Page 19

19

Eden

RESTLESSNESS SANK DEEPER into my stomach with each step toward the crop field. A thick decay filled the air, its putrid stench clinging to the back of my mouth and burning my nostrils. It surpassed the smell of dead plants. The rot didn’t stem from the failed harvest, but from something far worse. The damp soil beneath us felt unstable, ready to give way at any moment. My mind attempted to reason through it, seeking a logical explanation, but instinct screamed louder. This place exhibited more than mere abandonment; it had been tainted.

I hesitated before stepping forward, but just as I moved toward the gap in the broken fence, an arm shot out, blocking my path. I blinked up at Oberon in confusion. His stance remained rigid, with his shoulders wound tight. “Don’t walk through it,” he commanded. It was worse than I wished to know if he was being this careful. I frowned but didn’t argue.

Could he sense magic here? Or was he heeding the Lord’s warnings?

“What if it’s a body?”

He scanned the field with intense focus, as if he noticed something I couldn’t. Silver flickered in his eyes like a glimmer of storm light in the darkness. “It is,” he said.

“What?”

“But it’s not in the field.” His posture grew tense and wary. “Stay close.” His tone made me roll my eyes before I could stop myself. He was so protective for someone who pretended not to care.

His head whipped toward me so fast that it spilled adrenaline through my veins. “Dilthen Doe,” his voice curled low and lethal. “Roll your eyes one more time, and I will make them roll back into your fucking skull.”

Goosebumps prickled along my arms. The words should have unnerved me, perhaps even scared me, but they sent a thrill through me—a reckless exhilaration that compelled me to push him further.

Fighting the smirk that threatened to break free, I concealed it behind my sleeve and murmured, “Alright, alright.” Then, more quietly, “So dramatic.” His gaze burned into me, yet he didn’t take the bait. I stepped behind him, wrapping my arm around myself to quell the gnawing unease. I remained silent after that—not out of discipline, but because my stomach twisted in knots.

We hadn’t eaten, which was a good thing because—

I halted.

A young man’s body lay twisted in the dirt, discarded with limbs bent at unnatural angles. His skin had become a sickly pale, creeping in a slow, insidious decay. His mouth gaped as if he had died mid-scream, with his lips cracked and frozen in eternal terror. His eyes struck me cold—the void-black pits that stared up at nothing, endless and empty. Dried blood stiffened his clothes, dark patches spreading in shadows across his chest and arms. His fingers curled inward, claw-like, as if he had tried to grasp, fight, and hold on to life.

A lump formed in my throat.

“Oh, gods.” The words were a breathless whisper, lost in the early morning. Oberon moved around the body with precision, his stance that of a predator, his boots pressing into the dirt with confidence. Though his expression remained unchanged, his focus sharpened, and tension coiled beneath his skin.

My arm tightened around my waist. What was he thinking? “Is there any trace of magic?” My sleeve muffled my voice as I pressed it harder against my face, trying to block out the stench of death.

Oberon crouched next to the corpse, examining every detail with clinical precision. He didn’t rush, blink, or breathe for a long time. Without looking up, he answered simply, “No.”

A pit formed in my stomach. No magic meant no explanation. Then what was he looking at? How had he known it was a body? Or where it had been lying?

I shifted my weight. “How do you think he died?”

A hollow, shrill screech ripped through the silence . It curled through my ears, drilled into my skull, and scraped against my ribs. The marrow in my bones felt scooped out and left hollow and brittle under the pressure of the sound. My body locked up, my muscles tensed, and my breath was strangled in my throat.

Oberon grabbed my wrist, yanking me behind him with a forceful tug. His other hand hovered near his sword, fingers poised and ready. His irises burned silver, flickering as he gazed toward the trees—the dark, endless expanse of them, the void between the trunks—searching. Hunting.

My heartbeat thumped in my ears, echoing the disjointed rhythm of my breath. The sound emanated from everywhere and nowhere, winding around us and disappearing as quickly as it had arrived. The lifeless body at our feet was insignificant compared to whatever was alive out there.

Movement.

A shadow flickered between the trees, yet the branches remained still. The underbrush lay motionless. It glided through the mist, a presence that didn’t belong in this world. Oberon’s grip on my wrist tightened, his fingers digging into my skin in silent warning: stay close.

A second screech split the air closer than before.

Then silence. Thick, suffocating silence.

My shaking hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms.

Where was it?

My body shifted closer to Oberon, the warmth of his presence steadying me. I lifted the hem of my skirt to free my dagger from the sheath against my thigh. The blade felt cool and solid in my grasp, a slight comfort against the eeriness that surrounded us. I parted my lips to say something, but my breath hitched.

