“Blood of the Borrowed”

The night the boys broke into the Sanctuary, the Covenant bells had barely stopped ringing.

Sherman Cantrell sat through the last of the evening prayers with his head bowed and his chest aching, listening to Elder Lamont Havel drone through the closing litany. The old man’s voice had a rough, sawdust edge that carried to the rafters. Candlelight wobbled along the curved walls, picking out the carved symbols of the Hollow Flame—the same shapes Sherman had traced a thousand times in the margins of his school lessons, the same shapes that watched from above his sickbed.

“Life is given,” the congregation murmured. “Life is guarded.”

Sherman moved his lips just enough to pass. The words tasted stale. He stared at his hands instead, knuckles knotty and pale, veins showing in thin lines beneath the skin. He wasn’t supposed to think this way; he knew that. Still, every time the Elders spoke about how carefully they measured out life, how they “stewarded” it for the good of the Covenant, something sour stirred in him.

They had measured his life and found it wanting. Nothing had changed in seventeen years.

The prayer ended. Cloaks rustled, boots scraped the stone floor as the congregation filed out into the chill. Elder Havel stepped down from the raised dais with the slow, careful precision of a man who could feel his own bones counting time. His white hair lay thin and carefully combed across his scalp. Eyes like yellowed glass passed over the crowd with vague satisfaction.

“Sherman.” His mother’s hand touched his shoulder, light but insistent. “Home. You need rest.”

“I’m fine,” Sherman said. His voice came out weaker than he wanted. “You go ahead. Damon wanted to talk about something.”

His mother frowned, but she was tired too. It showed in the red along the edges of her eyes, in the way her fingers trembled when she crossed herself at the door. “Don’t stay out long. The Watcher keeps to the trees after dark, but boys who go looking for trouble always find more than they planned.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Outside, the Covenant settlement lay in its shallow valley, ringed by the dark press of forest. Lanterns burned along the main path, throwing uneven halos over packed earth. Houses huddled together, clapboard and stone patched and re-patched over generations. Beyond them, the trees closed in, a line of black trunks and weaving branches, dense enough to swallow the last of the light.

Damon Burch waited by the well, collar up, hands stuffed in his pockets. He was all sharp elbows and nervous energy, a head taller than Sherman and twice as restless. Two other boys leaned near him, faces half-hidden in the dim: Harlan Pike and Eli Thrace, both of them the sort who always seemed to hover just outside trouble, ready to bolt or throw a stone depending on how things broke.

“You look ready for a grave,” Damon said as Sherman approached. “You sure you want to do this?”

Sherman snorted. “That’s why I am doing this.”

Harlan shifted his weight, glancing toward the meeting hall. “We talkin’ or we moving?”

Damon’s grin flashed in the dark. “We’re moving. You all heard it, same as me. My uncle says they keep every life token in the Sanctuary of Holdings. Every one. You ever see yours? I haven’t. They say Matron Kane checks on them, makes sure nobody’s tampered with them. Like she’s the only one the Hollow Flame trusts.”

“Maybe they don’t want us messing with things we don’t understand,” Eli muttered.

Sherman felt the familiar heat rise behind his ribs. “They understand my life well enough to know it wasn’t worth fixing,” he said. “If there was anything in those tokens that could help, they’d have used it on me.”

Damon’s grin faded a fraction, sympathy flickering in his eyes. “Or they’re saving it for themselves.”

The meeting hall loomed over the settlement like a crouched animal, a long, low building of dark timber and stone. Its heavy door, still ajar after service, groaned as Damon shouldered it open. Inside, the air carried the lingering smell of tallow smoke and sweat and something else beneath it—old wood steeped in incense and blood.

They moved down the central aisle between rows of benches, past the altar carved with the Hollow Flame sigil, to the short side door that led to the Sanctuary stairs. Damon produced a thin scrap of metal from his sleeve and worked it into the lock.

“You’ve done this before,” Harlan whispered.

“Not here,” Damon said, not looking up. “But a lock is a lock.”

There was a soft click. The door eased open on old hinges.

“Stay quiet,” Sherman said. “If Matron Whitney’s still around—”

“She’s not.” Damon’s certainty sounded forced. “She goes home to count her candles, same time every night.”

