I sat, waiting for Kit to strike her sword through my nape. I would be waiting a long time.

A corner of my vision contorted wildly as I raised my head, flashing white and grey and black as the optic nerve dangling from my arm twisted as I moved. Optic nerve was an uncommon term: a medic, back in my marching days, had taught me it as I’d poked around an enemy’s crushed skull. That wasn’t accurate – it had been General Bina, in one of our late-night talks. Or had I read it in a book, hidden in a nook in my family’s library? My vision spun.

Yet the two of my eyes that remained intact flicked towards Kit with unnerving ease. The swordswoman slumped downwards, her weight crunching the frozen grass that peeked out of snow. She shivered slightly.

The sensation of cold had transitioned into a lethal numbness broken only by spikes of pain from my arms. The dark skin coating my body was beginning to purple. That didn’t seem relevant. I’d died half-a-dozen times, only to be mixed into the skull of another person. Death was for other people; not me.

Kit was another person, though. Without the benefits of Lizardblood, she’d freeze as easily as any mortal.

I needed to pull myself together.

I blinked rapidly, only for the motion to set my stomach churning as I relearned the fact that one of my eyes had no eyelid. Its perception of the world was locked half a beat behind the others, and levering it out of its socket had damaged it badly enough that it could only detect colour as vague stains.

The carving knife I had brought with me had been reassuringly familiar. In a world comprised of fire, slowly consuming itself unto ash, carving never changed. But even with my stolen Foxblood, sifting through mounds of snow to find it would take hours – more time than either of us possessed.

So I bent my head down and closed my canines around the optic nerve. Pain erupted through clenched teeth in the form of a distended groan and when the string of gore – alight in agony – began to fray my sight began to pulse with burning black spots. The world narrowed to a single, excruciating point. I reached a shuddering arm to it and yanked the entire strand. It snapped.

The phantom of that horrific pain lingered for several seconds as I keeled around my midsection. My hand ineffectually waved around the wound, torn between the instinct to clutch it and the knowledge that it was better left alone. With mocking torpor, the agony ebbed away, leaving only cold.

I spat a piece of gore onto the snow – partially the optic nerve and partially a chunk of my cheek. I wiped my hand on my lips and it came away smeared with black.

I needed to pull myself together.

“Fire,” I said quietly. My eyes flickered to the Jackal – no, to Kit – who gazed unblinking at a chunk of ice. “Do you have something to light it with?”

She glanced at me, then began fumbling at a small pouch tied to her belt. Her shaking fingers pawed at its entrance several times ineffectually before managing to finally open it. She grabbed something from within, raised it to her face to confirm she truly held it, then carefully handed it to me.

I grabbed the flint and steel and staggered upright, then grunted as the motion sent daggers of pain into my arms.

The lack of ravenous foliage and clawing branches gave the space we sat in the illusion of being a clearing; in truth, the trunks were as dense as anywhere else, but an unlikely arrangement of the nearby forest funnelled most of the nearby winds to this spot. Even with the firepit shielded from the worst of the gusts by virtue of being embedded in the ground, the windchill made it generally unpleasant. I’d originally found this spot by following a pair of ghosts. I still wondered why they’d chosen such an isolated spot for a grave.

On a still day like this, the conditions reversed. All of the branches that had been stripped from trees by wind lay concealed beneath a few layers of snow, waiting for the barest lick of flame to spring to life. Most of it was heartwood. Though we’d usually search for other woods to burn due to the stomach-curdling stench it released, with the open sky above its smell wouldn’t stain the area irrevocably. As a plus, it tended to burn hard and hot. Kindling could be torn from bushes a few paces away.

‘Torn’?

I paused, hand stretched halfway towards its tangling branches.

‘Torn’ seemed… somewhat disrespectful. My childhood was decades away, but I still recalled my elder brother teaching me delicacy. To carefully examine the plant; to pick the brittle branches; to live the roots intact; to coax instead of tear. The plains had grass aplenty, but good shrubs or trees were blessings worth cultivating.

But I was in the Heartlands. Whatever plants broke from the feckless fumbling of humans would be renewed years later, when the next Aching arose. Only the paranoid or ambitious bothered to cultivate in the present – the future’s rumblings would render their efforts pointless. Though some of the nomad’s sensibilities might have aided us during the famine, redirecting manpower from other efforts towards tending to a land that would certainly be wiped clean in a handful of years was foolish. The Heartlanders would merely have to ration better; adjust to the new timeframe for Achings. But Head Maleen would make the call, of course, and considering my limited experience as a gatherer I certainly wasn’t the woman to consult about long-term agricultural health…

Everything I knew bent itself against everything I knew. The dissonance in my thoughts made the flesh beneath my skin squirm.

