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Shame is thick in the air; Raek’s jaw is jutted forward, brow dark, but he has no room to speak as Silas continues.

“We are not a soft people,” he acknowledges.

His eyes dart my way before looking back out into the square.

“We do not live in a world which often allows space for tender things, which is filled with nothing but warm days and star filled nights. But neither are we heartless — at least, I would not have thought so. We do not treat our Offerings like…like this !” Somehow his deep voice, already cave dark, drops lower, as though the mountain itself is speaking.

“I cannot go against the full will of the Council,” he says, more to Grace than anyone else, “but neither will I let us continue down this path of madness. If an Offering is called, then it is called, but we will pay as we always have. With gratefulness, and love. With hope, and with honor. With gentle hands and a Guided soul. But we will not Sacrifice as though her life isn’t a gift to protect us from what has been, and what is still to come.

And there is no place in this village for any one who would ask for such a thing, or demand it. ”

The words are pointed, a sword’s tip, aimed at Raek, who takes the hit with mouth twisted in an ugly grimace.

“Of course, Father ,” he spits, before forcing his face into a mockery of respectful supplication.

He drops his voice, so only those closest to the stage can hear.

“And, as you agree to the need for the…Offerings…perhaps you would call the other nine now, as a show of solidarity in these most trying times. ”

Silas is silent, and Raek, without looking away from him, shouts out to the waiting crowd, using the Father’s words against him in near-parody. “With love, and respect, with hope, and honor, and gentle hands, the Council calls the rest of our Offering to the stage, for Reaping and Rendering.”

Slowly, slowly the crowd parts, letting those named stutter-step forward.

There is no last minute respite written on the page this time, no call for Crown or Blade that will stop what is to come.

Too many are too afraid, too many are too hungry, and there is a bone deep belief in every villager here that for any peace to occur in our lives, Offerings must be made.

“BoneKeeper?” Raek calls, pointing to a spot just to the side of him but still on the ground, still shadowed by the stone portico, turning to me with blazing eyes when I don’t move. “ BoneKeeper ?” He says again, this time the command is clear.

“Do we Rend and Reap now on the Council stage, Raek?” I ask, unable to fully strip emotion from my words, and he smirks when he hears the tremor in my voice.

He is so lost to his triumph that he misses the way the people nearest us look at each other.

“Is it a play or a pantomime? A theatre performance instead of a sacred tradition?”

“You know it is not, Keeper,” he replies tightly, fingers twitching at his side as though he’s forcing himself to not wrap them around my throat.

“Then we move to the Reaping Pit or the Rending Fire, though the Earth is silent and the Fire is banked.” I raise my voice to carry on the cold wind; my words are true, and strike home with any who can hear me.

With the death of Nickolas, the pillar fire miraculously died out as well, and no bones are screaming with unrelenting pressure in my ears for Offering.

But the Council is too far down the path they’ve chosen, and will feed the Earth and fire whether or not the Gods demand it.

Raek narrows his eyes, considering. “No, Keeper,” he whispers, a strange smile twisting his lips, “we will Offer our first here, where the full weight of our people will grant her comfort in her final moments. You can Guide her as easily here as anywhere else, and then we will move her to the Reaping Pit. In fact,” he says, turning to face the crowd, “we will Reap and Rend all here, where the hearts of those watching can strengthen the hearts of those Offered, where we move forward with these Offerings as one people, with one purpose, one determination.”

He is turning it into a spectacle, the quiet solemnity of the Rending and Reaping being polished and decorated as some sort of celebration, rather than a somber reminder of what has passed, what is present, and what is still to come.

When we Rend, when we Reap, it is with the Offering being surrounded by family and friends, and though the Rending Fire is never fully comforting, it is not stoked to blazing until after I have put the soul to sleep in my Guiding blade.

Though the Reaping Pit is never calming, it is surrounded by what few flowers we have in our village, by whispering trees, and low stone benches for last moments with loved ones.

No Offering is ever forced to their knees in front of a breathless crowd of thousands, throat exposed, waiting for the Reaper’s sharp dagger.

No Offering watches the Render approach with his thin, curved blade, knowing it is moments from their heart.

They face the rising or setting sun, look to the mountains above them, and when their breathing is slow and their heart at peace, they are taken from this life into their bone life.

And though there is fear — who would not fear the unknown — there is never terror.

But Grace is forced to kneel again on the stage, Raek’s hand in her hair twisting her neck painfully; the waiting crowd is motionless and uncertain.

