Eniya’s hands shook, not from the cold.

  She stood over the mutilated body of the bandit, forcing herself to breathe through her mouth so she wouldn’t smell the copper tang of blood and the stink of crushed entrails. She needed to survive. The knight was gone, and hunger had come back twice as hard, twisting her insides into knots.

  She crouched beside the dead man, trying not to look at the place where his head used to be. Her fingers slipped into the pocket of his filthy jacket.

  Empty.

  On the second one—the one driven into the ground—she found a crust of stale bread wrapped in a rag and a small rusty knife. The bread was bloodstained. Eniya carefully broke off the fouled edge and stuffed the rest into her mouth, choking on dry crumbs.

  Her stomach cramped hard in protest, but some strength returned.

  From the third bandit—the one whose skull had been split on the sword—she took a wool cloak. It was too big and heavy, but at least it didn’t stink as badly as the others. Wrapping herself in it, the girl staggered on, leaving the slaughter behind.

  The forest changed.

  Gnarled oaks gave way to tall pines, and windfall thickets to mossy paths. An hour later, when dusk had thickened for good, she saw a light.

  Not a bandit fire.

  A warm yellow glow spilling from the windows of a sturdy log house. Smoke curled from the chimney, carrying the scent of something sweet and spiced. Eniya froze. Every scrap of reason screamed at her to run—but exhaustion whispered of rest.

  She went to the door and knocked, timidly.

  It opened almost at once, as if they had been waiting for her.

  A woman stood on the threshold.

  She was unexpectedly beautiful for such a wilderness: tall, milk-pale, with thick red hair braided into an intricate plait. She wore a clean ochre-colored dress.

  “Oh, child…” the woman’s voice was soft as molasses. “All alone? On a night like this?”

  “I… I got lost,” Eniya rasped. Her voice cracked.

  “Come in, quickly, come in. It isn’t safe out here. My name is Brielle.”

  Inside, it was warm.

  Too warm. Close and stifling, like a greenhouse. Logs crackled in the hearth. A pot sat on the table. But Eniya’s gaze locked at once on the figure in the corner.

  An old woman sat in a deep rocking chair, swaddled in layer upon layer of shawls and blankets.

  She was impossibly, grotesquely old.

  Her face looked like a baked apple—shrunken and wrinkled—and sparse gray hair stuck out in clumps.

  “That’s Mother,” Brielle said with a smile, sliding the door shut and dropping a heavy bolt. The click of the lock sounded unnaturally loud. “She can’t speak, poor thing. Age takes what it wants. Sit down by the table—you must be starving.”

  Eniya perched on the edge of the bench. The old woman in the corner did not move, but the girl could feel her gaze on her skin. When she finally dared look back, a chill crawled through her.

  The old woman’s eyes were open.

  There was no white in them. Just two glossy black beads, like drops of tar… or insect eyes. They did not blink. And they seemed to tremble slightly, each turning on its own.

  “Mother likes guests,” Brielle said, setting a bowl of thick stew in front of Eniya. “Eat. It’s meat stew.”

  “Thank you.” Eniya took the spoon. The smell was wrong—under the scent of meat lay something sour, earthy.

  “You’ve come from far away, haven’t you?” Brielle sat across from her, chin resting on her hands. Her fingers were long—too long—with perfectly clean nails. She watched Eniya with greedy curiosity. “You have such… sturdy skin. Good bones too. Not like the local peasants. Nothing but sinew on them.”

  Eniya froze with the spoon halfway to her mouth. “I’m coming from Port Crow,” she lied.

  “From the city?” Brielle tilted her head. The angle looked too sharp, as if the woman’s neck had no vertebrae at all. “There must be so many people there. So much fresh… food.”

  “Food?” Eniya echoed.

  “Food, goods, life,” the hostess corrected quickly, smiling. Her smile was wide, showing teeth that were too even, too white. “Eat. Why aren’t you eating? Mother will be upset.”

  A sound came from the corner.

  Not a cough. Not a groan. A dry, chittering noise.

  khh-click-khh.

