Page 22

22

Eden

MY THROAT FELT tight, parched from the heat, the run, and the tension. The eerie silver gleam in Oberon’s eyes hadn’t faded. His fingers remained curled around the hilt of his sword, knuckles taut, his entire body braced as if he expected another attack.

I shook my head, forcing my voice to stay steady.

Think.

Focus.

“That thing came after us both. You were standing right there.”

His jaw tightened. “It only looked at you .”

A chill scraped along my spine, and I wrapped my arms around myself. My gaze drifted back to the twisted corpse sprawled on the ground. It was unnatural in a way that made my stomach churn. The flesh was withering, skin sloughing away in patches as black bile oozed from its slackened mouth. The stench of decay clung to the air.

The sigils beneath the body, carved deep into the dirt, were obscured by the foul sludge coating them. But beneath it, something moved.

A sudden crack split the silence. The ground beneath the corpse shuddered.

I flinched and stumbled back. Oberon’s arm caught my waist, yanking me away just while the ground beneath the Veilbound collapsed. A sharp gasp stuck in my throat as the corpse sank and dragged downward. The ground gaped open, bile bubbling as the land itself came to life, swallowing the body whole.

My pulse pounded, the scene unfolding before me feeling too surreal, too impossible. “That’s—”

“Not normal.” Oberon hadn’t let go of me. His voice was a deadly calm, despite his tension, a slow-burning energy in the way his muscles remained rigid. His firm grip on my waist lingered, as if he were trying to ground himself in the aftermath.

The tremors stilled, the bile ceased bubbling, and the ground settled as if nothing had happened. But the sigils remained, glistening beneath the grime.

Oberon’s chest relaxed before he eased his arm from around me. Losing his warmth left my skin tingling. He crouched, ran a hand over a carving, and smeared away the remaining filth. His brow furrowed as his eyes traced the symbols with unnerving focus.

“These aren’t just warding sigils,” he muttered. His voice was low and distant. “They’re binding marks.”

Binding.

“You think something was trapped here?”

Oberon remained still, fingers pressed against the soil, before he lifted his gaze to mine. “Not something,” he corrected. “Someone.”

“Someone?”

Oberon’s gaze drifted back to the sigils, his fingers tracing the grooves with reverence, as if the mere act of touching them might awaken what lay beneath us. The way he moved with such caution sent a fresh wave of unease coursing through my veins. He didn’t just read the symbols. He felt them. “These marks don’t just bind.” His silver eyes flicked up and locked onto mine with quiet intensity. “They consume.”

A chill slithered through me.

He sat back on his heels and gestured toward the etched stone. “Warding sigils repel. Binding sigils imprison. But these?” His voice darkened, laced with restrained fury. “These are meant to drain. To strip something, or someone, of everything until nothing remains.”

The bile in my stomach churned. I turned back toward the collapsed soil, to the thick, sludgy remnants of whatever foul magic had been at work. The ground still bore the scars of what had just happened, yet it looked undisturbed. It had swallowed its secrets whole.

“Then whoever was buried here—”

“—is long gone,” Oberon clipped, his voice hard. The tension in his shoulders hadn’t eased. He wiped his gloved hand on his trousers, stiff and measured, as if trying to rid himself of something unseen.

A lump formed in my throat. “If someone was buried here, then this wasn’t just a grave.” I turned to him. “This was a sacrifice . ”

Oberon went still, but a muscle in his jaw twitched. His gaze lingered on the sigils for a long, weighted moment before he spoke. “Yes.”

That single word sent a pulse of dread rippling through me. I swallowed hard, my eyes trailing over the crude symbols carved into the stone. They weren’t failed protections nor remnants of a forgotten ward. They were far worse. Someone hadn’t just died here. They had been bled dry. Erased.

This wasn’t just a desperate offering to unseen gods, an ill-conceived ritual lost to time. It had been calculated and purposeful. Someone had buried a body beneath this field for a reason. I fought the urge to retreat into instinct—to take notes, document every detail, and make sense of the horror we had just uncovered. The twist in my gut told me there was more to it.

A low, pulsing hum resonated just beneath the threshold of hearing.

The air shifted as a ripple of unseen magic crawled over my skin, raising every hair on my arms. Unseen fingers dragged through the air, scraping the ends of my awareness.

Oberon pushed to his feet, moving beside me while his gloved hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

The sigils ignited with a pulse of raw energy, surging up from the ground. Dust and debris exploded into the air. The wind howled as if the ground itself had exhaled. The force sent me stumbling, my boots sliding against the loose dirt.

