The bells of Blackmere had never been silent before.
Not in war. Not in famine. Not even on the night the river swallowed the eastern quarter and dragged twenty homes into its black throat. The bells had always rung—warning, mourning, or celebration—until the sound became part of the town's breathing.
So when the bells failed to ring at sunset, everyone felt it.
Ashen Calder felt it most of all.
He stood at the edge of the old watchtower hill, boots half-buried in frostbitten grass, staring down at the town below. Blackmere lay wrapped in dusk like a corpse in a shroud—chimneys coughing thin smoke, crooked roofs sagging under early winter's weight, and lanterns flickering like nervous eyes.
The bells should have rung by now.
Ashen's fingers curled tighter around the iron pendant at his throat. It was cold—always cold—no matter how long he wore it. The metal bit into his skin, grounding him, reminding him he was still here. Still alive.
For now.
"Something's wrong," he muttered.
The wind answered him with a howl that slithered through the dead trees behind the tower. Their branches clawed at the sky like skeletal hands, stripped bare by autumn and rot. Blackmere Forest had been dying for years. Everyone said it was blight. Ashen knew better.
The forest was afraid.
A crunch of footsteps sounded behind him.
"You're staring again."
Ashen didn't turn. "The bells didn't ring."
Mara stepped up beside him, wrapping her threadbare cloak tighter around her shoulders. Her dark hair was braided back, practical and severe, but a few loose strands whipped against her sharp cheekbones in the wind. Her eyes—gray as stormwater—tracked the town below with the same unease Ashen felt twisting in his gut.
"They're probably late," she said, though her voice lacked conviction.
"They've never been late."
Mara exhaled slowly. "Then maybe tonight is different."
Ashen snorted. "Everything's been different since the dead stopped staying dead."
She stiffened at that.
They both remembered.
Three weeks ago, Old Hendrick had been buried beneath frozen soil and a cracked headstone. Two nights later, he'd clawed his way out of the ground and wandered into the mill, dripping earth and grave rot, eyes glowing like dying embers. It had taken five men and a blessed iron hook to drag him down.
The priest had burned the body until nothing remained but blackened bone.
The bells had rung then. Loud. Desperate.
Ashen finally turned to face Mara. "You feel it too, don't you?"
She hesitated. That was answer enough.
"I haven't slept right in days," she admitted. "Every time I close my eyes, I hear whispering. Like something calling my name from underground."
Ashen swallowed. He'd been hearing the same thing.
A distant scream sliced through the air.
Both of them froze.
It came again—closer this time. A woman's voice, raw with terror, tearing through the quiet streets of Blackmere.
Ashen was already moving.
They sprinted down the hill, boots skidding over frost-slick stone, lungs burning as the town rushed up to meet them. Lanterns flared to life as doors flew open. Shadows spilled into the streets, people clutching pitchforks, knives, anything they could use as a weapon.
The scream cut off abruptly.
"Temple," someone shouted. "It came from the temple!"
Ashen's blood ran cold.
The Temple of the Veiled Sun stood at the center of Blackmere—a squat stone building older than the town itself. Its walls were carved with symbols no one could read anymore, its stained-glass windows dark even during daylight.
And its bells hung silent above it.
They reached the square to find chaos.
The temple doors were wide open, one hinge torn clean from the stone. Blood smeared the steps in thick, dark arcs. A body lay crumpled near the entrance—Sella the baker's wife—eyes wide, throat opened so deeply Ashen could see white bone beneath the red.
Mara gagged, turning away.
Ashen didn't.
He couldn't.
The whispering surged in his head, louder now, threading through his thoughts like grasping fingers.
This is only the beginning.
A shape moved inside the temple.
The crowd recoiled as something stepped into the lantern light.
It was once a man.
Its body was twisted, joints bent wrong, skin stretched too tight over sharpened bone. Black veins crawled across its face like living cracks, and its eyes—empty, glowing pits—locked onto the crowd with hunger.
Someone screamed.
The creature smiled.
Ashen's pendant burned.
He cried out, clutching his chest as heat seared through the iron, sending agony down his spine. The world tilted. The lanterns flared brighter, shadows stretching unnaturally long.
The creature's gaze snapped to him.
"You," it rasped, voice like stone grinding against stone. "You carry the mark."
Ashen staggered back, heart hammering.
"What mark?" he demanded, though fear hollowed his words.
The thing laughed, a wet, broken sound.
"The bell-bearer's blood," it said. "The gate-opener's curse."
The creature took another step forward.
Stone cracked beneath its misshapen foot, the sound echoing too loudly in the open square. Ashen could smell it now—rot and cold earth, like a grave torn open in winter. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run, yet his feet refused to move.
The whispering in his skull grew sharper, no longer a murmur but a chorus.
You are late.You are chosen.You are opened.
His pendant throbbed against his chest.
"You," the creature rasped again, its broken mouth stretching wider than any human jaw should allow. "You hear them too."
A man from the crowd hurled a lantern. It shattered against the creature's shoulder, fire spilling harmlessly down its blackened skin. The thing didn't even flinch.
Mara grabbed Ashen's arm. "Don't listen to it," she hissed. "Ashen—look at me."
He tried. He really did.
But the creature lifted a clawed hand and pointed straight at him.
"The bells were never meant to protect you," it said. "They were meant to keep you asleep."
Pain detonated in Ashen's chest.
He screamed as the pendant burned white-hot, searing through cloth and skin alike. He dropped to his knees, hands clawing at his collar, breath tearing from his lungs in ragged gasps. The ground beneath him felt wrong—too soft, like skin stretched over something vast and shifting.
The whispering became a single voice.
Open.
The creature lunged.
Time fractured.
Ashen threw his hands forward, not knowing why, not knowing how. Something inside him tore loose—a pressure he hadn't known was there until it was gone. The world answered.
The stone square groaned.
Cracks spiderwebbed outward from Ashen's palms, racing across the ground toward the temple steps. Darkness surged up through them—not shadow cast by light, but shadow born from depth, thick and alive. It swallowed sound, swallowed air.
The creature was caught mid-leap.
For a heartbeat, its eyes widened—not with rage, but with fear.
Then the darkness closed.
There was no scream.
When the pressure finally released, Ashen collapsed forward, palms scraping stone. The square was ruined—cracked, scorched, wrong. Where the creature had been, there was nothing but scorched ash and a faint, oily residue that evaporated into the cold air.
No body.
No blood.
Just absence.
The crowd stood frozen.
Someone dropped a pitchfork. It clattered loudly, the sound making several people flinch as though waking from a spell.
Ashen forced himself upright, dizziness washing over him in waves. His chest burned. His hands trembled. The whispers were gone—but the silence they left behind felt worse.
Mara knelt in front of him, gripping his face between her hands.
"Ashen," she said softly, fear naked in her eyes. "What did you just do?"
He searched himself for an answer and found only a hollow ache, as if something essential had been removed.
"I don't know," he whispered.
A deep, metallic groan rolled across the square.
Slowly—agonizingly—the bells in the temple tower began to move.
They rang once.
The sound was wrong. Too low. Too heavy. It sank into Ashen's bones instead of passing through the air.
Twice.
The crowd murmured, some falling to their knees, others backing away from the temple doors in terror.
A third time.
Ashen felt it then—a vast awareness stretching outward from the tower, from the forest, from the ground beneath Blackmere itself.
Something had heard him.
The bells continued to ring, not calling for help, not warning of danger—
But announcing it.