  Eniya glanced sideways. The old woman leaned forward. The blankets slipped, and for one split second the girl thought she saw not a human body beneath them, but something chitinous, segmented, dark brown. Then Brielle stood at once and fussed the coverings back into place.

  “Hush now, Mother, hush. The girl will eat and rest. We don’t want to frighten our guest, do we?”

  “I’m sorry—what?” Eniya asked, her heart quickening. The instinct that had saved her in the forest began sounding the alarm again.

  “I said the night is dark,” Brielle replied, returning to the table. Her movements were smooth, yet jerky in a way that robbed them of human weight. She moved in snaps: stillness—then suddenly at the table—stillness again. “Tell me, Eniya… You felt fear today, didn’t you? I can smell cold sweat. And… blood. Old, rotten blood.”

  The hostess reached across and touched the girl’s hand. Brielle’s skin was not merely smooth—it was hard and dry, like powdered shell.

  “I was attacked,” Eniya said, yanking her hand back. “In the forest.”

  “And you ran?” In the corner, the old woman’s black eyes seemed to widen, though that should have been impossible.

  “Yes. I ran.”

  Brielle laughed. It sounded like dry leaves skittering over stone. “What luck. For you. And for us. Mother and I haven’t had visitors in a long while.”

  A heaviness settled in Eniya’s stomach. Tension and hot food had done their work.

  “Excuse me,” she asked quietly, rising from the table. “Where can I… I need to step out.”

  Brielle smiled, but her eyes stayed cold. “The privy’s in the yard, dear. Out the back door, first left, past the scarecrow. You won’t get lost.”

  Eniya nodded and stepped into the cool night.

  Outside air felt like ice after the greenhouse heat of the cottage. The moon barely pierced the clouds. She rounded the house and saw it at once.

  The scarecrow.

  It stood in the middle of a patch of black, withered plants. This was no shirt stuffed with straw. Something like a dried body hung from the crooked post. A dirty burlap sack was tied tight at the “neck,” serving as a head.

  Eniya slowed.

  There was no wind, yet the sack on the scarecrow’s head shifted. Something writhed beneath the rough cloth, making lumps race across the “face” of the straw man. A faint dry rustle whispered from inside—like hundreds of beetles rubbing shells together in the stuffing.

  She shuddered. Trying not to look at the twitching sack, she ducked into the wooden privy a little farther off and hurriedly latched the hook.

  Inside, it smelled of lye and filth. Thin moonbeams leaked through cracks in the boards. Eniya crouched, feeling exposed and wrong-footed.

  Then came a knock.

  Thump.

  She flinched. It was heavy. Dull.

  Thump. Thump.

  Someone stood right outside the door.

  “Occupied!” Eniya called, voice trembling. “I’ll be out in a moment!”

  Silence. For a few seconds she heard only her own breathing and the distant whispering from the scarecrow’s sack.

  Then again.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Faster now. More insistent. And strange—like something hard and sharp was striking the wood, not knuckles. Stone. Bone. The door shuddered.

  “I said it’s occupied!” Eniya pressed herself into the far wall of the stall. “Brielle, is that you?”

  No answer.

  Only scratching.

  Skrriiiiiib.

  Slowly, top to bottom, like a nail dragged down the boards.

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  Her heart slammed in her throat. She fumbled her clothes back into place without taking her eyes off the flimsy hook latch.

  The scratching stopped as suddenly as it had begun. A heavy, unnatural silence pooled outside the door. Eniya waited a minute. Then another. She had to go back inside, but fear had turned her legs to stone.

  At last, gathering what little courage she had left, she reached for the hook.

  “There’s no one there,” she whispered to herself. “Just a branch. Or a rat.”

  She flicked the latch and shoved the door open, ready to scream.

  Nothing.

  No one in front of her.

  Eniya let out a shaky breath and stepped outside. But the moment she turned her head, her breath snagged in her throat.

  To the right of the door, half in shadow, stood Mother.

  The old woman stood perfectly still, hunched over. Her face was hidden in the folds of her shawls, but Eniya could feel that same unblinking faceted stare.

  “Y-you… do you need the toilet?” Eniya stammered, backing toward the house. “Sorry I took so long.”

