They walked into silence so deep it felt alive.
The world around them shifted — subtly, then violently.
The trees fell away.
The mist thinned into a vast, dead plain of cracked earth and lifeless stones.
Before them stretched The Threshing Grounds — a cursed place where the Deadroot separated flesh from spirit, where hope came to die in agony.
A thousand wooden stakes littered the horizon, each one crowned with a mummified corpse.
Some still twitched.
Some still wept.
Above, the sky turned the color of curdled milk, and the sun — if it was a sun — bled black across the heavens.
Royce steadied Eryndra as she stumbled.
Her blindfold was soaked with blood now.
Her lips, cracked and raw, moved in silent prayers.
He knew she would not last much longer without help.
And here...
There would be no help.
---
A low hum began beneath their feet.
The earth shivered.
From the cracked soil, hands emerged — thin, white, boneless things that clawed at their ankles.
Royce slashed at them, but for every hand he severed, three more burst from the dirt.
They needed to move.
Fast.
---
In the distance, an old farmhouse loomed — a patchwork skeleton of wood and rusted nails.
It was the only structure in this wasteland.
No choice.
Royce half-carried Eryndra toward it, feeling the ground writhe beneath his boots.
The door swung open with a screech like a human scream.
Inside, darkness pressed against the walls, thick and wet.
But worse —
the house was breathing.
---
They stepped in.
The door slammed behind them with a violence that shook the floorboards.
The smell hit them first — sour milk, rotten meat, and something sweeter, like spoiled flowers.
Rooms twisted at wrong angles, staircases led nowhere, furniture fused into the walls like tumors.
The house was alive.
And it hated them.
---
From the upstairs landing, a figure watched.
A woman.
Or what had once been a woman.
Her face was a ruined tapestry of stitched-together skin, her eyes black and shining like beetles.
She wore a wedding dress made of sackcloth and spider silk.
And in her hands, she carried a cradle.
Inside the cradle was nothing but bones — tiny, brittle, and wrapped in faded scraps of cloth.
She began to hum.
A lullaby.
Soft.
Terrible.
The walls wept blood.
---
Eryndra gasped and fell to her knees.
The lullaby wormed its way into their bones, pulling at their memories, their regrets.
Royce saw flashes —
His mother's twisted body, dangling from the rafters.
His father's empty chair.
His own face, younger, more innocent — breaking into sobs beneath a blood-red sky.
He staggered.
The house wanted them broken.
It fed on sorrow.
---
The Bride floated down the stairs without moving her legs.
She reached out a hand toward Royce, fingers bent at grotesque angles.
Her voice was honey and poison:
> "Come... cradle the lost...
cradle the forgotten...
cradle your sins..."
He fought to stay upright.
If he touched her, he knew — he would never leave this place.
---
A sharp, sudden voice cut through the thick air:
"Royce! Look away!"
Eryndra, trembling but furious, hurled a handful of silver dust at the creature.
The dust caught the Bride in the chest —
and she shrieked.
A sound that cracked the windows, buckled the floor, and made Royce's nose bleed.
The Bride recoiled, her skin bubbling and blackening.
The house howled with her.
---
Royce seized the moment.
He grabbed Eryndra and plunged deeper into the house.
Corridors twisted, doorways closed, the walls squeezed inward, trying to trap them.
They found a narrow stairwell leading down — into the basement.
The smell grew worse.
But the pull...
the pull of the boy's feather, deep inside Royce's coat, strengthened.
He knew:
what they sought lay below.
If they survived the descent.
---