Her breath is loud in the square, sharp, frantic pants of sound, neck corded and bent back at a terrible angle.

Her panic extends to the Offerings waiting in front of the stage, and even the infants raise tiny, meager cries as their parents' hands flex too tightly against their smooth skin in useless desperation. All else is midnight quiet.

So the sudden, wet sound of Raek’s knife across Grace’s throat is an avalanche of noise, a stomach churning liquid squelch.

Her still seeing eyes flare wide in discordant surprise, and she raises a single, trembling hand to her dripping throat in clear disbelief.

This is wrong, all wrong. Raek is not a Reaper, does not have the skill or practice to send an Offering to the bone life in a single, swift movement.

He has made the cut too shallow and too deep all at once; she won’t recover, but neither is it the quick, merciful death we are granted as Offerings.

Her chest strains in struggling beats of motion, a high pitched whistling, drenched and dreadful, bubbling from her gaping mouth, her fingers flexing against torn skin, coming away hearth-red.

No one has moved; we are nothing but echoes of motion.

Our inhales and exhales mirror hers, surface, shuddering breaths, an entire people suffocating from the slice of a single blade.

The shock of what is happening is too much to force feet forward.

Even Silas is stone-still, hand extended toward Raek as though he saw the flash of the blade before it crossed her throat and tried desperately to stop it, but was unable to.

We all stay frozen for a minute, an hour, a year, watching the life drain from her in staggering steps, Raek standing over her, hand still wrapped in her hair.

“For the Render,” he whispers, staring down at her through cold, dark eyes, and behind him, the waiting Councilmen echo his words.

“For the Render. For the Render.”

“For the Render,” Raek says again, but this time I am awake, and aware, and even in my stupor, even though he tries to slur the words together in a hushed, sliding sound, I hear him differently. For the Render? For the Ender? For the Render? For the Ender?

Above me, Raek abruptly releases Grace’s hair as a thin trickle of crimson drips back from the corner of her open mouth to her ear, then onto his clenched, white knuckles.

He shakes his hand away in sudden disgust, flinging tiny droplets of blood from his skin, lips twisting in distaste, before turning from her as though she was a rodent he had dispatched, and nothing more.

She stays upright for another agonizing moment, head lolling like a broken doll, and then, finally, finally the light drains from her eyes, and my lungs collapse in relief as the square echoes with cold thump of her body slumping to the floor .

Yanking my bone blade from my belt, I wait, rocking forward on my toes, anxious to pull her to me, to give her peace, to grant her safety, to Guide her home.

Her chest is motionless, her lungs are silent.

Her veins are still, her heart is quiet.

Her skin has smoothed, her muscles softened.

And yet, I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Until a tiny, pale mist drifts up from her body.

There is no soul-song.

There is no vibrating, joyful light of memory.

There is no…Grace.

Only a soft grey smoke the likes of which I’ve never seen before.

But I still reach.

I still try.

And I can almost, almost feel her. Almost hear her, lost somewhere in the cloud hovering over her body, my fingers glancing off her time and time again.

And I swear she is stretching for me, that I’m so close to catching her I can taste it, when a screaming wind tears down from the mountain, shrieking through the trees, sending people staggering back from its force.

It’s brutal and blinding, ripping breath from bodies, sending small stones like glass fragments into skin.

It’s a storm wind, sulfurous and noxious, full of ash and poison, and it races around the square like a living creature, a wolf on the hunt, searching for prey.

Everyone turns from it, cowering, covering themselves with their billowing cloaks, wrapping themselves around their loved ones.

Even the Council on the stage bends back from it, shielding their eyes from the dirt and debris being flung in the churning air.

So it is only Raek, and Silas, and Rannoch, and myself, who see the howling gale stutter, almost pause as it skirts across my skin, and then fully cease for a heartbeat when it nears the mist still floating over Grace’s body.

Flinging myself forward, I shout in alarm, hands outstretched, fingers grasping at empty air, desperately trying to find her. Because I know, somehow I know, if the wind takes her, she will be lost forever.

But I’m too late, if I could have reached her at all.

The moment the storm wind touches her it absorbs her, all at once and with no warning. Her greyness flares briefly, just a blink, then is swallowed by the storm, and is gone. The wind thickens until it is almost tangible, choking and suffocating, then roars away in a rush of chaos and flurry.

Everything is still

Everything is silent.

And then a single drop tumbles to the earth.

And another.

And another.