I needed to pull myself together.

“Fire,” I muttered, hands frozen around the thorny branches of a shrub. “Fire.”

My arms did not move. My breath quickened. This needed to be resolved.

“K-Kit,” I called, teeth chattering against my will. “Do you gently remove branches or tear them off?”

The query echoed slightly before vanishing into the snow.

“W-what?” was the response.

“Do you- “

“I k-know what you b-bloody said, Vin. What’re you- “ Kit growled incoherently. “Just ch-chop it off.”

I nodded to myself, then grew a jagged bone-spur from my arm. Doing so was difficult – the Seed’s powers lent themselves towards blunt edges or points. An uneven, saw-like surface was possible, but the limited combat applications made it less useful given the covert nature of our…

The next word lingered on the tip of my tongue. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛? It was there, in the hollow spaces between each thought – a puzzle piece I’d forced between my own fingers, back in the abandoned village. I couldn’t regret not stealing everything from Seoras, though. Not feeling with every beat of my heart just how singularly right I’d been.

I scowled and beat the side of my head with my palm. The cold had sunk its covetous mass into my skin, angling for the little heat that remained in my bones. Without Lizardblood, Kit would be feeling worse. I needed to pull myself together.

Sawing several wooden tendrils away from the bush took scarcely a handful of heartbeats, then I hurried back to the firepit, eyes darting away from anything that could possibly spur any rumination. That was an impossible endeavour – even the most inanimate of objects could, from a static moment, spin a thousand possible permutations. I’d spent my whole life seeing-

“No,” I hissed to myself.

I arrived at the firepit and began carefully arranging a tepee of kindling and smaller sticks after clearing its bottom of snow. Kit’s mute presence behind me was a ghoulish thing. Her every shift and shivering breath forced a tiny flinch through my spine. But when I tried and failed to force a spark into a slightly damp arrangement of wood, she said nothing. As I hastily worked through the process of sorting drier pieces from less useful ones, she spoke no words. It was only after I finally managed to coax a spark into a hungry flame that she asked me a question.

Kit sat cross-legged beside me, feet and palms dangerously close to the flame. “S-so…” She licked cracked lips. “How’s it work?”

I raised a weary eyebrow. “Ravenblood?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I can sense life in a certain range.”

She attempted to snap her fingers, but they trembled too fiercely. “Big range?”

“Used to be smaller.” I scratched at the wounds in my arm, then winced. “But yes. And if I get blood on my head while someone’s dying, I get their… I get them, too.”

“Everythin’?”

“Unless I… Deliberately stop it. But I think that… would kill me if I didn’t steal a bit of Lizardblood.”

“D-damn,” she breathed. “What a thing.”

“…You don’t seem surprised.”

Kit let loose a soft snort. “I’m s-surprised: believe you me. But it makes sense.”

I waited for an explanation.

“W-who else but Avri’s kin could beat me in a fight?”

The statement was so startling I was forced to laugh. “Sure, sure. Tell yourself that.”

A soft smile lingered on the swordswoman’s lips as she watched me. It slowly fell. “T-the Battle of the Foot. With the Lizard.”

I eyed her sideways.

“You kill yer mother?”

“That’s a… cruel thing to ask.”

“W-well,” she breathed out, her teeth chattering, “no one’s ever c-called me merciful.”

A silence grew between the two of us. The gentle patter of snowfall around us felt like a cage.

I stared at the fire and swallowed. “Yeah. I killed her.”

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Kit glance at me. “…How?”

“I…” My brow furrowed. “I stabbed her in the…”

She gazed at me silently.

I sighed. “It’s not… I did a bunch of things. I made problems. I made a mess. For everyone. And…” I swallowed heavily. “When she tried…” I drew in a shuddering breath. “When she tried to get me out of it, I…”

I put a hand over my eyes. The heat of the fire licked my face.

“I still hate her for making that choice. Leaving me with it.”

Kit nodded slowly.

“But how can I hate her? I did it for him.” I paused. “No: she did it for me. Because of me. If I were someone else, she wouldn’t have…

“And I ran away, too. Did the same thing to the twins that I – that Ma – did to me. Left them with all…” I traced my hands around the air, as if attempting to hold a vast weight. “With all this.”

I watched as the fire’s yellow and red tongues licked towards the sky.

“I hope they’re all okay.”

Kit shifted towards me. “Who?”

