Chapter Text
"Ever seen a nightmare? Ever opened your eyes and realized the horror wasn't a dream? The terror wasn't gone? I've seen nightmares. They live in the shadows. They've been watching. I thought...It's foolish, I know...but I thought I saw a way. That maybe we could win. Maybe we could survive. But once you step into those shadows, it's so very hard to walk in the Light."
—Unconfirmed (Ghost Fragment: Thorn 2—The Bloom).
A child no younger than the age of ten, ran his small bony fingers along a bulwark fashioned from stone and clay. The barrier—waist high to an adult—came just under his shoulder. Jagged edges of hard rock and fuzzy moss tickled the tips of his fingers as they glided along.
He traversed the well-worn muddied path, running the full length of the embankment. There was not a care in the world in him as he listened to the sound of twittering birds singing their morning carols. Above the pine and aspen canopy, grey clouds covered the sky with thick oppression. The smell of moisture filled the air, setting the tone for the day to come.
His black hair was clumpy with ash and dirt, days overdue for a shower. Muddy smears painted his pale skin, the streaks no doubt applied with grimy hands. The black shirt and sagging breeches he wore, several sizes too big for his scrawny frame, were equally tattered and stained.
The simple boots he had just about outgrown were tearing at the toes. So, as he strolled along, the detaching souls would catch against the occasional rock. As he stumbled, mud would be jammed between his toes giving him that extra squish in his step.
Not that he cared.
He was only a child.
"Shin! Shin!" someone called. "Get away from there!"
The boy—Shin—looked over his shoulder unfazed by the concern. His dark brown eyes briefly focused on a young, blonde girl around his age before resuming his course undeterred. "You know what Loken said,'' she yelled breathily as she ran toward him.
He shrugged.
"He said kids shouldn't go near the wall anymore," she reminded him, as if he forgot.
"He says a lot of things, Cara," Shin surmised.
"Where are you going?" As the blonde came alongside him, Shin regarded her with another glance. Her shoulder length hair was a curly, frizzy mass, that had been tied back with an old blue kerchief—a gift from her late mother. She hardly ever took the thing off.
Cara was small and scrawny, just shorter than Shin by an inch. The green tunic and simple breeches she wore, not much nicer than his own, caused her to look slightly malnourished. Even the brown boots on her feet were cracked and worn with constant use and abuse.
"My secret base," he replied.
"Can I come?" Cara asked, her blue eyes glittering with excitement.
"It's called a 'secret' for a reason. If I showed you, then it wouldn't be a secret," he laughed.
"Oh, please! Oh, please! Oh, please!" she pleaded while clasping her hands together. Her pale, porcelain hands were interlocked as she shook them forward and back in front of her chest. Shin chuckled and rolled his eyes.
"Okay," he grinned, his almond eyes almost a squint.
Taking her hand in his, Shin led them off the path and up a steep incline through a thicket of bushes and young saplings. The two jogged and giggled along the way, excited to share a secret between themselves. They continued onward until the trail lead to a small clearing at the top of a hill. In front of them was a large and round conifer with old boards, crookedly nailed to its trunk.
Shin pointed up into the tree's branches, covered with the greenest of needles. "D'you like it?" he asked excitedly.
Cara scrunched her face as she craned her neck back to survey the full height of the topiary. "I don't see anything," she said with an air of confusion. "Just a tree."
The boy didn't answer as he pushed his friend forward. "Climb on up, you'll see," he said with pride. Cara clambered up first with Shin not far behind. They scaled the old boards until they reached the last, then climbed over onto a branch thicker than their torsos combined.
They sat facing each other, their legs on either side of the limb. Cara pumped her dangling legs back and forth, her eyes flicking between Shin and the view. He did the same. From the tall tree, they could see the mountainous terrain and near endless timberland yawing into the horizon. If Shin and Cara looked hard enough, they could even make out the smokestacks of nearby houses puffing up through the foliage.
A gentle breeze picked up, carrying on its naked wind the scent of a burning campfire.
"Shin," Cara called softly, regarding the boy once more. "Can we stay here forever?"
"Forever?" he asked.
"Yeah," she answered. "It's so pretty here, I don't wanna leave."
"You don't have to," he replied. Shin paused as confusion washed over his face. His brown eyes trailed away from the forest view and studied Cara's crystal blues. "Where are you going?"