A swaying figure stood in the field. My fingers clamped around Oberon’s forearm. “What is that?” I squinted, trying to comprehend the shape and how it rocked.

A violent twist clenched my gut, a profound, primal warning. “That’s not… that’s not human, is it?” Each syllable was wrapped in a held breath. The thing in the field swayed, its movements fragmented and jerky—a puppet controlled by unsteady hands.

Oberon’s voice was guttural, sending a curl of instinctive unease swirling in my stomach. “No.”

The answer didn’t surprise me, but hearing the horror of it confirmed rooted a sickening dread in my chest.

I choked against the rot coating my throat, but the drumming in my ears was too loud to focus. “Is it getting closer?” I whispered. Oberon shifted to my front again, maintaining a loose yet cautious stance, his body blocking me from the grotesque creature beyond the broken fence. His fingers twitched near the pommel of his sword, but his posture remained unwavering.

If the thing noticed, it didn’t care. It staggered forward, a single step. Then it lurched. Its joints moved at unnatural angles, as if it was unfamiliar with how bodies should move. A long, drawn-out pause lingered between each step.

Then it paused, observed, and probed. The weight of its attention crawled over my skin, an unsettling presence that shouldn’t have existed. It had no eyes and no discernible features, yet I felt its gaze as it scrutinized me. A shiver ran down my spine, and I tightened my grip on the dagger clutched in my trembling hands.

The figure vanished, breaking apart in the wind. I blinked hard, as my mind raced to make sense of the absence. Oberon turned rigid. The line of his shoulders stiffened as he tightened his grip on his sword. The faintest creak of leather echoed in the silence.

The emptiness was tangible. My pulse pounded harder. “Where did it—”

The temperature plummeted. The air became frigid, seeping into my bones. Every muscle tensed as my breath hitched with an inhale I couldn’t expel. A blackened, leathery face emerged from the air beside me, twisting into existence where nothing had been a moment ago. The thing’s mouth split open, flesh ripping apart, exposing rows upon rows of jagged teeth, stained yellow and red. A hollow, ear-piercing screech tore from its gaping maw, rattling through my skull in shards of ice.

A strangled noise ripped from my throat when panic lurched hot and fast through me. I stumbled backward, instinct overriding thought. My boot caught on something solid. The world tilted. A wet, squelching noise filled my ears when my hands landed against the decomposing corpse behind me. The sickening give of rotting flesh compressed beneath my weight, and a gloopy plop followed, like an overripe fruit bursting underfoot.

A putrid gas exploded around me, creating a thick, noxious cloud that scratched my throat, stung my eyes, and burned my nostrils. I gagged, pulling my sleeve up to cover my nose. My stomach lurched.

Oberon’s blade cut through the creature.

Steel met what should have been flesh, but the impact didn’t bring resistance. It brought nothing. The blade sliced through its charred face, but the moment it struck, the head dissipated, the mist unraveling in the wind. The body followed, misting into nothingness.

I scrambled to my feet, breath heaving, and hand trembling on the handle of my dagger. “Did it… did you…?”

Oberon’s torso moved rhythmically, yet tension wove through every muscle, his silver irises glinting in the dim light. His tone was as inevitable as death itself. “No. My sword won’t kill it.”

His words made my stomach knot. He didn’t say I missed or needed to strike harder . He said it won’t kill it .

“Dilthen Doe.” Oberon’s hand seized my arm. “Run.” Dry, wilted wheat whipped at my ankles as we tore through the field. My lungs burned, but I didn’t dare slow down. The only thing more terrifying than the creature was the fact that Oberon was running.

The force of being shoved inside slammed my shoulder into the doorframe, causing a sharp jolt to rattle through my bones. The impact sent me stumbling. My feet dragged against the tile, and my arms flailed to keep me upright. Pain lashed through my hand when my palm caught the floor to stop me. The cut split open again. A fresh warmth seeped through the bandages, sticky against my skin.

Hard tile beneath me. The bite of reopened wounds. The echo of boots closing in behind me.

“Run again, and I’ll make sure you can’t.”

The voice wasn’t Oberon’s. The moment wasn’t then.

But my chest tightened as if it was, as if the past had reached through the thin veil of time and curled its fingers around my throat.

My eyes shut tight.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

My lungs burned as though they could no longer draw in air. I unclenched my fingers. But the damage had been done. The sharp crescents of my nails marked my palms, pressing deep enough to sting.

“Herbalist.”