“My siblings. Blake. Erin. Jackson. Stitch. Jasmine. Miss Tran. The Barberfellows. My wife. The girls. My soldiers…” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t see them. Won’t do them any good. Being what I am.”

She gazed at the fire.

“You should go. I’m not a safe person.”

Kit barked a laugh. “Ha!” A lopsided smile curled across her face. “That makes two of us, don’t it?”

I squinted at her.

“You wanna ask…” She clicked her tongue. “What’s his name? The big Owlblood at Fort Vane. You want him to get rid of yer Ravenblood, right?”

I nodded.

Kit leaned back and stretched her arms. “That’s easy. Easy as easy can be.”

Her voice cracked.

----------------------------------------

Once we were both warm enough, the two of us began staggering back to the house. Kit started several conversations as we shuffled through snow, over a frozen river and under the twisting branches of heartwoods, yet after exchanges of various length I was forced to end them as my mind became intractably snagged on a set of words. We’d continue travelling silently for a short time, then she’d try again. Her efforts filled the silence where mine could not.

“You see the ghosts?”

I nodded.

“Wil an’ the farmer man?”

I repeated the gesture.

“Whaddaya you think they were doin’?”

“Carrying a body,” I stated flatly.

Kit pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I figured. You think her grave’s nearby?”

I ground my teeth. That was the question that grated me, night after night. Where was the ghost’s body? Her corpse had been carried past the stone shelf, allowing the grave to be sucked away during the Aching. Beyond the phantom itself, were there any signs of her existence? Who would remember her; save a piece of who she once was before death stole her from the world?

Kit looked at my face as it began to contort, and the conversation went no further.

We continued staggering back, trusting Davian’s yellow strips of cloth and the footprints Kit had left to mark the trail to the house. The wounds on my arms were packed with pristine snow that quickly stained into black. The heat of my body gradually melted it, so Kit would scoop more off the ground and worked them into the wounds as I groaned and beat my feet against the ground. Dirt would be better for staunching, but cleaning them out later would be painfully annoying. I’d decided to wait until we got some better bandages instead.

When Wil’s house appeared from beneath a hail of snow, I turned to Kit.

“Are you going to tell them?” I asked her.

Her brows tented slightly. “If they need t’know. It’s a, uh… I don’t really know what it means.”

“To be a…” Forcing the term from my throat was surprisingly difficult. “Ravenblood?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing good.”

The swordswoman nodded slowly. “That man in Fort Vane. You think he can get it outta you?”

“Maddie said he’s the most singularly inventive Owlblood in existence, with Neelam gone.” I licked my lips. “He’ll get it out. He’ll let its divinity lay in the air, to rot and fade into nothing.”

“Okay. If they need t’know, will you…?”

Weariness dogged me at her question. The knowledge that no sleep awaited me made it worse. None of the changes were normal. But meditating on them would only see all the pieces of my soul grind together. Or maybe I was driven by simple cowardice.

“I’ll be fine.” I paused. “You make the call, Kit.”

She swore quietly. “…Alrighty then.”

We continued trudging onwards, hands tucked into armpits as we squinted through the snow’s glare.

Gast came out to meet us before we entered the house. She had been huddled at the top of the lookout tower alongside a flame of lifeforce I vaguely recognised as Yowler’s. As she levered open the front door using her considerable weight, she paused. Her gaze alighted upon the wounds in my arm.

“I’m okay,” I assured her.

She glanced up at my face. “You’re not.”

That response stifled whatever I was going to say next.

“Come on,” Kit muttered. “Let’s go.”

The swordswoman pushed me towards the open doorway, forcing me to duck lest I crack my head on it. Almost as soon as I crossed the precipice, the excruciatingly warm air within the house began defrosting the wounds upon my arms, driving needles of pain through my body as numbed skin began to recover.

“We boiled snow recently?” asked Kit.

In response, the fat Strain headed into the kitchen and returned lugging a large pot of steaming water. We followed her into the living room, where she placed it at the foot of the large chair I sat in when we ate together. I slumped into it.

The young woman began attempting to tug off the gloves on her hands, then scowled when her shaking fingers repeatedly failed to do so. “You’re gonna have to put him back together, Gast.”

