Unsleeping Patron - First Toll of the Parchment

Damp pine needles and wet river drafts slowly suffocated the dying fire. and the wet draft blowing off the river. Every few minutes, a green twig would burst with a sharp crack, and three or four of the figures huddled around the embers would twitch, their eyes darting toward the treeline before settling back into a dull, hollow stare.Silas sat forty feet from the circle, his back resting against the cold, fluted flank of a grey slate boulder. His knees were drawn up to his chin, his torn sleeves pulled down over his knuckles to keep out the mist. His elbow throbbed where the shale had cut him, but the sting was nothing compared to the dry, hollow ache in his stomach.Nobody had eaten. Nobody had drunk a single drop since the purple fire had claimed the three who ran for the river.Near the fire, Gideon was methodical. He moved between the seated survivors, his heavy boots crunching softly on the shale as he checked the improvised wooden spears he had forced two of the younger men to shave down with a pocketknife. Hester Brierly sat near the edge of his shadow, her knees pulled tight, rubbing the bridge of her nose where her glasses had rested. Her lips moved silently, repeating chemical names or anatomy notes some rhythmic mantra from her old life to keep the dark from closing in.Silas looked away from them, staring down at his own mud-stained boots.When he closed his eyes, the river’s roar didn’t fade. It seemed to move inside his skull, echoing against the back of his teeth.Then the cold started.It wasn’t the damp chill of the forest air. This was an interior frost, a sharp, needle-like spike that drove straight through the center of his brain and settled at the base of his spine.Silas stiffened, his fingers curling into his trousers.In the dark behind his closed eyelids, a pale, yellowed surface expanded. It didn’t look like light or a screen; it felt like a stiff, frozen piece of cured hide, scarred with fine, dark veins, unrolling inside his head. Suspended above it was a quill carved from a heavy, ink-black feather.You’ve been looking at the water, a voice whispered not a sound, but a cold thought that didn’t belong to him, heavy as lead sinking through silt. You saw the threads.Silas squeezed his eyes shut tighter, his breath hitching in his throat. He tried to think of his flat in London, the rain hitting the windowpanes, the radiator clanking in the hallway. The images dissolved into grey dust before they could take form.The inkless quill moved. It didn’t touch the skin-like hide, yet fine, golden-black script bled onto the surface as if rising through layers of old fat.Sequence 9: Mind-Light.Main Ingredient: 10 grams of Thread-Fish Ashes. Harvest Method: Restrain the entity within an enclosed light perimeter. Burn its aquatic mass with natural flame. Collect the residual soot from the riverbed.Secondary Ingredients: 10 grams of Asharto Horn Powder. One fresh Purpur-Blossom.Silas felt his pulse hammering behind his ears. His mouth tasted of iron. He focused his mind, forcing the thought toward the dark parchment: What is the cost?The golden-black script shifted, dissolving into a single, jagged line that cut deep into the leather surface.Twenty years.Life is the only currency accepted by the void. Pay, or remain meat for the mist.Silas swallowed hard. Twenty years. He was twenty-four. On Earth, twenty years meant a third of an average life promotions, grey hair, a house mortgage paid off, knees that hurt when it rained. Here, twenty years meant nothing if a stray ember or a passing shadow could reduce him to grease before the sun came up.He pulled a ragged breath into his lungs. Take it.The quill struck the parchment once, a sharp, imaginary impact that rattled his teeth.Pain didn’t start in his head. It hit his abdomen first.Silas doubled over, his forehead slamming into his knees. A wet, tearing sensation ripped through his upper intestines, as if someone had reached inside his belly with a pair of cold iron tongs and twisted. His liver, his lungs, his stomach every organ felt as though it had been drenched in concentrated lye.He clutched his stomach, his fingers tearing through the cotton of his shirt. He tried to breathe, but his diaphragm locked up, seizing in violent, rhythmic spasms. A thick, dark fluid tasting bitterly of copper and sulfur welled up his esophagus.He clamped his hand over his mouth, forcing the fluid back down, his teeth grinding together so hard his jaw creaked. He couldn’t make a sound. If Gideon or the others saw him convulsing like this, coughing up black bile, they would throw him into the river. They were scared enough to stone him to death just to keep the camp clean.Twenty years, the parchment whispered, its golden script fading into the cold leather like ink absorbed by blotting paper. Contract sealed. Remaining lifespan: Fifty-two years, five months.The sharp, tearing pain in his belly gradually dulled, settling into a deep, necrotic throbbing. It felt as if a fist-sized patch of dead meat was now sitting inside his chest, radiating a persistent, low-grade fever that made his skin clammy and cold. His vision vibrated at the edges, fringed with a thin line of grey haze that refused to go away no matter how many times he blinked.Silas slowly straightened his spine, pushing himself back against the slate rock. Sweat had soaked his collar, freezing against his neck in the night draft.A few yards away, Gideon turned, his heavy boots crunching on the shale as he looked over toward the shadows.”Silas?” Gideon’s voice was low, suspicious. “You alright over there?”Silas kept his hands tucked into his sleeves, leaning his head back against the stone so the faint embers of the fire wouldn’t catch the grayness in his lips.”Cramps,” Silas rasped, his voice sounding like two dry stones rubbing together. “Bad water earlier.”Gideon stared at him through the dim red light for three long seconds, his hand resting near his heavy belt buckle. Then, with a curt nod, he turned back to the dying fire. “Don’t wander into the trees. It’s getting darker.”Silas didn’t answer. He closed his eyes, feeling the cold, dead spot behind his ribs throb in time with the rushing river. He had the recipe. He had twenty-six days less than he had an hour ago, a chest full of decaying meat, and the dark knowledge of how to kill a ghost.