Oberon’s voice sliced through the fog, pulling me back to the moment. The entryway was empty except for us. The vast space swallowed the echo of his words, making them heavier than they should have been.

He didn’t know. He didn’t mean it.

My breaths shuddered through me, uneven, but I made myself move. I pulled my shoulders back, straightened, and curled my fingers into the fabric of my dress to conceal the fresh bloom of blood soaking through the bandages.

Oberon watched me with an intensity that peeled back layers I didn’t want him to see. I took a deep breath and forced a smile, tilting my chin enough to make it convincing. “I tripped, but I’m fine.” The dim morning light filtered through the tall windows, highlighting his face. The muscles there flickered taut beneath his skin.

He didn’t call me on the lie. But it was clear he didn’t believe it.

His gaze shifted toward the dark staircase ahead of him. His body remained tense, with a restrained energy thrumming beneath the surface, though I wasn’t sure whether it resulted from frustration, caution, or something else. “Don’t go back out there alone,” he ordered. A flicker of warmth brushed against the chill in my bones. Not because of his words, but because of how he said them. No anger, no irritation. Just command.

I pressed the moment deep into the recesses of my mind, where it could fester in silence. If I ignored it long enough, the tremor in my hands might fade. Maybe the past wouldn’t claw its way to the surface. Maybe. The laugh escaped me, thinner than I intended, brittle at the edges. “Oh? And here I thought it was safe.”

Oberon didn’t share my humor.

His expression remained impassive, carved from stone, as he positioned himself in front of me in one swift motion. The shift was so sudden and decisive that my feet stopped. My pulse quickened as a wall of solid muscle and unwavering will stood between me and my way forward. His onyx eyes fixated on me. Oberon’s expression had always been unreadable, but there was an unfamiliar weight to it, a quiet intensity that held me in place. He didn’t just gaze at me.

He saw me.

“Dilthen Doe.” The words were soft. The low timbre of his voice sent goosebumps along my spine, but the plea beneath it unsettled me. Don’t. No elaboration, no demand.

My fingers dug deeper into my skirt, and the rough fabric pressed against my palm, the sticky warmth of my blood seeping through the bandages. He wouldn’t move until I acknowledged him. So, I lifted my chin enough to shift the balance. “I wasn’t planning on it.” It wasn’t a lie. Not entirely.

Oberon’s gaze raked over me. His lips parted as if he hadn’t decided what to say, but knew he wanted to respond. A tense pause settled between us before he exhaled sharply through his nose, signifying restraint. His jaw tightened, and he stepped aside. I moved past him before he could see any deeper, before his perceptive eyes could peel back the layers I wasn’t ready to expose. I kept my steps even, my shoulders straight, willing my heart to return to its proper rhythm.

I wasn’t sure what he’d find if he looked deeper into me, and I wasn’t ready to find out.

THE MORNING IN Vaelwick was a stark contrast to the night we arrived. The village stirred awake with the rhythm of daily life. Vendors arranged their wares, and the smell of fresh bread drifted through the narrow streets. Children darted between legs, their high-pitched laughter filling the air. On the surface, it was ordinary, familiar, and just like any other place. But beneath the hum of routine, wary eyes observed.

It wasn’t the idle curiosity of strangers passing through or the grudging acknowledgment of outsiders. This was different, more deliberate. Conversations tapered off as we passed. Voices dropped into hushed murmurs as if lingering too long on our presence might summon something worse. Heads turned, only for glances to flick away just as quickly, as though we carried misfortune in our wake.

It was as if we were the ones stalking the night.

I slowed near a group of villagers gathered outside a weathered stall, their fingers knotting dried herbs into bundles. The smell of rosemary and sage lingered in the damp air, masking a more acrid smell. The five of them—three women and two men—worked in silence, their hands never still even as they exchanged glances at my approach.

I wasn’t welcome. That much was clear.

“Excuse me,” I said, forcing a polite smile that I hoped wouldn’t betray my unease. “I was wondering about the trinkets around town that hang from the eaves and posts. What are they made of?” For a moment, only the rustling of herbs answered me. Then, an older woman with silver streaks in her thick braid met my gaze with a measured look. Her fingers worked on a small, carved figure between them.

“Bones. Wood. Twine,” She said with a voice rough as worn river stones.

Nodding, my eyes followed the contours of the tiny effigy. It was humanoid, but only just. Its features were too distorted, its limbs too thin. “And they symbolize…?”

A younger woman, just out of her teens, spoke up. “Protection, warnings. Prayers, sometimes.”

I followed her gaze to a nearby doorway where someone had drawn a sigil in what I hoped was chalk. Darker streaks bled into the wood grooves, resisting the rain that ought to have washed them away. “And the markings?” I asked.