The Strain bobbed her head, then pulled a chair across from me and carefully lowered herself into it. She quickly pulled a soaked rag from the pot and began carefully cleaning my wounds. Each scrape against my hollowed arms provoked a screech of pain from my body, but worse than that was the sensation of hot cloth pressing against a piece of flesh that should be firmly within my body, yet remained pressed against warm air. It was wrong, but all my attempts to ignore it were shattered by the inexorably pressing of cloth. The intense discomfort grew more distended as my attention remained on it. I shifted my weight repeatedly to alleviate it, yet no relief came. I needed to keep myself together.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Both the rag and the water in the pot quickly became soaked in black blood, but Gast continued her ministrations without remark. But though Kit made an admirable attempt to keep the others out, there was little she could do to stop Ronnie from entering.

The giant Strain paused upon sighting me, then began signing questions with their mismatched hands. I repositioned my gaze towards an empty patch of wall, ignoring the burgeoning pressure in my chest. With Ronnie’s entrance, the dam Kit’s arms and warnings formed broke down, allowing Maddie and Davian and Taja and Wil and Jana into the room – the last of which took a single look at my black-bleeding wounds and hastily dragged all the children present outside.

Everyone talked and yelled and questioned and made an endless amount of noise as Gast dragged her rag through my arms with agonising slowness, and I lowered my head towards the ground as Kit tried to carefully give answers before breaking into furious shouting herself. Something itched on the back of my neck, but with my arms restrained I couldn’t do anything about it. The cacophony continued while I shifted in my chair until the swordswoman managed to bellow everyone present into silence.

I tried to ignore the carefully arranged questions and her considered responses and I heard everything anyway. Kit answered the most basic questions first: Where I’d been; What wounded me; How she’d found me. I would’ve suspected a plan to gradually ease the group into the revelation were it not for Kit’s woefully inadequate diplomacy skills. She just didn’t know how to explain why my blood was black.

I think even without getting an appropriate answer, most of the older individuals had figured it out by that point. They’d been around when the Ravenbloods had swarmed out from the Wastes like a tide of locusts: they’d heard the warnings and the signs blood-smeared, trembling survivors had carried into civilisation. I was almost certain Davian had figured it all out weeks beforehand. Wil even earlier.

But they were still shocked to see I bled black. No paltry Ravenblood ever bled so dark.

When Kit told everyone that they needed to get me to Fort Vane – to get the conversion stone and destroy whatever blood came out of me – I was relieved that I didn’t have to raise the point myself. Her demand that they begin the journey immediately needed little explanation.

That was when Wil began speaking.

“That’s a dangerous idea,” he said. “Frost is out lookin’ to bury people this year, an’ you’re proposin’ to go gallivantin’ outside in it? Vane’s still a few week’s journey away in good conditions – none of you will make it.”

The dark-skinned young woman sighed. “He’s gonna get worse. I’m not sayin’ we strut out in a snowstorm with no plan, but we need to start preparin’ to go.”

Wil scoffed. “You won’t find anythin’ that’ll keep you from freezin’.”

“Go stick yer head in an oven,” Kit spat. “Gast’ll rig somethin’, or we’ll put together a wagon, or we’ll get some more blankets or somethin’. We got time, and some of the people here’ve got more brains than us two illiterate dirt-munchers have between us.”

I shifted in my chair as they argued and flexed my fingers to subdue the tension waiting beneath my skin. Agony seeped from my arms as they gradually defrosted.

Wil frowned. “I’ve taught myself to read over this Frost. I’ll teach myself more. But I don’t need teachin’ to see that your proposal will get people killed.”

Kit snarled. “You teach yourself to bury yer mother in a godsdamned unmarked grave too?”

Immediately after hissing that insult, she paused – mouth open and eyes wide.

Wil’s were wider. “What’d you see?”

Instead of retracting her remark, the swordswoman continued onwards more cautiously. “What happened to her?”

“She died.” The statement came harsh and flat. “What business of that is yours?”

“Cause her ghost’s still out roamin’,” she drawled, “and you’ll talk about old father but never her.”

“That’s my choice. None of it alters th’ fact your idea is poor.”

Another voice sliced through the conversation before Kit could reply. “Vin’s fought for me,” Head Maleen said. “For- for all of us. I believe that, at the very least, we should entertain the idea. If he wants it,” she added belatedly.

It took me several moments to realise she was addressing me. Wasn’t she referring to Vin? No. Yes. Me. My neck itched.

I shifted in my chair, perception drawn to the unnatural scrape of bandages being wound around exposed skin. The pain chewing through my arms jarred my attempts to formulate a measured response.

“Get it out,” I muttered. My eyes did not leave the floor.

“Vin,” Wil wheedled, and I winced as the name jarred in my skull. “You don’t need to leave.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” snapped Kit.

The worn man ignored her. “House Baylar’s out of the picture. They can take Maddie to the Fort on their own.”