The stairs spiraled down into the earth, walls closing in, light thinning with every step. The air grew cooler and damp, holding the soft tang of iron. Sherman’s chest tightened, more from memory than exertion; he had spent enough nights in the infirmary breathing medicine and stale air. This darkness felt different. Not empty. Not welcoming, either. Just waiting.

At the bottom, Damon fumbled for the wall sconce, found a stub of candle, and struck flint. The wick caught, throwing a weak circle of light over the chamber.

Rows upon rows of shelves lined the stone walls, stretching back into shadow. Each shelf held neat ranks of small objects: carved wooden disks, bone pendants, lengths of cord woven with hair. Some were plain, others etched with symbols, some tattooed with old stains.

“Every life,” Damon breathed. “From the day the Covenant came out of the forest till now.”

Eli crossed himself automatically. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

“Then don’t touch anything,” Harlan said.

Sherman stepped forward, drawn almost in spite of himself. His own token would be somewhere in the section marked for his age group, filed and forgotten, his life reduced to a scratch in a ledger and a trinket on a shelf. The idea made his jaw clench.

“Let’s find yours,” Damon said, reading his thoughts with uncomfortable ease. “You want to see it? Just to say you did?”

“No.” Sherman’s gaze drifted past the marks denoting youth and middle age, up to the higher shelves where the elders’ tokens rested. Those shelves were marked with careful, looping script. “I want to see theirs.”

Damon hesitated. “Sherman…”

“Just look,” Sherman said. “We came all this way.”

Matron Whitney Kane’s handwriting labeled each section, meticulous and steady. ELDER CABOT. ELDER THRAE. ELDER LAMONT HAVEL.

Sherman’s hand lifted before he had decided to move. His fingers closed around a small, smooth object on the shelf beneath Havel’s name.

It was carved from dark wood worn nearly to gloss, no larger than a plum pit, bound with a thin cord that had sunk deep into its grooves. It felt warm, even in the chill air. Warmer than his own skin.

His pulse stumbled. The room seemed to tilt. For a moment he smelled pine sap and wet leaves, felt cold wind sliding under his collar, and heard a man laughing somewhere far off—Elder Havel’s voice, young and strong.

“Put it back,” Eli said sharply. “Sherman, that’s an elder’s token. That’s—”

Sherman closed his hand around it. Heat flared along his palm and up his arm, not burning, but fierce and clear, chasing the fog of exhaustion from his head. His knees steadied. The constant ache in his bones eased, just a fraction, just enough to notice.

“Sherman?” Damon’s voice sounded muffled, as though it came from the end of a long tunnel.

Footsteps creaked on the floor above them.

All four boys froze. The sound of a door closing, the faint clink of a lantern hook.

“Someone’s still here,” Harlan hissed.

“The Matron,” Eli breathed.

Damon snuffed the candle with his fingers, lips pressed tight against a cry. Darkness crashed in. The boys’ breathing seemed too loud in the sudden quiet.

“This way,” Damon whispered, already moving toward the far side of the chamber. “There’s another set of steps, back of the room. Storage stairs. They’ll come down the main.”

They bumped and stumbled through the dark, hands brushing cold stone and rough wood. Sherman kept his fist clenched around the token, feeling its warmth seep into his skin. Each step he took felt surer than the last.

Above them, the floor groaned again. A faint spill of light touched the top of the main stair.

They found the narrow back steps by feel and scrambled up into a cramped storage closet behind the meeting hall stage. Damon eased that door open a crack, peered out, then gestured urgently. They spilled into the empty hall, then out into the night.

By the time they reached the well, Damon was laughing under his breath, the sound shaky and thin.

“See?” he said. “Easy. In and out.”

Eli swore at him and stalked away. Harlan followed, muttering. Damon turned back to Sherman, grin returning now that the danger had passed.

“What did it feel like?” he asked. “When you touched it?”

Sherman opened his mouth, then closed it again. He wasn’t ready to share that warmth, that clarity, with anyone. Not yet.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing much.”

Damon squinted at him, unconvinced, but he let it go. “Fine. Keep your secrets, Cantrell. Just don’t get me strung up if Matron Kane starts counting.”

They parted ways, Damon heading toward the Burch house, Sherman taking the path to the small Cantrell cottage. The wind had picked up, moving through the valley with a low, steady rush. The forest beyond the last houses showed no light at all, only a black wall of trunks and branches.

