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Another follows… then another… seven… nine… twelve.

Fuck… there were never twelve.

The guests dance around them.

One man grabs a scarecrow and kisses its stitched mouth. The strings split and something black pours into his mouth but he doesn’t stop. He keeps kissing it.

My stomach turns.

“STOP!”

No one does.

The table stretches… longer and longer. Food rots before my eyes. Grapes collapse. Apples blacken while bread blooms with mold then everything reverses.

Fresh. Ripe. Perfect—only to rot, ripe, rot. Over and over. Too fast. The smell is unbearable.

Sweet. Putrid. Meat. Wine. Sweat. Blood—Earth.

A woman crawls onto the table, her stomach moves and something pushes beneath her skin. She laughs. “Ripe.”

Another voice answers. “Ripe.”

Then another. “Ripe.”

The word spreads out from hundreds of mouths.

RIPE.

RIPE.

RIPE.

I back away until something touches my shoulder. I turn and see Mercy. Not dead but not alive. She’s a version from the Earth with roots beneath her skin.

“You remember.”

I stare at her. “Eleanor.”

“Yes.”

“She lived.”

“Yes.”

“And her children?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Her children’s children?”

Her smile grows. “Until Sage.”

I close my eyes. At least I did one thing right.

One.

In two hundred and thirty-five years of failure—I saved the bloodline that brought Sage here. The thought should comfort me but it doesn’t because that means I brought Sage here too.