I couldn’t leave Head Maleen. Nor could I leave what she had offered me, up on that hill. The bandages were tucked into places they should not be and I shifted in my seat.

“You can stay here,” he pleaded. “No one’ll bother you. I won’t let ‘em.”

“Why would you keep me around?” I murmured.

“I owe you. For savin’ what you could.”

I looked at him. Desperation rimmed his eyes and his mouth.

“You’re lying,” I told him.

Wil screwed his eyes shut. “It’s the honest truth.”

The wounds on my arm throbbed. “Not all of it.”

“I am grateful,” he insisted.

My voice grew angry; plaintive; discordant. “What do you want?” My eyes fixed on him.

He looked down.

“I’m going- “

“Don’t.”

“- because I have to,” I growled then groaned as my arms throbbed and people I still hadn’t looked at whispered to one another and a nausea grew in my gut and Kit had disappeared and I glanced around.

Wil addressed me. “Staying here is best for- “

Gast finished tying the final bandage and looked up. “I’m done.”

Kit shoved her way through the crowd, reddened and wide-eyed.

I shifted in my chair.

“What the blood is beneath yer room, Wil?” Kit shouted. “What did you do?”

The man whirled. “What were you- “

The swordswoman shoved him. “What is that basement?”

Wil shook his head wildly. “It’s not- “

She raised an accusatory finger. “You godsdamned- “

“Let me- “

“There were dozens of ghosts!”

I blinked rapidly and lowered my head and shifted in my chair.

“It wasn’t- “

In the next handful of heartbeats, several things happened. Kit lunged for Wil and wrapped her hands around his tunic. Wil got his arms between himself and her as she shook and screamed at him. Out of instinct, a small bone spur – sharpened to a point – began slowly growing from his wrist. The moment it appeared, my body stiffened, I stood upright, and punched him in the side of the head. My sudden movement made Kit release Wil and back away, leaving the man unsupported.

Driven by the momentum of my punch, he fell to the side and slammed the back of his head on the corner of the table. A smear of blood was left on its wooden surface. Within my perception, I felt his life rapidly fade.

By the time Wil hit the floor, there was no saving him.

An unnatural quiet hung over those gathered in the living room. People looked at Wil; at Kit; at me. No one present could perceive the death throes of his lifeforce directly, but they’d seen how he’d fallen: limp as a wet rag, bereft of the instinctual reflexes any living human possessed.

“He’s not breathing,” Taja said.

Davian began moving to aid the fallen man. As I stared at Wil, comprehension dawned over my empty mind. He was dying. It was my fault.

An overwhelming urge to save – to preserve – some part of the thing I’d destroyed took hold of me. I wiped a finger along the blood on the table and wiped it on my forehead.

Hera takes care of you. In the house, she ensures your stomach is always full; your body is always clean; your wounds are never ignored; your tears are always wiped. You keep her company her in the kitchen, helping her to peel vegetables or wash dishes. You help her mop the floor, and often hours painstakingly pulling a bucket half the size of your body from the river while obstinantly refusing all help. Hera – who you later realise is your mother – takes care of you. But it is Pa who you want to be.

The others struggled to revive Wil. There was an old story of a heroic Lizardblood returning from death as a distraught lover beat their chest. Ronnie took it upon themself to do so. But that was a story, and Wil was no Lizardblood.

Pa scares the monsters away with torches and spears, or shoots them from atop the highest room if they stay. Pa is strong and powerful. Pa takes care of the fields. If the quakes shake the earth, Pa tells Hera and you what needs doing and when. Pa is the one who speaks the loudest and the longest; whose words are never ignored. On the rare occasions when visitors arrive – filthy from the road and ofttimes bleeding from the many dangers of the Heartlands – Pa is the one to welcome them. And Pa is the one who carries their unconscious bodies to the basement.

As I walked to the front door, a sudden gagging bent my body over. I retched streams of clear fluid onto the floorboards.

As you get older, your duties move away from Hera’s and towards Pa’s. Strange things are cultivated in the fields: different every Aching. Curled or straight or crooked or bristling or drooping or low or rooted in the ground; bearing fruits or vegetables or needing to be ground. All distinct, except for their crimson colour and ubiquitous thorns. Though the Aching’s turmoil never shakes the land around your home too badly, the plants always die, and the process must begin anew.

Down the hall, Anton broke away from the other children and stepped passed Jana – each arm begrudgingly wrapped around an infant. He peered through the entrance of the living room and did not move for some time.