Inside his room, Sherman shut the door and sat on the edge of his bed. The familiar ache in his legs that usually followed this much walking didn’t arrive. His breathing was steady. His head felt clear.

He opened his hand.

The token lay in his palm, dark and polished and faintly gleaming, as if it remembered candlelight. For a moment it stayed still.

Then, very gently, it gave a tiny, unmistakable twitch, as though something within it had stirred and tested the walls of its prison.

Part II

Sherman woke before dawn, something that hadn’t happened in years—not without his mother shaking him, not without Moira nudging his shoulder and whispering that he’d overslept again. His eyes opened to the dim bluish light creeping through the shutters, and for once there was no dragging weight pinning him to the mattress, no dull pressure blooming in his joints.

He lay still for a moment, listening to the quiet. The cottage creaked faintly as it settled in the cold, but the familiar throb behind his ribs was absent. His breath moved cleanly through his chest, unhindered.

He sat up. The motion should have made his head swim. Instead, the world remained sharp and steady.

Sherman reached under his shirt and closed his fingers around Elder Havel’s token. It was cool now, not warm like it had been in the Sanctuary, but it seemed to pulse faintly against his skin. A small, steady rhythm.

He pulled it out to look at it. The grooves along the surface caught the morning light, giving the carved wood an almost wet sheen. There were no signs of seams or cracks. Just an object that looked too simple to hold anything of value—and yet, his limbs felt stronger than they had in months.

A soft knock came at his door. “Sherm?” Moira’s voice, hesitant.

“I’m up,” he said.

She cracked the door and peered in. Her hair was braided down one shoulder, loose strands sticking out like stubborn thistle. Her eyes narrowed.

“You’re awake already?”

He stretched his arms over his head. “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s new,” she said. “You don’t look like death today.”

He smirked. “Thanks.”

She stepped fully inside and sat at the foot of his bed. “I mean it. You look… better.”

He avoided her eyes. “Maybe I’m finally turning a corner.”

Moira didn’t buy things easily; she’d always been the one in the family who double-checked locks, who counted the firewood twice, who read the old Covenant texts because she wanted to understand, not because she was told to. She studied him for another moment before nodding slowly, though the suspicion didn’t leave her face.

“Breakfast is almost ready,” she said. “Mom wants you to eat before she goes to the Hall.”

She left, closing the door behind her.

Sherman let out a breath and slid the token back under his shirt. The sudden rush of strength he’d felt last night hadn’t vanished. If anything, it felt deeper this morning. He flexed his hands experimentally. No ache. No trembling.

He put on his boots and stepped outside into the biting air. Frost silvered the path. The sky hung low and hazy over the valley, a pale wash of early light. Beyond the houses, the forest waited in its usual stillness, the line of black trunks rising in a quiet formation.

He paused for a moment, looking toward the trees. The back of his neck prickled—not in warning, but in recognition, as if the forest had noticed him for the first time.

Inside the cottage, breakfast smells drifted through the kitchen—eggs, onion, stale bread crisping in the pan. His mother moved between the stove and the small counter with her usual precision. She glanced over her shoulder.

“You’re looking better today,” she said. “Sleeping early must have helped.”

“Guess so.”

He sat down at the rough wooden table. The moment the plate hit the surface, he realized he was starving. Ravenous. He ate quickly, barely chewing.

Moira watched him with raised eyebrows. “Take it easy. You’re going to choke.”

“Let him eat,” their mother said.

He finished in half the time he should have. The food settled strangely—not uncomfortably, but shallowly, as if his body burned through it faster than it should.

When he stood, his legs didn’t protest. The floorboards creaked beneath his boots, but they didn’t feel as uneven as they usually did.

His mother gave him a pinch of his coat sleeve. “You want to come with me to the Hall? Help shelve hymnals? Might be good to get you moving.”

Sherman opened his mouth to refuse—and paused.

He didn’t feel like collapsing after walking across the room. The idea of going outside didn’t fill him with dread. Even the walk up the hill to the Hall seemed manageable.

“Sure,” he said finally. “I’ll go.”

Moira nearly dropped the cup she was washing. “You want to?”

“Why not?”

