Shrine-Hollow, Eastern Velgrath Foothills
The sky cracked open on the fifth day.
Rain fell like penance, cold and metallic. Aeron and his band pressed on through a sunken vale strewn with splintered trees and red stone. Harwin's cloak clung to him like a second skin, and even Elric had stopped cursing the weather. The boy said nothing at all—only stared up at the slopes, where hunched figures marked the ridgeline like gargoyles.
They were effigies.
Twenty of them, lashed to posts with their arms bent skyward. Their faces had been carved from bark and bone, their sockets hollowed. Smoke curled faint from their mouths.
The sign of a relic cult.
"Old God's watchers," Harwin muttered. "Shrineborn."
Aeron's voice was flat. "Or someone wants us to think so."
He dismounted, boots sinking into the red clay. At the edge of the clearing lay a stone well, half-covered with moss. Nearby, a shrine slab leaned at an angle, its engraving almost lost to time: a sunburst, carved inside an eye.
"Eye of God," said the washer-widow, her voice ragged. "They say it blinks during bloodstorms."
The boy crouched near the well. "There's something inside."
Elric stepped forward, war axe slung. "Probably bones."
"No," the boy said. "Light."
Aeron moved to look. Down below, in the water's murk, a flicker—faint but sure. Like fire struggling against drowning.
"Trapped lantern?" Harwin asked.
"No. A candle, floating."
Aeron tied a rope to a stone and lowered himself halfway. As his boots scraped the well wall, the light sharpened, then trembled.
It wasn't a candle.
It was an ember, shaped like a tongue of flame—and it floated mid-air, inches above the water's surface.
And it was watching him.
He froze.
The flame pulsed once.
Then vanished.
A second later, the water roiled—then stilled.
Aeron climbed back up in silence. He said nothing for a long time.
Then he said "We're too close. Something's trailing us. Or waiting ahead."
Harwin grunted. "Both, more likely."
They made camp in silence that night, avoiding the shrine. The figures on the ridge did not move—but nor did they seem any less alive.
That night, Aeron dreamt.
Not of fire. Not of battle.
But of a hall of statues—each bearing his face, twisted in grief, rage, or madness. At the end stood one without a mouth, just a blank where speech should be.
When he awoke, the boy was staring at him.
"You screamed," the boy said.
Aeron wiped sweat from his brow. "No. I was being quiet."
The boy looked at the horizon, where morning had not yet come. "The quiet's the loudest part."