"I dunno," she shrugged. "I overheard my Dad talking with Austin, Todd, and Jim again. They keep talk'n about the city of lights." Cara frowned, her eyes drooping with sadness. "I don't wanna go. I wanna to stay here with you." As she said this, she began picking at the tree bark, breaking off brittle pieces into the palm of her hand.
Shin frowned, his heart plummeting at the thought of losing yet another friend to the haven of refuge underneath the Traveler’s spectral perch in the sky—'The Last City'. "Why do grown-ups think that place will fix everything?" he asked, frustration in his voice. As much as it bothered him, Shin knew the answer. They believed it to be safe and secure from all alarms. But is anything truly safe? His frown deepened into a scowl.
The girl shrugged, "I dunno. Maybe 'cuz there's no Spiders there."
He said nothing in reply as a shadow of doubt crept in.
Their conversation died out for a time as sadness hung in the air between them. Though they were no strangers to the mere fact that people came and went frequently through the small, paltry town of Palamon, goodbyes were the worst.
They were always final.
The grey monotony of clouds above took a dark turn as a steady drizzle set in. Shin could hear the droplets pitter pattering against their coniferous refuge as a crack of thunder whipped the air. He waited for the ensuing flash of lightning to strike the heavens, but even as Shin observed the expanse above, there was no sign of its approach. It was all silent once more in the mountains like the storm never truly existed.
Not a whisper.
Just a strike—nothing more.
Cool liquid dripped onto Shin's head, cascading the curve of his cheeks as they fell away. The boy thought nothing of it as he swiped an arm across his forehead. He just wanted the tickling sensation to go away.
"Hey Shin," Cara called with a waver in her voice, "what's that on your face?"
The blonde girl pointed, concern clearly written on her expression. Shin gently wiped the tips of his fingers over his forehead and found white ichor residue thick like paint. Together, he and she craned their necks back, peering up into the canopy of the tree they sat in.
About ten feet above them a creature appeared hunched over on a large, bowing branch. It was slumped forward as if it had merely fallen asleep. Its horned head was slung unnaturally, cocked to the side with its eyes closed tight.
Two, muscular arms were loosely dangling, while two more limply clutched a long, bulky rifle in its lap. From what Shin could tell, the creature was oozing the sap-like ichor from a hole in the side of its head. It had died only recently. Cara let loose a deep scream, before Shin slapped a hand over her mouth. With a finger to his lips, he gave a calm "shh" and motioned to the ground.
Shin scrambled to the forest floor, dropping the last few feet onto the souls of his boots. Thump. He watched as Cara descended, hand-under-hand with rigid motions. When she was about an arm’s length away, Shin reached out to her with a proffered hand. Cara took it gratefully and hopped down. Just as they were together again, some yells in the far distance caught their attention, making them jump.
The boy didn’t bother to stand around and wait to see what was on the other side of the hill as he tugged at Cara’s hand. The two raced back toward the stony bulwark to the muddy path they had left behind long ago; but they didn’t stop there. They ran as fast as their young, scrawny legs could manage. The road before them streaked by as their vision tunneled.
Shin could hear the beat of his heart and the swift pumping of blood in his ears. The zing of fear pulsed through him like the flash of lightning now overhead. Somewhere behind him Cara whined, tripping occasionally as she stumbled after him.
“Shin, wait! I can’t keep up—” Cara complained shortly before crashing to the ground on her knees. The boy lurched to a stop, his boots digging impressions into sloppy earth. Turning back, he helped the girl stand to her feet.
“Sorry,” he frowned at his thoughtless mistake.
“It’s okay,” she managed to say, swatting at her knees.
“I just—I just wanted to make sure we got away,” his frown deepening, “…that you were safe.”
“Thank you, Shin,” Cara smiled weakly. "You're so brave. I wish I was like you."
Shin frowned as he felt anything but 'brave'. He could hear the war drum of fear like a rallying cry in his ears. His face was flushed and his armpits and hands cold with sweat. The only thing Shin could think of in his panic was the fact that he didn't want to die. He wasn't proud of himself because he didn't do anything special. He just ran.
"I'm not brave—" he began to say but trailed off. Cara's forgiving expression swiftly fled away, replaced altogether by another emotion—terror.
“I can’t believe we saw a Spider.” Cara’s crystal blue eyes grew distant as her lips went to quivering. Tears began to collect at the corners of her eyes, threatening to burst free. More than anyone, Shin knew her greatest fear—the Fallen. They were the sole reason Cara was without a mother and he was without his birth parents.
“C’mon, Cara,” he said, “let’s go home.”