The suspicion returned to her eyes, deeper now. “Sherman… seriously. Are you feeling all right?”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

The three of them stepped outside together, his mother locking the cottage door behind them. Mist curled across the valley in thin, drifting ribbons. Their boots crunched over frost. Sherman breathed in the cold air, feeling it spread cleanly through him without the usual dull resistance.

They reached the meeting hall. Villagers were already gathering bundles of wood, carrying jars, counting supplies for the weekly donations. Elder Havel was not among them. His absence wasn’t unusual—elders kept their own hours—but there was a heaviness in the air when his name was mentioned. People avoided it subtly.

Inside the hall, his mother assigned him a stack of hymnals to organize. Moira disappeared into the choir loft. Sherman worked steadily, faster than he expected, faster than he could remember ever working here.

Halfway through sorting, a strange tingling moved along his fingertips, as though something under the skin were adjusting itself. He pulled back his sleeve.

The faintest discoloration crept along the edges of two nails—darkening, almost like a thin line of ink.

He blinked, rubbed at it. It stayed.

He swallowed and let the sleeve fall.

Across the room, Matron Whitney Kane entered through the main door, quietly closing it behind her. Her gray hair was braided tight against her scalp. She usually moved with unhurried grace, but today her steps were quicker, her eyes scanning the hall with purpose. She held her ledger under one arm.

She paused when she saw Sherman.

Her gaze dropped—just briefly—to his hands.

Then to his chest.

A faint crease formed between her eyebrows.

Sherman looked away first.

He returned to straightening the hymnals, but the pages blurred for a moment. His heart beat steadily—not racing, not straining. Just steady. Too steady.

Whitney Kane continued across the hall toward the storage alcove where the stair to the Sanctuary waited behind a locked door. Her hand brushed the pocket where she kept her keys.

Sherman’s fingers came to rest over the hidden token beneath his shirt.

It pulsed once, faintly.

Almost as if answering her touch.

He forced himself to keep working, but every sense he had seemed stretched thin toward the Sanctuary below—the carved shelves, the stone walls, the heavy breath of the earth—and somewhere, farther still, the quiet, waiting woods beyond the village.

He didn’t want to leave the Hall early.

He wanted to run.

He didn’t know why. Only that, for the first time in his life, he felt capable of it.

Part III

The news reached the Cantrell cottage before noon: Elder Lamont Havel had collapsed during a morning council meeting. No details yet, only whispers—he was short of breath, he had turned gray, he had been helped to his personal chambers by two other Elders. Some said he’d been speaking nonsense, others that he’d lost the use of his legs for a moment.

Sherman listened from the kitchen table while his mother accepted a folded note from a messenger boy. She thanked him and shut the door before opening it.

Moira hovered at her shoulder. “What does it say?”

Her mother read slowly, lips moving slightly.

“‘Elder Havel will be resting for several days. All meetings postponed. The Matron will make rounds at sundown to address concerns.’ And… ‘Remain prayerful.’”

Moira frowned. “That’s not normal.”

Her mother didn’t reply, but the way she folded the note—carefully, precisely—said everything. She slipped it into the drawer with the family records and straightened the table as if that would straighten the uneasy hum filling the room.

After she left to help the midwives down the lane, Moira cornered Sherman near the back stoop.

“This is strange,” she said.

“Old men collapse sometimes.”

“Not Elder Havel.” She crossed her arms. “He’s led the Covenant since before I was born. He never misses council.”

Sherman shrugged, though the motion felt stiff. He didn’t like the direction of this conversation.

“Damon Burch came by,” Moira said, lowering her voice. “He looked terrified.”

Sherman felt the muscles in his jaw tighten.

“What did he tell you?”

“That you boys were in the Sanctuary last night.” She paused. “And that you took something.”

His stomach dropped. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but her eyes sharpened.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “We just looked around.”

Moira stepped closer. “Sherman, don’t lie. Not now.”

He turned away, stepping down off the stoop and into the yard. The frost had melted in thin patches, leaving dark, wet earth beneath. It squished faintly under his boots, rich with the smell of soil and old leaves.

Behind him, Moira followed. “Tell me what you took.”

“Nothing important.”

“Important enough to scare Damon white.”

He didn’t answer. His fingers twitched toward the hidden pocket under his shirt. The token felt heavier today, resting against his ribs. Warmer too.

