body was placed before the seventh family, I saw that only two boys were there to see off whoever this had been. A parent? A master? They both gazed at the body before them, unrecognizable from what it had been in life. They were little older than children, still having the gangly limbs of young adulthood.

My jaw tightened as I remembered burying my father when I was barely able to care for myself. Those boys looked like I had felt, their emotions raw on their young faces.

They would be adults when this was over.

A brief moment of silence, and the song changed into a peaceful sweeping tune as the congregation began to sing along. But in the silence before it, I heard the hiss of someone nearby. I didn’t need to look at her to know who was currently glaring daggers at me.

Renjin.

She was making her way toward me, along with a few other warriors at her back. She was trying to be subtle about it, but it was clear from the venom in her eyes what she intended.

But I couldn’t bring myself to pay attention.

The pain was suddenly back along with something more. A pull. A deep chill that would not ease despite the roaring purple flames that began to sprout from the amethyst at the center.

Everyone said an Abyssal did this, I thought, fighting a shiver.

But the cold was getting stronger. Stronger.

But…

Almost of their own accord, my eyes wandered to the bodies again.

Something was wrong. Very wrong. Nobody else seemed to notice the cold which swept through the space. The way the shadows pooled and swirled unnaturally.

If the Abyssal killed them…

I was looking at the final body now, the deep chill seeming strongest from that direction. One of the boys was crying now, the other placing a hand on his back. But that wasn’t the source of my horror. No.

The body’s shadow was growing. Changing.

But nobody said where it went.

And that was when the Abyssal, the creature of unspeakable nightmares to humans, Elemancers, and all the races alike, appeared.