  The old woman did not answer. She did not so much as turn toward the open privy door.

  She simply stood there, watching.

  A gnawing dread hollowed Eniya from the inside out—an absolute certainty that if she stayed another few seconds, something terrible would happen.

  She bolted for the house.

  As Eniya ran, Mother’s head turned after her with a soft crackle. A dry snapping sound followed, like a bundle of twigs being broken—her neck twisting to an impossible angle to keep the girl in view while the rest of her body remained still.

  Eniya tore up the steps, nearly tripped, and crashed back into the cottage, slamming the door behind her.

  Brielle sat where she had been before. She didn’t even look up from the sewing in her hands.

  “Everything all right, dear?” she asked, eyes still on her work. “You look pale.”

  “Out there… your mother… she…” Eniya gasped for air. “She was standing there. She knocked, but she didn’t go in.”

  Brielle looked up. In the firelight, her eyes seemed less blue than yellow.

  “Mother gets confused sometimes,” she said gently. “Old age is a miserable business. She only wanted to make sure you didn’t get lost in the dark. Sit down. Rest a little longer.”

  Eniya could not stay here. Every instinct screamed danger—but she was so exhausted she knew she would die in the woods if she tried to leave now.

  “I’m very tired. Thank you for supper. I’m going to sleep.”

  She backed toward the stairs.

  At that moment, the front door opened.

  The old woman stood on the threshold.

  She did not walk in—she flowed into the room in a strange shuffling glide, her knees never bending. As she passed Eniya, she made the same sound as the scarecrow outside: a dry, whispering rustle, as though hundreds of tiny hard bodies rolled beneath her clothes.

  Eniya flew up the stairs like a shot.

  The room was small: one window, one bed. The girl slid the bolt (a flimsy hook, no better than the one in the privy), wedged a chair under the handle, and crawled onto the bed without undressing. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, trembling all over.

  Silence.

  The house grew quiet again.

  Eniya lay staring at the dark ceiling. Exhaustion and fear wrestled inside her, and little by little her eyelids drooped.

  Maybe I imagined it, she thought, drifting toward sleep. Maybe they’re just strange people… just strange…

  A sound woke her.

  Scratch-scratch. Scratch-scratch.

  Not in the hallway.

  In the room.

  Right under the bed.

  Eniya’s eyes snapped open. Her heart skipped a beat, then pounded so hard it hurt beneath her ribs. Sleep vanished instantly. She lay frozen, afraid even to breathe, drawn taut as wire.

  Something moved under the bed. She heard dry skin rasping against wood, and a soft wet clicking of mandibles.

  She lay like that for what felt like an eternity—three minutes, maybe, each second a last one. The chair she had jammed under the door stood neatly back in its original place.

  The door was open.

  As if mocking her final hope.

  Gathering the scraps of resolve she had left, Eniya slowly lowered her legs over the side of the bed, trying not to make the springs squeal. She meant to hit the floor and sprint for the door.

  The instant her bare foot touched the plank, something shot out from under the bed.

  It had been waiting.

  Mandibles clamped around her ankle—huge insect jaws punching into the flesh, injecting something into the soft meat.

  Eniya screamed and convulsed. It was more than a bite—it felt like a red-hot nail driven into her leg. She jerked away, falling off the bed onto the far side, and in the moonlight spilling through the window, she saw it.

  “Mother” was done pretending to be human.

  She crawled across the floor, spine arched in a grotesque bow. Shawls and blankets burst apart, exposing a swollen, half-translucent abdomen pulsing with yellowish slime. The human arms and legs had withered to vestigial stumps, while three new pairs of limbs jutted from her sides—chitinous, serrated, bristling with stiff black hairs.

  A gigantic humanoid tick.

  The old woman’s head bobbed on a long jointed neck. Her lower jaw split apart into hideous mandibles dripping venomous saliva.

  “F-f-fresh…” the thing hissed, faceted eyes gleaming in the dark.

  Eniya staggered to her feet. Her leg burned; the muscles knotted in spasms. She lunged for the door, hurled the chair aside, and spilled into the hallway.