Moira grabbed his sleeve. “Sherman. Was it one of the tokens?”

His silence was answer enough.

Her face drained of color. “Whose?”

He shook her hand off. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters if someone’s dying!” she hissed. “Tell me who you stole from.”

His heartbeat thudded once, a deep, grounding throb that steadied his breathing. The world around him—the creek babbling beyond the yard, the wind sliding through the dry grass—sharpened again in his senses. Sounds separated cleanly, distinct.

Something in him bristled at her tone. A low tension threaded through his muscles, instinctive, defensive.

“Let it go, Moira.”

She didn’t. “Sherman, was it Elder Havel?”

He met her eyes. He didn’t intend to. It just happened, sudden and sharp.

Her breath caught. “Oh God.”

“Keep your voice down,” he said.

She stepped back, horror flickering behind her eyes. “Sherman… stealing a token is—”

“I know what it is.”

“It’s not just a sin. It’s forbidden. It’s—”

“I know.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. Something in the way he stood made her fall silent. She stared at him, her expression shifting slowly from fear to recognition—like she was seeing something beneath the surface of his skin, something she didn’t have a name for.

He turned away again. The forest rimmed the far edge of the fields, dark and quiet. Though he couldn’t hear anything unusual, he felt something there. A tension. A waiting.

Moira spoke again, quieter. “Sherman… he’s sick, isn’t he? Elder Havel. Because of you.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to.

She swallowed hard. “I need to tell someone.”

He spun so quickly she startled. His voice came out low, too low, threaded with something he didn’t recognize.

“No. You won’t.”

She took a trembling breath. “Sherman…”

“Not a word,” he said.

The wind shifted. The trees rustled faintly at the valley’s edge, though the air around them was still.

Moira’s eyes darted toward the forest, then back to him. “What’s happening to you?”

He didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t want to. Every instinct screamed to end this conversation, to get away from her, to move—anywhere but here under her questioning gaze.

She watched him for a long, quiet beat. Then her shoulders sagged.

“I’m going to the archives,” she whispered. “I’m going to find out what happens when someone steals an elder’s token.”

She turned and walked toward the path, quick steps muffled in the damp soil. She didn’t look back.

Sherman stood alone in the yard, pulse steady, breath even. The token pressed warm against his chest.

From the forest beyond the last row of houses, something answered.

Not in sound.
Not in sight.

But in a faint, unmistakable pull—
a whisper at the edge of his mind,
beckoning.

Part IV

Sherman didn’t remember walking into the forest.

One moment he was standing behind the Cantrell cottage, Moira’s footsteps fading down the path, the village pressing around him with its narrow lanes and watchful windows. The next, he was among the trees, the ground soft underfoot, moss thick as animal pelt beneath his boots.

It felt like waking from a half-dream.

The air tasted different here—cooler, metallic, edged with sap and rot. His lungs drank it in as if starved.

Branches shifted overhead. Not swaying. Adjusting.

Sherman stood still, listening. His ears caught layers of sound he’d never noticed: insects drilling beneath bark, distant animal breath steaming into the cold, the faint scrape of something large moving several ridges away.

And beneath it all, the low pulse of the token against his chest.

He pressed a hand to it. The warmth had grown. It throbbed like a second heartbeat, deeper and slower than his own.

A memory unfurled across his mind—sharp, vivid, not his:

Lamont Havel, younger than Sherman had ever seen him, running through these woods with a hunting spear. Snow spraying beneath his boots. Laughter bursting from his throat. A sense of power so complete it felt divine.

Sherman’s vision snapped back. He staggered a step.

Someone else’s life had slid across his mind like a filmstrip.

He took a breath—steady, calm, too calm—and turned back toward the village.

Except he had no idea which way the village was.

The forest rearranged itself around him, a slow settling of shadows. He knew the Covenant’s woods as well as anyone—every child was taught its boundaries, its clearings, its dangers. But this wasn’t the familiar treeline behind the fields. The trees here were older, crowded, their trunks fused with twisting scars, their roots pushing above the soil in gnarled ropes.

He walked anyway.

Each step felt natural. Too natural. His body moved with a precision that startled him—knees bending, muscles responding in perfect measure, weight shifting silently over the earth.

Somewhere deep behind his ribs, fear stirred.

This shouldn’t feel good.

