The days after the funerals blurred into a gray fog, each hour a weight pressing Elias deeper into the house’s rotting embrace. The village had turned its back—whispers followed him through the streets, eyes averted, doors bolted when he passed. The graves were fresh, but the living buried him too, their silence louder than the preacher’s hollow prayers. He didn’t care. The house was his prison now, its walls throbbing with the figure’s pulse, its air thick with sap and blood. The cold in his bones had grown claws, scraping his insides, and the figure’s grin—carved from a tree fed by slaughter, bound by a pact older than the soil—watched him from the hearth, a constant, festering wound.


    Morning broke, weak and pale, sunlight struggling through clouds that hung like a shroud. Elias stood in the yard, breath fogging in the chill, the saber clutched in hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. The figure sat inside, its maw gaping, sap dripping in slow, deliberate beads that etched the hearthstones with glyphs—runes from its birth, when a coven bled into the roots of a forest no sun touched. He’d tried locking it in Grandfather’s chest, but the lid splintered overnight, wood groaning as if birthed anew, and the figure reappeared on his pillow, its blank eyes hollowed by a hunger centuries old. He couldn’t touch it—his fingers locked, burned by a chill that whispered “Mine” in a voice woven from screams.


    The village stirred beyond the fence, voices drifting like smoke. Elias glanced up, squinting against the light, and saw them—children, three of them, clustered by the well, their coats patched and muddy. They pointed, small hands trembling, eyes wide with something between fear and awe. “Look at ‘im,” one whispered, a girl with braids unraveling like threads of fate. “No shadow.” The words hit Elias like a stone, cold and sharp, sinking into his gut. He stepped back, boots crunching frost, and turned to the sun—a dull disk overhead, casting faint outlines of the fence, the trees, the children. Their shadows stretched, thin and jagged, but his feet stood alone, the ground beneath him bare, untouched by darkness.


    He dropped the saber, hands fumbling to his sides, eyes darting to the house, to the figure within. The children’s whispers grew—“Cursed,” “Witch-boy,” “Dead man’s kin”—and footsteps shuffled closer, adults now, drawn by the murmur. Old Meg, the crone who peddled herbs and curses, hobbled forward, her cane tapping a rhythm that matched the figure’s thrum. Her eyes, milky with age, narrowed, peering through him, past him. “No shadow,” she rasped, voice a dry leaf crumbling. “Marked, he is. Somethin’ took it.” She spat into the dirt, the glob hissing faintly, and the crowd shrank back, crossing themselves, muttering prayers Elias didn’t know.


    He ran. The saber clattered behind him, abandoned, as he bolted for the house, the door slamming shut with a groan that echoed the figure’s birth—a tree felled by lightning, carved with blades dipped in blood. Inside, the air was thick, the stench of sap and rot coiling around him. He stumbled to the mirror in the hall, a cracked oval hung above a table scarred with burns. The glass was fogged, streaked with dust, but his reflection stared back—pale, hollow-eyed, coat hanging loose. The sun slanted through the window, a weak beam cutting the room, and he waited, breath held, for the shadow that should’ve followed. Nothing. The light pooled around him, but the floor stayed empty, a void where he should’ve been.


    The figure watched from the hearth, its maw stretched wider, sap bubbling up, forming tendrils that writhed like veins seeking flesh. Elias’s knees buckled, a sob clawing his throat. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered, voice breaking, but the figure answered with silence—a silence that thrummed, a pulse from its roots, from the forest where it was carved to guard the veil, now turned to feast on the living. He lunged for it, desperation overriding fear, and hurled it into the hearth. The logs were cold, ash gray and lifeless, but he struck a match, hands trembling, and tossed it in.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Flames erupted—green and venomous, hissing like a chorus of serpents, curling away from the figure as if burned. The wood didn’t catch; the fire danced around it, recoiling, and the figure sat unharmed, its sap flaring brighter, dripping faster, etching the ash with glyphs that pulsed red—symbols of a pact sealed in blood, a warden’s duty twisted into hunger. The flames died, snuffed by a breath Elias didn’t feel, and the figure’s maw split further, revealing a throat of black, endless, swallowing the light. A laugh rasped—wet, guttural, a sound from the abyss it once guarded, now its domain.


    Elias staggered back, hands slick with sweat, the cold in his bones surging, a tide that dragged him under. The mirror caught his eye again, and he froze—his reflection flickered, not him but something else: a boy with no eyes, skin gray and peeling, mouth gaping in a silent scream, standing where his shadow should’ve been. The image vanished, leaving only his face, but the glass pulsed, rippling like water, and the thrum grew louder, shaking the walls, the floor, his skull.


    That night, he dreamed—or didn’t dream, but fell into a void where the figure loomed, towering, its sap a river flooding the dark. The forest rose around him, trees gnarled and bleeding, roots twisting into the sky, and voices chanted—a coven, their faces masked in shadow, blades carving the figure from a trunk that wept black, their blood soaking the earth, binding it to a purpose it betrayed. “Mine,” they sang, and the figure turned, its maw gaping to swallow the stars, its shadow stretching—his shadow, torn from him, chained to its will. He woke, gasping, the figure back on his pillow, its sap staining the fabric, tendrils curling toward his face, brushing his lips with a cold that burned.


    He bolted upright, flinging it across the room, the thud echoing like a heartbeat from its birthnight. It landed by the window, maw grinning, sap pooling beneath it, glowing faintly, alive. The room was dark, but the air shimmered, a heatless haze that bent the walls, revealing glimpses—faces in the woodwork, eyeless, screaming, the carvers trapped in the grain, their pact a curse eternal. Elias pressed against the headboard, hands clawing the quilt, the cold in his bones a scream now, a tether to the figure’s roots, to the shadow it stole.


    Dawn crept in, gray and heavy, the light slanting through the window but casting no shadow at his feet. He checked the mirror—still nothing, just his face, paler now, eyes sunken, the glass pulsing faintly with runes that matched the figure’s sap. The village’s whispers echoed in his mind—“Cursed,” “Marked”—and he knew they were right. The figure sat by the window, uncharred, its maw a black abyss, sap tendrils snaking upward, forming shapes—a hand, a face, his shadow, trapped and writhing, a piece of him claimed by its ancient hunger.


    He sank to the floor, saber lost, hands trembling, the thrum a constant now, a song from its origin—a warden carved to guard, turned to devour, its makers’ blood its first feast, his shadow its latest prize. “Fear nothing, slay all,” he whispered, but the words were dust, swallowed by the figure’s grin, a promise of worse to come.