Page 425 of Coal Hearts

My stomach threatened to revolt.

All around me, jewels reacted in their own way.

All skin colours turned shock-white.

All eye colours went horror-wide.

No one could wrench their gaze off the table in the centre.

No, not a table.

An altar.

Carved from the very cave itself with a thick pedestal and chunky stone platform.

A human-sized platform.

Shaped like a flat coffin, grooves cut into its edges, ready to capture liquid and funnel it to the end where a glass cauldron swung, greedy and grasping for every drop.

An ancient ache worked through me.

Time seemed to overlap.

My mind filled with similar scenes. Historical sacrifices, pages from books I’d read, and scenes depicted in the old castles and manors I’d explored.

In every era of humanity, evil had presided.

Today was no different.

And standing in that oppressive cave with stone pews circling the sacrificial altar and torches adding a patina of misery, I struggled to believe in innocence. Struggled to hold faith in hope.

Even Mother Nature seemed in on this hellscape with stalactites dripping like fangs and mineral-deposited stalagmites spearing like demon fingers.

I’d never felt so small or so stupid.

Historic brutality couldn’t compare to the energy pouring off my fellow jewels.

The indescribable shattering of thirty broken hearts as we all came to terms with our fate if we didn’t find a way free.

One day, each of us would be buckled and bled on that altar.

One day, every single one of us would cease to exist.

For an age, no one breathed.

But then...a gasp.

A cry.

A stumble.

The spell broke, and the jewels all reeled back as one. Bumping into one another, choking on wails, scrambling for strength, and finding they had nothing left.

“Don’t...” I whispered, gagging on my own dead heart. “Don’t....”

I wanted to tell them not to give up hope.

Not to envision what’d happened in here or to picture themselves on that table.