Elderly men and women hobbled the streets, wearing matching drapery style clothing, off-white fabric that wrapped around their bodies, down to their calloused, bare feet. Dried leather tied the coverings around their waists and skimmed the ground in their wake.
“Excuse me.” Zahara stepped before an older, frail woman, her hand reaching to clasp the hunched over inhabitant. “Do you know where the entrance to Shadeborne Bound is?”
The woman cocked her head questioningly. Her brown eyes held no emotion—no sense of self—as if driven entirely by something or someone else.
“North. Temple.” But her cracked lips did not move in sync with the accented sound that exited. Her lips mouthed the syllables, but the words did not come out until after her mouth closed.
What the—
Zahara swallowed and took a step back.
She bowed low before the woman in thanks, eyes glued on her. “Thank you,” she muttered, and we walked north.
“This place is… weird,” Zahara murmured under her breath, but I caught it and hummed in agreement.
I studied the people around, especially the ones in conversation. The asynchronous words to sound sent chills down my spine, reminding me of the Nethergill I narrowly escaped the day prior. Then, I noticed the twitching. The people on the island jittered at random, however, all at the exact same time. One person twitched their arm at the same moment another mimicked the motion in their neck. Every inhabitant I witnessed did it, as if they jerked according to a shared clock.
Their leathery skin breathed together, stretched and compressed with their movements as they carried on life’s daily activities. In fact, I searched but couldn’t find any inhabitants that did not have the textured, tree bark like skin.
We walked through the villages and neared the ivory temple. Its spires peeked over the harbor shops and homes, casting a pearlescent shimmer across the city. Massive arched doorways opened to the white marbled interior, revealing towering pillars etched in ancient runes lining the walkway to thefar side of the temple. And at its end stood a single unguarded door.
This is too easy.Nothing we’ve done so far has been straightforward.
Uneasiness crept into my body as we neared the door of the empty temple.
“How do we get in?” I whispered to Noctis at my side, but the furrow in his brows told me he did not know.
“Is there someone we can ask?” Calvin questioned, looking around. But Jun gestured to the temple room, at the lack of anyone’s presence.
Zahara cut in. “There’s a hand mark.” She leaned in closely to the iron-clad door, tracing the outline with her eyes.
Calvin jumped forward, his own hand extended and placed it within the etchings. His eyes flew open, face flushing a ghostly pale at contact. A gurgle rumbled within the chamber, echoing and bouncing between the pillars. The air around us tightened, as if the world itself drew in a breath and forgot how to expel it.
Oh, no…
Calvin’s fingers twitched. His jaw slackened as it dropped open. Like a shadow peeling from a surface, his soul stretched agonizingly slow from his throat.
“Stop it. Now,” Zahara ordered, her voice sharp but unsteady.
Noctis stepped forward, his hands gripping Calvin’s shoulders and lifted him off to the side, breaking the connection before his soul became sacrificed instead of their offering.
Calvin stammered, dizziness knocking him over. He chuckled nervously. “Let’s just say… I don’t advise anyone else to try that.”
Noctis reached for the door.
“You aren’t actually considering doing that, are you?” I asked, disbelief thick in my voice.
He looked over his shoulder as his hand hovered before the mark. “Be careful, darling. It almost sounds like you would care if I got hurt.”
Calvin cut in. “Even though you treat flirting like a sacred duty, we do still need you breathing. It would make this mission a hell of a lot harder losing the one person who can forge the trident. We should find someone first.”
But Noctis pressed his palm firmly to the tracing on the door, the indent perfectly sized for his hand. The crew stared for a while, waiting for something to happen, but the door stood unchanged. Noctis shoved into it, yet it held firm.
“The ticket was a soul,” Jun said, cutting through the silence. “Can you deliver it to the door somehow?”
Noctis nodded.
“Wait, can you switch souls and bodies? Like trading hand-me-down cloaks?” Calvin asked, pure intrigue in his voice, but Zahara elbowed him in the chest.
