The bells rang long after the town had died.
No hands pulled their ropes. No winds stirred them. And yet they swung with maddening regularity, tolling out a funeral song for a world already abandoned by the gods.
Nima stood at the threshold of the ruined village, her bare feet sinking into the soft rot of the earth. Around her, once-proud homes leaned like drunks, their roofs torn open like gaping mouths. Black crows squatted on the rooftops, staring with too-human eyes, feathers soaked in the mist that oozed from every crack in the soil.
The air was thick with the stench of iron and lilies.
She clutched the haft of her naginata tighter, the wood still warm from the blood it had tasted hours before. Her breath trembled in the cold morning, weaving ribbons into the mist.
"You hear it too, don't you?" came a voice behind her.
Nima turned slightly. Her brother, Kael, approached slowly, his white cloak smeared with something dark and flaking. His blindfold was tight across his eyes, but somehow he navigated the broken stones better than she could with sight. The old ways marked him—just as they had cursed her.
"The bells," she said. "They're wrong."
Kael smiled humorlessly. "Everything here is wrong."
They stepped together into the corpse of the town, boots sinking deeper into the mud with each step. Every few feet, they passed the remains of the townsfolk—some twisted into grotesque shapes, others sprawled as if frozen mid-scream. Pale flowers sprouted from their mouths and eyes, pulsing slowly as if breathing.
"The Harrowblight," Kael murmured, almost reverently. "It's spread faster than the augurs predicted."
Nima said nothing. Her gaze drifted to the town square ahead, where the great stone well still stood. Something dark rippled at its lip, like a banner in a silent breeze.
A figure.
As they drew closer, the figure resolved into a woman—or what had once been a woman. She wore a tattered bridal gown, its lace soaked red at the hem. Her face was hidden by a veil woven of spider silk and bone. She sat perched on the well's edge, humming a broken tune that rose and fell in time with the tolling bells.
Nima froze. The air around her thickened, growing heavy as molten lead. Her lungs strained with every breath.
"Don't look at her," Kael warned softly.
But it was already too late.
The bride's head snapped toward them with a terrible, liquid cracking sound. Beneath the veil, two burning coals fixed onto Nima. The humming stopped, and silence flooded the town, snuffing out even the unnatural bell-song.
The crows exploded into the air with a shriek.
The bride opened her mouth—and from it poured a tide of black locusts, their wings slicing the mist into shreds. They came screaming toward Nima and Kael in a chittering swarm.
"Move!" Kael barked, grabbing Nima by the shoulder and dragging her back.
Nima ripped free and planted her feet. The naginata whirled in her hands, a blur of gleaming steel. She swept it in a wide arc, carving a path through the locusts. Black ichor rained down around her as the creatures shattered into wet pieces.
Kael raised one hand, tracing a rune in the air with his fingertip. Blue fire blossomed from his palm, a warding flame that sent the locusts recoiling with an ear-piercing hiss.
"She's calling the Choir," Kael growled. "We have to end this before the others wake."
Nima gritted her teeth and nodded. She charged.
The bride shrieked, her voice warping into a chorus of agonized screams. Threads of black light erupted from her body, lashing at the air like whipcords. Nima ducked under one, feeling it slice a strand of hair from her scalp.
She closed the distance with a final leap. The naginata plunged forward, aimed straight for the bride's heart.
For a heartbeat, the world held still.
Then—
The blade struck home.
The bride convulsed, her body arching impossibly backward. A sound like shattering glass echoed through the town. Her veil disintegrated into ash, revealing a face that was no face at all—only a hollow mask of rotted wood and bone.
The bride's body collapsed in on itself, crumbling into dust that scattered on the dead wind.
The bells stopped.
Silence returned.
Nima stood over the ashes, chest heaving. Her arms shook with exhaustion. Kael approached, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
"It's not over," he said.
Nima looked up at the sky. The clouds churned in unnatural patterns, threads of black stitched through their bellies. Something vast and unseen moved beyond them—something that watched and waited.
"No," she whispered. "It's just beginning."
From the forest beyond the town, new bells began to ring—deeper, hungrier. Their sound carried a promise, a covenant written in blood and fear.
Kael turned to her, his blindfold darkening with wetness. "The Black Procession has begun."
A cold certainty settled in Nima's gut.
There would be no more safety. No more light. Only the endless march into the maw of the dying world.
And she would either carve her place within it—or be devoured whole.