A crackle of underbrush. A branch snapped behind him.

Sherman turned.

Matron Whitney Kane stepped into the thin strip of light between the trees, lantern held low. The greenish flame inside flickered in a way no normal candle should. Her face looked carved from stone.

“Sherman Cantrell,” she said softly.

His pulse didn’t spike. His breathing didn’t quicken. But every muscle tightened.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Neither should you.” Her eyes drifted to his chest, to where the token lay hidden. “You’ve taken something that belongs to another. Something that was never meant to be touched.”

Sherman swallowed. “I needed it.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can see that.”

They stood in silence. The forest exhaled around them.

“You know what it is you’re carrying, don’t you?” she asked.

“I know what a life token is.”

“That’s not all it is.” She took one slow step closer. “The Elders’ tokens are not like yours. Or mine. Or any ordinary villager’s.” Her voice dropped. “They contain more than a man’s vitality. They contain his bond.”

Sherman frowned. “Bond to what?”

Her lantern flickered.

“To the Watcher.”

He felt the word in his bones rather than heard it—an old syllable, heavy with the taste of dirt and old roots.

Whitney continued. “Long ago, before this valley had a name, before the Covenant existed, our people were dying. Winters lasted too long. Sickness swept through the camps. So they made a pact with something in these woods—an ancient thing older than the soil. The Watcher kept us alive. Fed us its strength. In return, it took a piece of every life given here.”

Sherman’s skin prickled. “That’s just old lore. Scare stories.”

She shook her head. “Lore becomes ritual. Ritual becomes rule. And your Elder Havel is bound more tightly to that rule than anyone alive.”

Sherman stepped back.

The token pulsed harder, hotter.

Whitney watched the movement beneath his shirt. “You didn’t just steal his vitality. You stole his tether. His years. And the forest wants what’s owed.”

Sherman’s throat tightened. “I’m not giving it back.”

“That choice isn’t yours.” Her gaze softened—not pitying, but mournful. “Sherman… you’re changing. Can’t you feel it?”

He opened his mouth to deny it.

Then stopped.

Because he could feel it.

In his bones. In the way his shoulders had begun to sit differently. In the taut coil of strength gathering in his thighs. In the faint ache of his jaw, as if something inside was adjusting its shape.

Whitney’s voice gentled further. “If you stay in this forest tonight, something will finish what you’ve begun.”

He took another step back, deeper into the trees.

The lantern light didn’t follow.

Whitney’s expression did not change, but her posture did—straightening, squaring.

“You’re not the first boy to steal a token,” she said. “But if you cross the threshold of the hollow ridge behind you, you will be the first who doesn’t come back.”

Sherman turned his head. Behind him, the ground dipped slightly into a shallow, bowl-like depression between the trees. The air in that direction felt colder. Still. Expectant.

The Watcher’s pull came stronger from that hollow. A magnetic pull, subtle but real.

Sherman clenched his fists. “I can’t go back to being sick.”

Whitney’s face softened again, grief flickering across it. “Some cures take more than they give.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Something moved above them—soft, gliding, shifting weight from branch to branch though there was no wind.

Whitney’s lantern flared green. “Sherman. Listen to me carefully.”

He didn’t.

He ran.

Not stumbling, not wheezing, not dragging one weak leg behind the other.

He ran like he’d been built for it—silent, powerful, cutting through roots and brush, barely noticing the sting of branches against his skin.

Behind him, Whitney Kane called out his name once, then again, her voice swallowed by the rising whisper of the trees.

The forest opened around him, drawing him toward the hollow ridge.

And Sherman’s heart answered with a slow, new rhythm.

Not human.
Not his.

He crossed the ridge without hesitation.

The forest welcomed him like a returning son.

Part V

Moira found the trail before anyone else did.

A set of prints, deep and uneven, cut through the frost at the valley’s edge—Sherman’s boots, but spaced farther apart than his usual stride, as though he’d been moving with unnatural ease. Matron Whitney Kane knelt beside them, lantern held low. Her face looked older in the sickly flame.

“He crossed into the hollow ridge,” Whitney murmured. “I warned him. But the pull… it’s stronger for the young.”

Moira swallowed, forcing her thoughts into order. “What happens if we leave him in there?”