At the heart of Palamon, in a dilapidated courtyard of muddied earth, Shin and Cara took their seats around the communal fire pit. They sat on smooth logs, their bark stripped long ago for kindling. In the center of the hollowed earth bordered with rusty metal, stocks of wood were piled together, forming a sort of teepee. Flames crackled and danced among its fuel source, ravenous with hunger as it burned. Above that, was a spit made from scavenged metal. Shin watched as black pot hung from the rusted pole, swaying in the mountain breeze.
The kids had remained unnaturally quiet since their hurried return from Shin's secret base.
They were just two kids harboring a secret between themselves, weighing a couple tons.
And the adults around them were none the wiser.
Cara had finally stopped shaking her tin of water when a group of men sporting long rifles came into view from the main road. In front was Magistrate Loken, a man in his mid-forties. He was dressed in a simple, blue button-up and a pair of tan breeches. On his head he wore a broad brimmed hat, made from genuine leather. It was woodland brown, cracked with age, and donned braided tassels clipped at the ends with steel caps.
Shin didn’t need to see it to picture it.
He knew it anywhere.
The Palamon denizens sitting round about the fire came to a hushed silence as all eyes turned to Loken and his men. As they came into spitting distance, the Magistrate stepped to the side. Two men, sharing the same labored faces—Austin and Todd—came into view, holding a body between them. The identical men both licked their lips, their knuckles white as they kept a tight grip on the horns of a dead creature. It had four arms, two legs, and a rugged cape hung around its neck too dirty to distinguish the color.
The moment Austin and Todd dropped the cadaver like a lead weight, it smashed to the ground in a lifeless heap. Shin’s brown eyes flicked to Loken—Palamon’s law and justice—and he could’ve sworn he saw the whisper of a grin on the man’s chapped lips. The more he focused on the man, the more Shin realized the serious glint in the Magistrate's eyes.
“We found this Spider while out on patrol. Luckily, my men were valiant and sharp as ever,” the Magistrate said with pride. “Shot it straight out of a tree.” Shin’s stomach flopped the moment he laid eyes on the Fallen Vandal with a hole in the side of its head. It was the same one Cara and he found at his secret base. White ichor clotted the wound’s entry, no longer free flowing like he remembered.
Shin gnashed his teeth.
Loken was lying.
"I just want to reiterate how important it is to stay in town." As Loken said this, his eyes fell to Shin, as if he knew the secret. The man swiped the back of his hand over his mouth, obscuring the salt and pepper stubs of facial hair from view. Instinctively, Shin brushed a hand over his face and found flecks of crusty white residue staring back at him. "We can't protect ya', if ya' wander off." His hazel gaze flicked away from the boy, searching the crowd surrounding the pit. "Who knows what lies beyond the wall of our town. If this here Vandal could drift into our borders, then who knows what else could do the same."
Everyone was quiet, not willing to speak a word.
It was a heavy moment, oh-so heavy, as the small community sat defeated. Their silence was an admission to the oppression that hung around them like shackles. Yet no one did a thing. They couldn’t. The folks of Palamon had grown dependent upon just one man who could provide them all they had. Though they tolerated him, it was purely out of necessity. People tend to do stupid things when starvation is a legitimate possibility.
Live or die—that was the natural law in this neck of the woods.
"Austin. Todd." Loken called his men with a snap of his fingers, giving them a nod with his big, leather hat. "Collect Palamon's tithe, it's payday." With that, the Magistrate walked off in search of his home—a log cabin a small trek away from the earthen court and its humble hearth.
As Shin watched after Loken, now the size of his thumb in the distance, the voices of Austin and Todd bickering caught his attention. Looking over his shoulder, the boy realized everyone had left and the twins were making to leave as they struggled to heft the Vandal at their feet. They seemed to forget about him—or perhaps they didn't realize he was there—as they argued.
"What do you think we should do?" Todd asked, shaking curly brown hair out of his face.
"What do you mean?" Austin asked, his face turning red with effort.
"You know as well as I do brother, ain't none of us shot that Spider out of the tree," Todd stated.
"Shut up, Todd! Start pull'n." Austin quipped. "If their payment means food on the table, then so help me—don't spoil it!"
Shin remained as still as a tree as he sat next to the fire. He didn't dare move, not an inch. Who knows what Loken would do to him if he realized Shin knew their secret. He waited until the twins turned away, dragging their phony prize along, and quickly scrubbed at his face with the collar of his shirt.
Curfew came early that night.