The Siren Bell of Emberwatch
The night the sky caught fire began like any other: quiet, unassuming, suffocating in its normalcy.
I crouched in the dirt outside our family's cottage, scraping mud from a rusted hoe. The crops were dead. Again.
"Rot's spread into the rootbeds," muttered his father earlier, spitting black saliva. "The gods piss on us this year."
I hadn't responded. No point. You learned to stop praying when the gods stopped listening. Then the siren bell rang—three times, slow and deep. Not for bandits. Not for fire. But for something worse.
The Voidspawn.
Chaos erupted. Screams scattered like birds. Then mother shoved me out the door, tossing me father's old sickle.
"Find Alira!" she screamed. "The shadows are moving!"
I sprinted through the village square, already slick with blood. Flames licked the rooftops. A child sobbed near a horse's crushed corpse. From the barn, an unnatural shriek pierced the air—wet, high, and wrong.
Then I saw it. A thing—as if a god had tried to sculpt a spider from rot and grief—burst from the barn. Eyeless. Skinless. Bones protruding from soft meat. Mouths where no mouths should be. Claws like hooked reaping scythes ,and Alira stood between it and the villagers.
"KAEL!" she shouted.
I froze.
The creature lunged. Alira twisted, her sword dancing silver in the firelight. Steel clashed with chitin. She screamed—but stood her ground. Kael took a step forward—then stumbled. His legs wouldn't move.
"Don't just stand there!" she shouted. "GO!"
"I can help—!"
"You can't!"
I stared into her eyes— the eyes that i had seen every day since birth. They were calm, even now. They told me: You must live. I have already chosen to die.
And then—
CRACK.
The Voidspawn's tail drove through her chest, and her body hit the ground like a sack of ash.