Chapter 49 – Hunger Without Teeth
429 Words
They buried the bodies beneath a cairn of ice-crusted stones, though Rael didn’t speak the rites.
No wind, no breath of warmth—just the scrape of rock over rock. Aurelia kept her hands deep in her cloak, afraid the others might see the way her fingers twitched without her meaning them to.
The spear was quiet now. Too quiet.
Like it had eaten and was still savoring the taste.
---
By afternoon, the cut through the ridge had narrowed to a dark, bony pass. The walls pressed close, streaked with frost that looked like pale veins. Snow muffled their steps, but Aurelia kept hearing things—soft scrapes, an echoing click like distant bone tapping stone.
Dusk’s hackles rose.
They emerged into a hollow pocket between cliffs, and that was when she saw them.
At first they looked like boulders scattered through the snow. Then one of them unfolded.
Pale carapace. Too many joints. A face like an eyeless mask split by a mouth full of… nothing. Not teeth, not tongue—just absence.
Lira’s whisper came sharp. “Shadewrought spawn.”
Rael’s hand went to his blade. “We run. Now.”
The creatures turned their blank faces toward them, moving in that wrong, jerking way—like marionettes with a cruel puppeteer.
---
Aurelia’s pulse pounded.
Her hand twitched.
> Let me.
She clenched her jaw. No.
The first one lunged, and Lira’s spell slammed into it—silver light searing through the hollow of its mouth. Two more followed, scuttling over the snow with impossible speed.
Rael shouted her name. She moved before she thought—before she decided.
Shadows bloomed at her feet, dragging upward like she was standing in a tide. She felt herself split in two: the Aurelia watching in horror, and the Aurelia who wanted.
The spear’s strike went out in every direction—no, her strike—cutting the creatures into pieces too neat to have been made by steel.
Snow settled. Silence fell.
And her companions stared.
---
Rael’s knuckles were white around his sword hilt. Lira’s lips moved soundlessly, as if searching for a name to put to what she’d just seen.
Aurelia looked at her own hands. No black veins now—they’d receded, hiding like a predator that knows it will feed again.
> We’re past bargains, little chainbreaker. You will open the rest for me.
She turned away from them, toward the narrowing pass ahead. She didn’t want them to see her expression.
Because part of her wasn’t afraid anymore.
Part of her was… hungry.
- Writer