Whispers, low and urgent, slithered through the wind in a language I didn’t recognize but felt. The sound didn’t just echo, it sank into me, curled through my ribs, and seeped into my bones. They were pleading.

A choked noise clawed up my throat as I lurched back. Oberon’s hand clamped around my wrist and hauled me away.

The whispers twisted into raw, shattered, and endless screams. Their agony split the air apart, tearing through the unnatural wind—through me.

I had heard suffering in the dying, in the grieving, in myself . But this wasn’t just grief, it was rage. Whatever had woken up was furious.

The ground heaved beneath us. A deep, resonant crack ripped through the clearing when the sigil-covered stone fractured. A fissure tore through the dirt, gaping wide, and from its depths poured a wave of pure rot. The smell of death, ruin, and power buried too long beneath the ground crashed over me.

Oberon’s grip on my wrist tightened. “Move!” A hand erupted from the ground. My stomach lurched at the blackened flesh, peeling in ragged sheets, clung to exposed, gleaming bone. The fingers twitched, curled, and searched.

I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t breathe.

Another hand punched through the dirt. A wet, sickening rip followed as the ground split apart. The ground convulsed and cracked wider as bodies spilled forth from the gash in the ground. One after another, they clawed their way free, limbs tangled, movements jerky and unnatural. The dirt heaved them up from a wound that had split open.

A shallow breath escaped me as my eyes locked onto their hollowed faces—jaws slack, sockets empty. The stench coated my tongue. The decay was so strong that it blurred my peripheral vision. I wanted to scream, but the sound stuck, trapped beneath the weight of horror that pressed against my chest as it sank its claws into my lungs.

The metallic shhiiing of Oberon’s sword carved through the air as he drew it from its sheath, the blade gleaming in the dim, shifting light. I forced myself to swallow against the bile that rose in my throat. My chest tightened. My skin crawled.

“Sinclaire, what is this?” I rasped.

Oberon’s silver-flecked gaze flicked between the writhing corpses and the glowing sigils beneath them. “Necromancy.” Quiet fury edged his tone. His grip on his sword tightened. “And it’s old.”

This hadn’t been a fresh summoning. It had brewed and festered beneath the field for Gods knew how long.

The dead had been waiting.

And we had just woken them.

The tallest of them—a woman—let out a rattling, gurgling shriek. Her head lolled, her jaw hung too wide, her bones cracked and popped as she turned toward me.

I swayed as my legs threatened to give out beneath me. She looked at me. Not Oberon. Not the field around us. Just me.

My mouth ran dry. The horror in my chest twisted and became colder, crueler.

Why?

Why me?

Oberon’s deep voice cut through the rising panic. “Dilthen Doe.” I tore my eyes away from the corpse and found his. That silver gaze was steady and waiting.

I sucked in a sharp breath, ignoring the way my hands trembled as I gripped my dagger and ran. My boots tore across the loosened soil as I bolted, dagger clenched in my fist so hard my knuckles ached. The corpses pulled themselves free. Dirt and rotted flesh sloughed off their bones as they staggered to their feet.

Oberon stayed close behind me. His sword swung through the air as he cut through the first one that lunged at me. The sickening sound of metal splitting flesh and bone rang in my ears, but the damn thing didn’t falter. It just shuddered, gurgled, and kept going.

“Move!” Oberon barked.

I twisted away just as the corpse’s rotted fingers swiped for my throat. I felt the rush of air as it missed, the icy grasp of decay shy of my pulse.

More of them had risen, one after another, clawing out of the shattered soil, their sunken faces twisted in expressions of torment and hunger. The woman—the tallest of them—staggered forward. That guttural, wet shriek tore from her throat once more. Her arms twitched at her sides, fingers flexing, curling, and reaching.

Still focused on me.

Panic sank into me. Think. Move. “The sigils!” I gasped, skidding to a stop just outside the bodies. “They’re what’s keeping them alive!”

Oberon’s gaze snapped to the markings that glowed beneath the corpses’ feet, their symbols pulsating with a sickly, unnatural light. “Then we break them,” he gritted. He moved again, blade flashing, carving a path through the undead.

Dagger in hand, I dropped to my knees and dug into the first sigil I could reach. The moment the metal tore through the carved lines, the air shifted. The shrieking stopped. The corpses froze. Then they screamed. A death wail—a guttural, unreal sound that sent my skull splitting open with pain.

I clamped my hands over my ears, gritting my teeth against the burn in my skull, and reached for the next sigil. Then the next. Each time I carved through one, another corpse collapsed into a pile of rot and dust.