But it’s hard work, filling plates enough for Pa and you and Hera and the livestock you keep and the people in the basement. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough in the fields, and you two men must go foraging for more. Seeking monstrous Strains in the wilderness for meat or plucking what you can. However, the Aching occasionally offers only thin bounties: its renewal bringing less nutritious food and more foreboding forests. Or Frost is too harsh. Or the Aching just takes a bit too long coming. So, to meet the demands of living, Pa and you need to empty the basement and carry their bodies out to where the speartrees gaze skyward. Where Pa hangs the person upside-down from the tree and slits their neck open, allowing all their blood to drain downwards, onto the ground. With a sacrifice, the Heartlands always provides.

One of my arms stretched towards him, yet motion from between my feet froze me still. Leering from the reflection generated by the bile – its rancid taste fresh in my mouth – was a monster.

The first time this happens, you regurgitate your scarce breakfast onto the dirt. Carrying bodies through the wilderness is difficult, but knowing what will happen to them is more so. And something about seeing a person with two arms and two legs that looks just like you swinging from a rope on a tree is deeply sickening. Every time you and Pa are forced to perform this task, you try to argue those feelings into submission. They always linger.

My flight carried me towards the door, but the burden of all the people within the house – their fears; their life; their misguided affection – had me pausing. No true thought marred the perfect unreality of the moment. The decision to stay passed without making itself known to me.

As you become taller, Hera seems to grow more distant from you. Her concerns – that seemed so all-encompassing when you were a child – have become trivial things. You eat with her and you speak with her, yet though the feeling seems like sandstone through your intestines, you do not respect her. But you do love her. When you wake one night to an argument between Pa and Hera – the first you’ve ever heard – you worry. By dawn, Hera is in the basement as well.

I staggered up the stairwell.

Pa doesn’t like feeding the people in the basement. The task was always Hera’s. Now it is yours. Unlike before, the person in the basement is not just any person. It’s your mother. In the times you’re meant to be sleeping, or an errand outside the house, Pa goes down to speak to Hera. He pleads and wheedles and demands her to return things the way they used to. She never acquiesces.

Halfway to the top, the flexing of muscles in my arm as it grips the railing reignites the flow of blood from my wounds.

Perhaps Pa notices your increasing remoteness; perhaps he simply grows weary of it all. One morning, Hera is dead, and the two of you carry her out to the wilderness. She becomes a sacrifice. The two of you return home in silence. That night, when Pa grows furious at his failed attempts to chop a vegetable to pieces, you beat him to death with a stool. The rage abates. You find yourself wailing and beating the walls and remembering who Pa was, beneath the horrible things he was forced to do. You curse your mother and you curse yourself. Your cries fill the walls with noise and nothing else. The house is empty. You try to fill it with something – anything – for several months. Eventually, you give in. You leave.

The hazy warmth of the second floor engulfed me. Above, a hanging brazier flickered in remarkable sharpness.

Your survival skills are negligible. Fortune is the only barrier between death from exposure and yourself. Miraculously, your body holds out until you pass the isolated territory around what was once your home and enter a nearby settlement, where you collapse. You’re revived by the Grower family with weeks of food, water, and rest, and informed none of it came free. You have a debt to pay.

Months of muscle-memory carried me to my room, but its cramped confines were no longer comforting.

The work is familiar to you. Tending to the fields. Repairing boundaries. Shouting away those that transgress upon them. Identifying weeds and edible plants. The only foreign aspect is the blood that waters the ground: freely given by the workers in exchange for food or chits. But though the method is different, the vision of red liquid slowly seeping into pink dirt remains at the core of what you are. Gradually, you come to realise that the notion of debt is as well. At the long table where debtors sit to eat, while lifting a spoon from a bowl to your mouth, you come to believe that this act pays interest for a loan you could not consent to, and can never pay back. How can a person repay their birth? The only difference between the debt you repay with your labour and the one you repay with your every breath is that the former is fair: a year, and what you owe for the food and housing is done.

The countless carvings that coated every surface felt foreign. As if the shapes they presented to me were a well-meaning lie.

Everything seems to rot. You cannot see the people around you and the plants you care for as anything but monuments to decay; suspended in the day’s slow death or the night’s quiet tomb. All the small kindnesses each labourer pay one another in the fields or at meal times or in the drafty barracks you rest in are flayed within your mind’s eye: temporary salves forced by the transparent wretchedness of being. You quietly repay your debt then continue working for chits. Conversation never came easy to you. Now, any words emerging from your throat – no matter how true or well-meaning – feel like lies. The twisted, thorny, grotesque plants you work with are, at least, honest.