The older woman’s hands stilled for a moment. “The same,” she said. The hair on my arms stood on end. She spoke those words as if they carried immense weight, as though voicing them could unravel something best left undisturbed.

The younger woman hesitated, then added, “Each family has its signs, some older than the village itself.”

Something unsettled twisted in my gut. Older than the village? The black wheat swaying in the mist, untouched by the wind, refusing to rot. “And the field?” I asked carefully. “The black wheat?”

The shift was immediate.

Their fingers stilled. The air thickened with an unspoken tension. The younger woman swallowed, her lips parting. The older one shot her a quick look. “It’s cursed,” the girl muttered, ignoring the warning.

A muscle feathered in the older woman’s jaw. One man, broad-shouldered and lined with age, looked at me. His expression was stern. But his voice was taut, a rope stretched too thin. “You don’ belong here, Herbalist.”

The quiet that followed was suffocating.

I held his gaze, even as my gut twisted, instinct telling me to retreat. To leave it alone. “I only want to understand,” I said.

His jaw tightened. He shook his head once. “Understandin’ won’t save you.”

Oberon stepped closer, creating a subtle change in the air, accompanied by the quiet pull that followed him. Tension settled over his frame, winding. His voice was steady and low. “What do you mean?”

The man’s gaze flicked to him. Beside him, the women kept their eyes lowered, busying their hands as they twisted herbs into tight, intricate knots. The sharp scent of rosemary curled through the air, but it did little to mask the unease that pressed in on each of us.

The man exhaled sharply through his nose, issuing a warning. “Means you should leave before you find out.”

Oberon didn’t move. Not a single shift of his weight, not a flicker of reaction. But his presence changed in a way that was impossible to ignore. The surrounding air became heavier and pressed in further, daring the man to try again.

The villager shifted on his feet. His wariness deepened, but he held firm. “Things in Vaelwick don’t take kindly to outsiders askin’ questions.” His calculating gaze flicked to me. To my hands, still dusted with remnants of crushed herbs from the market. To the bandages wrapped around my fingers.

His lips parted, hesitated, then set in a thin, grim line. “‘Specially ones who think they can fix what’s been decided.”

A slow, insidious chill unfurled in my gut. “Decided by who?” I asked.

The reaction was immediate. The women moved with quick, efficient hands, gathering their things in silence. The man stepped back, his expression set into stone.

Oberon didn’t press further. His fingers brushed against my wrist. The message was definite: We’re done here. I turned with him as my feet carried me away from the stall, but my thoughts lingered and unsettled me.

As we walked, I flipped through my journal, scanning the pages and searching for answers. But the words blurred, the notes I had taken lost shape and meaning, and fragments refused to align. The pieces lay scattered as bones in the dirt, but they didn’t fit together as they should have.

Frowning, I lifted my gaze, allowing my eyes to adapt to the bright midday sun. It was too hot.

Vaelwick sat northwest of Silverfel. It shouldn’t be much warmer, if any. Silverfel’s dense canopy might have lowered the temperature, its shadows sheltering the village. Vaelwick was different. Exposed.

Sprawling fields stretched toward the horizon. Golden and black waves of dead wheat and brittle grass rolled with the lazy whisper of the wind. The only trees were on the other side of the fields, opposite from the town. No shade. Nowhere to hide from the relentless press of the sun overhead.

My eyes followed the slow ripple of movement across the fields. It should have been soothing, but it wasn’t. The wheat swayed out of time with the wind, as if moving to an unseen rhythm.

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. My uniform was too thick, designed for the freezing, damp castle corridors, and long nights wrapped in stone walls, not for the relentless heat turning me into a seared prime filet—or maybe steamed. My fingers flexed, feeling the dampness gathering beneath my bandages and the prickle of sweat on my skin. I wanted to roll my sleeves up to let the air touch my arms and cool the discomfort.

The thought lingered, an old weight I thought I had shed. The past never left. It only settled beneath my skin and sleeves, waiting for these moments to remind me it was still there.

Oberon stood at the mansion door with arms crossed. He didn’t just wait. He made sure I entered. I slowed as I passed him, readjusting my grip on my journal.

Why did he do that? He just stood there, still as stone, watching. Waiting. It made ignoring his presence impossible.

“I’m going to the room… I mean, my room,” I corrected, the words fumbling off my tongue. My grip tightened on the journal as if it might anchor me. I felt self-conscious under his gaze, and I hated that I did.

“I have too much to figure out,” I added, lifting the journal as if that explained everything. He furrowed his brows, but he didn’t respond.