Whitney didn’t answer at first. She only adjusted the lantern wick. The shifting glow caught a thin line of moisture tracking down the Matron’s temple—sweat or rain, Moira couldn’t tell.

“The forest finishes what the token started,” Whitney finally said. “It draws out whatever remains human, and fills the rest with what the Watcher requires.”

Moira’s fingers curled into fists. The chill around them deepened as they stepped beneath the treeline. Bark pressed tight on either side of the narrowing path, the trunks warped, knotted, marked by time in ways that didn’t follow any natural pattern.

“Sherman!” Moira called. “Please—just stop!”

Only the steady drip of melting frost answered.

They moved deeper. The air grew close, dense with the smell of sap and damp earth. Shadows folded over each other, heavy and layered. Whitney’s lantern carved weak shapes into the dark, revealing prints that grew more distorted as they followed them—heel marks that shifted subtly, toe impressions angled strangely.

Moira forced herself not to dwell on that.

Up ahead, the trail dipped into the hollow ridge. Even from a distance, the place felt wrong. The ground sagged inward, forming a shallow bowl ringed by bramble and leaning trees. The branches overhead bent together, forming a loose canopy that blocked out much of the sky.

And in the center stood Sherman.

Or something that carried his shape.

Moira stopped abruptly, breath steadying itself despite her quick walk. She couldn’t decide which detail struck her first—the way Sherman’s posture had shifted, weight balanced differently along the balls of his feet, or the way his shoulders had tightened beneath the fabric of his coat. His arms hung at a slight angle, elbows not quite aligned with how a person normally stood. When he turned toward them, the movement came too fluidly, too smooth.

Whitney raised the lantern. Its light washed across Sherman’s face.

His eyes reflected the glow in a way no human eyes should.

“Sherman,” Whitney said gently, “you need to come back with us.”

He tilted his head, a gesture almost curious. “I feel better than I ever have,” he said. His voice was calm, steady, void of strain. “I don’t hurt anymore.”

“That isn’t healing,” Whitney said. “It’s replacement.”

Moira stepped forward. “Sherman, that token is killing Elder Havel.”

Sherman blinked slowly. “I know.”

The simplicity of those two words stopped her cold.

“He was strong,” Sherman said. “Stronger than the other elders. When I took it… it filled something in me. It fixed what I couldn’t fix.”

Moira’s voice wavered, but she held it steady enough. “Sherman, you didn’t fix it. You traded for it.”

A low stir shivered through the ridge. Something unseen moved just beyond the trees—not approaching, not retreating, simply watching.

Sherman lowered his gaze. “I don’t want to be sick again.”

Whitney took a careful step forward. “Then give the token back. Break it. Release what you stole. You will survive the loss.”

Sherman hesitated. For the first time since they’d entered the hollow, uncertainty rippled across his features, softening the rigid angle of his jaw.

But then the branches overhead shifted, and a whisper—thin, almost inaudible—threaded through the hollow. Moira didn’t hear words, only an urging, a pressure behind the ribs that made her shoulders tighten.

Sherman lifted his head.

Something passed behind his expression. Something ancient.
Something that didn’t belong to him.

“I can’t,” he said.

Whitney exhaled quietly. “Then the forest will finish its claim.”

Moira stepped toward him. “Sherman—please—look at me. You’re my brother. You don’t have to do this.”

He closed his eyes. The angle of his spine relaxed for a moment. His shoulders lowered. For a heartbeat, he looked like himself—tired, unsure, small beneath the vast press of the woods.

Then the token pulsed under his shirt. A faint glow seeped through the fabric.

Sherman’s features hardened.

Moira lifted her hand, as if reaching for him could tether him to what he had been. But his shape blurred at the edges as he moved, slipping backward into the bramble with uncanny silence.

Branches parted for him.

The forest swallowed him whole.

Whitney stood beside Moira, lantern steady. Her expression held no surprise.

“He’s part of the ridge now,” she said softly. “He may linger at the edges when winter comes, but not as the boy you knew.”

Moira stared into the darkness where Sherman had disappeared.

She thought—just for a moment—that she saw a silhouette between the trees, taller than it should be, arms slightly too long, watching her as if recognizing something it could not name.

Then it slipped away, leaving only the sound of branches settling behind it.

The forest kept its quiet.

And Sherman Cantrell was gone.