Oberon was a whirlwind of steel beside me, slicing any that got too close. But even he was wavering. His movements were slower, and his expression was tight with strain. The magic fought back. The air buzzed, vibrated, and pressed in with a physical weight as it tried to suffocate us.

One more.

Just one more.

My blade slammed into the final sigil. The surrounding sound shattered as a wave of dark energy erupted from the broken circle, rippling outward in a shockwave. Every corpse convulsed, their skeletal jaws gaping in silent agony as they crumbled to dust. The moment the last body fell apart, the air went still.

The weight had left. The magic had died. My ragged breathing was the only sound left. Oberon stood next to me with his sword lowered, staring at the wreckage around us.

I sucked in a shaky breath and lifted my gaze to where the tall woman had stood. The only thing left of her was a tattered scrap of fabric, half-buried in the broken soil. I swallowed. My pulse refused to slow. “Necromancy,” I rasped in a whisper.

Oberon ran a bloodied hand through his hair. “And not just any necromancy,” he said. “This was a warning.”

OBERON SAT AT the rickety wooden table in my room, flipping through the pages of my notes with an intensity that made my skin prickle. His jaw was tight, his fingers tense where they gripped the parchment, but he said nothing. Not yet. He did that thing again, where he stared too long and let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable.

I paced near the window, arms crossed tight against my chest. My mind spun like a wheel caught in the mud. My body still felt wrung out, with muscles that ached from the fight, but exhaustion wasn’t enough to prevent the unease that curled deep in my gut.

A warning. That’s what he’d said. That necromantic ritual—those things in the field—weren’t random. They weren’t a forgotten relic of dark magic buried beneath the crops.

Someone put them there. Someone wanted us to find them.

But why?

I stopped pacing long enough to rub at my temples, trying to drown out the echoes of that horrible shrieking still lodged in my skull. The smell of decay clung to my clothes, no matter how many times I had scrubbed my skin raw in the basin.

Oberon sighed and shut my journal with a decisive snap. “It’s deliberate,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

He gestured toward the notes, tapping a gloved finger over the sketched sigils I had copied earlier. “This kind of necromancy isn’t just for show. It’s layered, complex, and meant to sustain itself until something breaks the cycle. We saw that firsthand.” His silver eyes flicked up, locking onto mine. “But it wasn’t meant to last forever. It was decaying before we even touched it.”

The unpleasant thought slithered through me. “You’re saying… it was set to fail?”

Oberon nodded.

A chill coasted my spine. “Then what was the point?”

His expression darkened. “To send a message.”

I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “To whom?”

Oberon’s gaze drifted past me toward the window, where the moon was nothing more than a sliver against the inky sky. “You,” he murmured.

My stomach twisted. I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would—”

“Because it’s not the first time,” he cut in, standing from the chair. He loomed closer now, broad shoulders casting a shadow over the table.

My breath caught. “What are you talking about?”

“The creature in Silverfel,” he said. “It went for you. It could’ve targeted anyone, but it didn’t. And now this.” His unwavering eyes searched mine. “This magic—it wasn’t an attack. It was a spectacle. A warning. And it was meant for you .”

The words sat heavy between us, thick with implication. I took a step back. Oberon’s gaze flicked over me, catching the movement. His expression darkened.

I hated he saw it, that my body betrayed me. But more than the lingering adrenaline and the unease clawing its way up my throat, one thought pushed its way to the front of my mind. It was so stark and sudden that it made my stomach drop.

Why me?

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t,” I stammered, my voice quieter than intended. “I don’t understand. Why me?”

Oberon sighed again and dragged his hand down his face. His silver eyes flicked up to meet mine. I felt exposed under that gaze. He had been dissecting every inch of me, peeling back my layers in a way that made my pulse quicken for different reasons than fear.

“You’re an herbalist,” he said at last.

I blinked. “So?”

His fist clenched. “ So , herbalists handle matters that others overlook: curses, poisons, remedies, and wards. Perhaps someone doesn’t want you to look too closely at what’s happening here.”

I opened my mouth, ready to protest, but the words died in my throat. He was right. I had been asking too many questions, pushing too hard, digging too deep, and someone, or something, wanted me to stop. My fingers curled into my arms.

Oberon leaned forward, close enough to see the subtle glow in his irises, the faint pulse of something other beneath his skin. “You don’t have to understand it yet,” he said. “But you need to start accepting that this—” he gestured between us, to the journal, to the remnants of that damned ritual still lingering in the air “—isn’t a coincidence.”