Chapter 8
Scars of the Soul
The silence in the cabin was a heavy, suffocating blanket. The acrid tang of blood and something far more primal still clung to the air, a phantom scent that made my stomach churn. It had been… a feast. That’s what Taji had called it, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that scraped against my raw nerves. A feast. And I had partaken. The memory, sharp and visceral, pulsed behind my eyes: the tearing, the taste, the guttural satisfaction that had momentarily silenced the screaming chaos in my head. Now, the silence was worse. It was filled with the echoes of that satisfaction, a grotesque counterpoint to the horror that was beginning to seep in, cold and relentless.
I sat on the rough-hewn floor, my back pressed against the splintered wood of the wall, trying to untangle the knot of myself. Who was I? The boy who’d woken up disoriented, terrified of his father? Or this… thing… that had participated in such an act? The boy was gone, I knew that with a certainty that chilled me to the bone. He had been consumed, just as Liann had been. And in his place, something new, something… fractured, was taking root.
Taji was outside, his movements slow and deliberate. I could hear the scrape of his boots on the dry earth, the occasional snapping of a twig. He was cleaning up. Or perhaps, he was simply breathing in the freedom of the wilderness, a wildness that now seemed to mirror the territory he’d carved out in my mind. I hugged my knees to my chest, my body trembling not from cold, but from a deep, internal earthquake. Guilt warred with a disturbing, lingering sense of fulfillment. It was a sickness, I knew. A profound, soul-deep sickness. But it was also… real. It was a response to the sheer, overwhelming otherness of what had happened.
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