  “Mother wants to eat!” came the scraping cry behind her.

  Eniya did not look back, but she could hear it. The creature wasn’t crawling on the floor—it was running across the walls and ceiling, claws ticking as it gained on her with inhuman speed.

  The girl tumbled down the stairs, nearly breaking her neck. She crashed into the sitting room, hoping to bolt for the front door.

  Brielle was already waiting.

  She stood in the middle of the room, beauty gone to rot. Her red hair hung wild, her eyes burned with mad yellow fire, and her mouth was stretched in a smile far too wide to belong on a human face.

  Eniya tried to veer toward the door—but her legs suddenly refused.

  “Where are you going, dear?” Brielle cooed, raising one hand, fingers spread.

  Pain exploded in the bitten leg, and Eniya felt invisible strings yank at her muscles.

  The venom.

  Not just poison.

  A binding spell.

  “No…” the girl rasped.

  Her body betrayed her. She tried to step back and instead took a stiff, jerking step toward the witch.

  “That’s it.” Brielle curled one finger, and Eniya took two more steps. “Mother is hungry, and the oven is already hot.”

  Eniya’s gaze snapped to the huge stove. The iron door stood open. Hellfire roared inside, licking at soot-black bricks. The heat was unbearable even from across the room.

  Above, from a ceiling beam, hung the monstrous head of the insect-old-woman, chittering in anticipation.

  “Into the oven,” Brielle commanded, chopping her hand through the air.

  Eniya screamed in terror, but her own legs carried her toward the flames. She tried grabbing the table, the bench—her fingers opened against her will. She was a passenger inside her own body, and it was driving her straight to execution.

  Heat scorched her face. She was right at the maw of the stove now. Sparks bit at her clothes.

  I don’t want to die! Help me! Someone!

  Terror peaked.

  Her mind, unable to endure the strain and the closeness of the fire, began to gutter out. The world narrowed to a black pinprick. She sagged, but the witch’s magic held her upright.

  Then the fire changed color.

  Orange turned corpse-pale—and then went out altogether, replaced by a killing cold that made the logs in the walls crack.

  The air in the room thickened to jelly.

  Brielle choked on her spell.

  Eniya hit the floor as the strings of control snapped.

  The girl lay unconscious, and above her rose a Shadow.

  The skeleton-knight emerged straight up through the floorboards as though he had grown through them. In the cramped cottage he looked colossal; his helm nearly scraped the beams.

  “Who are you?!” the witch shrieked, stumbling back. “Mother—kill him!”

  With a hiss, the insect-old-woman dropped from the ceiling, mandibles aimed at the intruder’s throat—a living dart, fast and lethal.

  The knight did not even turn his head.

  At the moment of impact, he simply drove his left hand upward in one sharp motion, no windup at all. His bony fingers closed around the segmented throat, halting the creature in mid-flight with a nauseating crunch of chitin.

  The thing screamed—a thin, piercing sound—kicking and clawing at rusted plate. Its talons scraped the metal without leaving a mark.

  The knight lowered his arm slowly, bringing the thrashing horror level with his empty sockets.

  Then he stepped toward the stove.

  The fire flared back to life—this time hungry, furious, demanding sacrifice.

  The skeleton drove the shrieking insect straight into the blazing maw with the force of a pile-driver. He did not merely throw it—he rammed it in, snapping limbs against the brick lip, and slammed the heavy iron door shut.

  A dull impact boomed from inside. Then frantic scratching. Screams. Those, too, soon broke down into the crackle of flesh bursting in the heat.

  The knight turned slowly toward Brielle.

  “You… you destroyed my family!” the witch roared.

  Her face split with cracks. Skin burst, and black spikes pushed through. Brielle swelled and changed, becoming something halfway between mantis and woman. Her arms lengthened into bony blades.

  She attacked in a blur, crossing those blade-arms in a strike fueled by rage and sorcery enough to split stone.

  The blades passed through the knight’s ribcage without resistance.

  They cut through empty air where ribs and mail should have been, as if hacking at smoke. The knight did not so much as sway.

  Thrown off by her own momentum, Brielle stumbled straight through the ghostly figure and barely caught herself. She spun, staring in shock.