I turned from that and walked to the stairwell. Down the stairs to the third-storey came Yowler, greying fur catching the light as he gingerly treaded down each step. Towards the yelling beneath.

You work through one Aching, then another – the final one for over a decade. You work as the Growers and their contractors build walls and huddle together at night, their conversations stepping around the Raven’s Cult’s sudden and inexplicable desire to consume the world. You’re working when a lone, wounded stranger is outed as a Ravenblood, and witness the grim resolution to kill the man in his sleep. You work as all others celebrate the slaying of a god and mourn the passing of heroes into legend. You work and unbeknownst to you, you are noticed by the Grower family.

I carried the dog down to the first floor and walked back up.

Individuals who know how to cultivate the Heartlands are rare. Farmers from outside the region are used to playing with different rules; those within rely on the Aching’s bounty and their own strong arms to ward away its myriad dangers. Someone like you is rare. Your knowledge is wanted for the next generation of Growers, and they seek to bind you with their sixth daughter. An initial refusal is met with months of raised brows, pointed comments, and somewhat passive-aggressive statements. Out of a mixture of bafflement and frustration, you accept.

Up, up.

You meet your wife on the day you marry. This person is meant to be an extension of your being, just as you are meant to be an extension of theirs. All you see is a woman. She is not your mother. You are not your father. Her movements are strangely frightening. You’re given a house, with you spending most of your time at one end, tentatively eying her out of the corner of your eye. She does the same. After a month of observation, everything becomes easier. She moulds herself around your idiosyncrasies. Your first night together is the second most nerve-wracking of your life. The first is the birth of Alton.

To the stubby lookout tower.

He draws you together – uniting two disparate entities for a common goal. The decay lurking at the core of all things persists – in him, too – but the truth of it fades when you are with him. You become a tolerated part of all Grower gatherings: a silent set-piece to occasionally make statements to or half-heartedly rib. Only Old Snapper is completely at ease with merrily insulting you; a trait you imagine is borne of decades of practice. Alton grows. The Aching never returns.

Thin slits showcased the outside world in its tumultuous frenzy. However, inside its small walls, the air was mostly still.

At first, its absence is only felt in thinner harvests from the foragers: smaller portions and less variety. Then yields from each crop grow increasingly paltry. An outsider believes the earth itself has lost its vitality, and none among you have any idea how to restore the fleshy earth to its previous abundance. Attempts are made to mimic the techniques of farmers from beyond the Heartlands; Old Snapper manages to cajole several to give opinions. None work. Each empty plate drives more and more labourers away: at first with apologies, and later without a word. The arms of every adult soon becomes covered in scars in sacrifice to the earth.

A blanket-covered chair sat in one corner next to a small brazier, still burning with whatever fuel Gast had fed it. I huddled opposite it.

One day, strangers appear at the walls to the Grower’s steadings. When they’re invited in to sup with the family, they produce bronze weaponry from beneath shirts and begin to herd everyone out. A panicked attempt at rebellion is met with three dead. Seeing entrails exposed births a horrifying sense of relief within you. They allow you to gather clothes along with a few days of supplies and send you into the wilderness.

I looked outside, into the snow, and I felt the sparks fly on the other side of the connection as I died.

Some of the younger men and women plan to retake the Grower steadings from the bandits occupying it. The rest of you leave for Spires. Without weaponry, marching the trail back proves lethal for many. You wield a wooden spear against an Oxkin as large as the trees and survive amidst a field of carrion. Your wife fled with Alton. You find her body rotting beneath the malformed teeth of a Spiderkin. But Alton survives beneath the roots of a tree.

Alton would never forgive me for what I’d done.

Your wife’s family – vastly reduced – bear his grief. You only know how to model the raw, necessary operations of existence. Matters of the soul are beyond you. You are a poor father. But in Spires, you can at least work for him. Your role is gathering deceased – bearing the marks of long years of sluggish starvation as flies herald days of decay. These bodies are drained of blood. You get no pay for the ones too old to yield crops. You come home and your family is always thinner.

I closed my eyes.

Old Snapper pulls enough strings to bind the Growers and a family of Smiths, where Owlblood is passed from dying parents to children in the strange way Heltians sometimes do. Seeing Alton eat a full meal bought by Old Snapper’s silver tongue brings relief tinged by a dark undercurrent. But you push it down, and suddenly you are all in the process of fleeing the Heartlands in a caravan.

My wounds still flared from the hollows in my arms that gaped beneath slowly-soaking bandages. The throb drew my attention to it and the rhythmic pain became almost reassuring. Like the throb of feet after a long day walking.

