PART 1: THE SLEEPWALKERS
The first child vanished on the night of the scarlet moon.
Little Mara, the weaver's daughter—barely six years old, with a laugh like wind chimes. They found her standing barefoot in the ashes of the birch grove at dawn, her nightgown stiff with dried blood, her small hands cupping something unseen.
"She gave me a gift," Mara whispered when questioned.
Lysara's dagger was at the girl's throat before Aric could react, the blade's edge lifting Mara's chin—not to harm, but to reveal.
Beneath the child's tongue, a sliver of gold pulsed like a living thing.
"Mask shard," Lysara signed, her own scars darkening to bruised purple.
By week's end, seven more children wandered off. Each returned changed:
- Jasper, the blacksmith's boy, now humming a dirge in a language dead for centuries
- Lila, the innkeeper's twin, drawing precise blueprints of the buried bone door
- Thom, who'd been mute since birth, screaming the Pyre God's true name at midnight
The village elders barred their doors. The parents whispered of curses.
And Grandmother Ash?
She was gone.
Only her staff remained, plunged into the butcher's basement floor like a warning.
PART 2: THE SCAR-MAP
Lysara's skin became a battleground.
Overnight, the scars migrated—NO MORE GODS unraveling into sprawling glyphs that mapped the valley in jagged lines. When Aric pressed his palm to her back, the marks burned cold, resolving into three clear locations:
1. The Butcher's Basement (already defiled)
2. The Forgotten Well (where the first sleepwalker drowned)
3. The Standing Stone (a monolith older than the village)
They went to the stone first.
It wept black sap where Lysara touched it. The carvings slithered under her fingers, rearranging into a single phrase:
"YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HER FORGET"
Then the ground shuddered.
From the forest's edge, the children began to sing.
PART 3: THE WELL OF WHISPERS
The forgotten well wasn't forgotten at all.
The villagers had sealed it for a reason.
Aric counted thirteen locks—each crafted from a different metal, each stamped with a hollow circle. Lysara shattered six with her dagger before the remaining locks *melted* themselves, the molten metal forming a staircase downward.
The water below wasn't water.
It was memory.
Lysara plunged her arm in first. The liquid thickened around her scars, showing flashes of:
- The god-child stitching gold masks onto villagers' faces
- Grandmother Ash burying something under the standing stone
- Aric, in another life, holding a dagger to Lysara's throat
When Aric pulled her back, her scars had changed again:
FIND THE HEART
Above them, the children's song reached a crescendo.
PART 4: THE HEART'S PRICE
The standing stone cracked at dawn.
Inside lay Grandmother Ash's missing heart—still beating, wrapped in chains of blue fire.
Lysara reached for it.
The children's voices became one:
"Take it, and we'll never sleep again."
Aric hesitated.
Lysara didn't.
Her fingers closed around the heart— and every scar on her body detonated into white flame.
CHAPTER ENDING: THE FINAL CHOICE
The fire showed them the truth:
The god-child had always been in the village.
Not as the brown-haired girl.
Not as the Pyre's remnant.
But as the land itself.
And it was hungry.
Lysara's voice returned in the inferno, raw and cracking:
"Last chance. Burn it all... or let me try something worse."
Aric reached for her.
The children screamed.
—TO BE CONTINUED—