  Not a scratch on the armor.

  The knight raised his enormous sword.

  There was no room in the cottage for such a weapon—the hilt should have jammed against the cupboard, the blade should have lodged in the ceiling beams.

  He made a wide horizontal sweep.

  Brielle sprang back, expecting the sword to bite into the wall and stick.

  Instead, the gigantic blade passed silently through the oak cupboard, through the load-bearing post, as if neither existed. No dishes rattled. No wood cracked. The metal had become immaterial to dead things.

  But the moment the ghost-steel touched the witch’s flesh, it gained monstrous weight and edge.

  The blow landed on her shoulder.

  The crack of bone was deafening.

  Brielle was hurled into the wall; her left blade-arm, severed cleanly, slapped onto the floor oozing black sludge. The cupboard and post the sword had passed through remained untouched.

  She wailed and pressed herself against the wall. Terror flooded her vertical pupils. You could not touch him. You could not hide from him behind walls.

  This was Death itself.

  Her darting gaze landed on Eniya, curled unconscious on the floor.

  “The vessel…” the witch hissed, spitting black blood. “You’re here because of her. No her—no you!”

  She launched herself off the wall with her remaining arm.

  Not at the knight.

  At the helpless child.

  “Die!” Brielle shrieked, turning into a streak of murder.

  She plunged downward, her one remaining bone-blade aimed straight at Eniya’s heart.

  Eniya did not move. Did not cry out. Did not open her eyes. She slept a black, senseless sleep, unaware death was less than a heartbeat away.

  Then the air over her chest rippled.

  From the girl’s solar plexus—through cloth and flesh, silent and swift—burst a massive rusted blade.

  The metal passed through Eniya’s body like morning mist. No scratch opened on her skin. Her dress did not tear. The sword simply existed inside her and outside her at once.

  But the instant it cleared the bounds of her body, the ghost-steel became lethally real.

  Brielle was already in the air. She could not stop.

  Thwack.

  The sound was wet, dull, final.

  The witch impaled herself on the two-meter blade jutting vertically from the girl’s chest. The point punched into her belly, broke her spine, and burst from her back, killing her momentum in one savage instant.

  Brielle gagged and hung there, suspended. The weight of her body should have crushed Eniya, caved in her ribs—but the sword held the witch by itself, as though it had been driven into hidden bedrock rather than through a child’s fragile body.

  Black blood dripped downward, but a few inches from the sleeping girl’s face it hissed and steamed away, burning off in the aura of her protector.

  The witch’s bone-blade twitched helplessly near Eniya’s throat, then stilled.

  The knight approached, passing through furniture, through toppled chairs, through matter itself.

  He reached for the hilt protruding from Eniya’s chest like some legendary sword in stone. His fingers closed around it.

  He did not pull the blade upward.

  Instead he tore it sideways in a broad gutting stroke.

  The steel passed harmlessly through Eniya’s ribs and carved through the witch’s flank, flinging the dying body away from the girl.

  Brielle hit the floor in a heap of broken limbs, trying to crawl, leaving a greasy trail behind her.

  The knight planted a heavy armored boot on her head.

  Skull cracked.

  He raised the sword point-down and drove it into the back of her neck with a dull, brutal thunk, pinning her to the floorboards.

  Silence returned to the house.

  Only the low roar of the stove remained, where Mother’s remains were burning down.

  The protector wrenched the sword free and turned his skull toward Eniya. The emptiness in his sockets looked bottomless.

  The girl still lay unconscious. The bite on her leg had blackened and swollen.

  The knight dropped to one knee—his knee sank through the floorboards into the boards as if they were fog.

  He stretched out a hand.

  Darkness flowed from his bony fingers into the wound. The venom rose from her leg in black streamers of smoke and unraveled into the air. The swelling subsided. Her skin returned to pale and clean.

  The task was done.

  The knight’s outline quivered. He rose, his shape thinning. The giant sword dissolved first, then the cloak, and finally the skeleton himself broke apart into gray mist, leaving Eniya asleep among corpses and wreckage in the silence of the cursed house.