Two weeks pass with little issue, then everyone begins dying. You hold a spear atop a hill and see a Face – one of the storyteller-shamans who gave Divinities and officiated funerals – kill dozens of people while his companion single-handedly fells several Blooded. They are avatars of death; yet you are alive because of them. The contradiction burns along with bodies, but gains no traction. Eventually it seeps upwards, away from you all.

Below, my double felt my life begin to end. The broken, hole-ridden pieces of my mind phrased incomprehensible questions and my unbroken skull found answers.

The remnants of the caravan are split into two groups. Vin and Kit take the more dangerous route, but you do not believe for a moment either will die. You’re left with the need to sidestep the Baylarian line, marked by rows of blazing torches gradually moving forward over bristling fields of perfect darkness. The tallgrass slices the face and arms wrapped around your children. Beside you, Old Snapper and Atifi shield the infants with their bodies. One sees the blood dripping from the greybeard’s face and gurgles. An orange-haired archer hears this and fires in the air. You all wait in silence. When it pins Snapper’s calf to the floor, no one but the baby makes a sound.

A life hollowed.

He does not die immediately. However, that doesn’t seem to matter. Five march out towards your location, matched by a woman wearing armour reinforced in what you can recognise – after seeing the things the Smiths could make – as Owlforged steel. Only magic can feed fire hot enough to smelt it, but here was a soldier clad in enough power to fill three normal Owlbloods. Her hair gleams in a brown braid. Your body readies itself to run. Davian reveals himself instead.

I rested my head against the wood behind me. The metaphysical weight of the connection was heavy. Snapping it would be simple.

They speak for long enough for your arms to ache and Snapper’s stifled breaths to become ragged gasps. They speak so long that the moons change position in the sky. While you catch pleading tones, whatever words the Strain shares with the leader are lost to the darkness. In the end, the leader returns to the line, slings an arm over one of the torch-bearers, and points them towards the darkness. For a brief time, the line opens. You make it past. A few days later and a collection of fur-cloaked warriors chase you into precarious stone mountains. Half of the pursuers fall away. When you turn backwards, you see Old Snapper’s limping form leading them astray. Atifi places a hand over her face and calls him an old cockroach. When the golden soldiers sight you, she follows Snapper’s lead to make the next sacrifice.

It might even be wise.

You scurry into the earth and try to remember how to feed infants with stolen milk as you wait. The land is stinking and putrid – your strongest suspicion proved in a heartbeat. To your shock, Vin reappears alongside Tully. You search for a way out. You find a river of blood instead. Divine power akin to sort that decided the battle on the hill. Enough to reverse the inevitable and stitch together something lasting for the children. Humanity is a small price to pay.

But I didn’t.

Days of fever and incomprehensible dreams follow. You awake feeling no different. It takes some time to notice a redoubled revulsion towards the failures of those around you. Every mismanaged swing of an axe or poorly-phrased sentence or feeble-willed complaint grates against the walls of your heart. Your own failures – your stupidity; weakness; cowardice – are unbearable. So you work to become a better person. And though the memory is occluded by decades, you recall one man that was greater than all others. You go home. Ghosts greet you.

Emerging from the throbbing of my wounds and the encroachment of the cold and the incomprehensible roiling of my mind dying from head trauma, an itch on my nape made itself known.

Vin and Maleen teach you to read and write. You copy exercises the man teaches to Taja. Your father moves through the world: a model of confidence and raw power. Your skills and body develop at astonishing rates – as if your decades of wasted life were all waiting for these moments. You try to teach Alton as best you can, and are frustrated by your inability to teach him well enough. Yet even so, you grow. But your mother and everything she represents endures in death just as stolidly as she did in life. The sight of her throws everything into disarray. Your father realigns everything. You watch him closely. That is why you notice that the ghosts only ever appear when Vin is nearby.

Indulging in something as mundane as itching felt like a betrayal. But it only grew more intense, until the sensation overwhelmed all others.

Some primordial instinct within you recognises Vin as important. Monumental. Through him the will of your father is preserved, as well as the shame of your mother. Yet his rapid deterioration is plain. Whatever pieces comprise his being are rearranging themselves into something more fundamental. When he returns one day, your suspicions are proven true. Then Kit finds your shame, and you are struck down. Your mind fades. Fragments. Decays into nothing.

I raised a hand to the sensation and furiously ran my nails over it. Skin scraped away.

And in the moment before oblivion, something holds you close…

My vision grew as an eye on the back of my neck fluttered open.