Maybe he felt the shift between us, the unspoken weight that had settled into the spaces where silence once felt normal. Now, it only felt thick. Heavy.

I paused, then shook my head at myself. Enough . I stepped past him into the mansion’s threshold, and a chill swept over me. The air was cooler inside, but no less suffocating.

At the bottom of the stairs, I hesitated again. The ceilings loomed overhead, and the silence stretched more than it should have. Even the flickering candlelight became distant, swallowed by shadows that gathered in the high corners of the hall. A whisper of unease trailed through me.

Marcus’s mansion had been that way. It was too large, too empty. The emptiness turned every creak into footsteps and every shifting shadow into watching eyes. There were too many doors, places for someone to be lurking just out of sight.

My pulse stuttered fast.

We weren’t in Wickloe. I wasn’t there anymore.

Clearing my throat, I pushed myself forward, step by step, until the memory loosened its grip, and I reached my door. The journal dropped on the table with a dull thud, pages fluttering before settling. With a groan, I sank into the chair and pressed my fingers to my temple.

Focus.

The notes I had taken throughout Vaelwick were a mess of half-scrawled observations, fragmented warnings, and scrawled sigils. It was there, but disjointed, scattered, a puzzle with pieces missing their edges.

I rewrote everything with a clean sheet of parchment, breaking it apart piece by piece.

First, the trinkets . Bones, wood, twine. Carved with intent. Symbols of protection, warnings, prayers. But against what?

Second, the sigils. C rude but deliberate markings on doors. The older woman said each family had its own, passed down through generations. It wasn’t just superstition, but something rooted in history, in survival.

Third, the field. The black wheat. Cursed , they had called it. No one said why. No one explained what it meant. But one villager had let a detail slip, quiet, half-muttered, before silencing herself.

‘The crops feed on it.’

Feed on what?

I frowned, tapping the quill against the table. My gaze swept over the notes, retracing the words as I searched for the missing link. The trinkets, the sigils, the field—protection, warnings, a curse, a secret they refused to name.

Something didn’t make sense.

Or maybe I was just too late to see the pattern.

Maybe the roots of the field held the answer I sought, the truth Vaelwick concealed.

Waiting. Growing. Feeding.

Tearing off a small piece of the black wheat loaf, I absently chewed as I sketched a rough map of the village. The bread was dense, heavier than I expected, with a bitter aftertaste that lingered on my tongue. It didn’t taste spoiled but had an unpleasant aftertaste—an elduven sharpness, damp soil after rain, but darker. Stranger.

I ignored it and pressed on, marking the locations of the sigils I had seen, the houses with more trinkets than others, the general layout of the field. The quill followed the patterns I had traced throughout the day, but my restless and jagged thoughts churned beneath the surface.

Straightening, I scanned my messy scrawl.

People protected the houses closest to the fields the most, carving more sigils, trinkets, and desperate prayers into their walls. It wasn’t random or tradition. It was defense . They weren’t just superstitions or old customs. They were barriers.

The bite of bread I had been chewing went down dry, sticking in my throat like dust. My hand gripped the charcoal tighter. The man’s warning echoed back to me, creeping through the cracks in my mind in a whispered omen.

“You don’t belong here, Herbalist.”

Not us. Not Oberon.

Me.

A heavy pounding started in my chest.

Why?

Herbalists weren’t threats. We worked with plants, studied the land, and healed the sick. We helped. So why did a withering village—its crops struggling, its land sickly, its people desperate—see me as something that didn’t belong?

The charcoal stilled between my fingers.

Unless… it wasn’t wilting.

I sat up straighter, my breath unsteady. What if they weren’t afraid of me being useless here? What if they were worried I would interfere?

Tearing off another piece of the loaf and chewing, my gaze fixed on my notes, though I wasn’t seeing them anymore. The creatures that the travelers spoke of in whispers, the ones Oberon and I had seen, were in the fields where animals refused to venture. Where the deaths happened and where people vanished if they ventured too far into the wheat. Everything was connected to that field.

Setting aside the charcoal, I exhaled and swept my hair back.

But why? When I looked at it earlier, it had seemed… normal. Strange in its endlessness, eerie in how the wind moved through it with breaths, but otherwise, it was just a field. Or at least, it was on the surface.

A sharp chill crawled up my spine.

On the surface.

I stared at the half-eaten loaf in my hand with unease. The wheat thrived. The grain grew thick and tall while everything else around it struggled to survive, its roots starved of whatever life remained in the soil. That’s why the villagers muttered about the wheat feeding on something. Because whatever it was…

It was buried.