The morning light filtered through the thin curtains, dousing the Elder’s cramped room in an ashen glow. On the table, the spent toothpick lay inert, harmless as any ordinary sliver of split bamboo. My gaze lingered on it, half-expecting it to twitch, to convulse and reach for me as it had in the fevered moments of the night. But it didn’t move. My mind conjured the memory of splinters threading beneath my skin—phantom pains flaring and retreating, a cruel aftertaste.
Laras sat beside me, her hair tangled from a sleepless night, eyes rimmed red in the weak daylight. She squeezed my hand, her grip fierce, as if daring the world to try and take me again. For the first time in hours, I let myself lean into her warmth, the heat of her body grounding, real. Still, I couldn’t shake the fear: that the very air trembled with some thinly-veiled malice, that the world itself had been knocked off its axis, all because I’d pressed a toothpick between my teeth without a thought for anything but a stubborn bit of meat.
The Elder moved slowly, gathering the remnants of the ritual—the bowl of ash, the coil of red thread, the scraps of incense paper. He glanced at us, his features drawn with exhaustion, and I wondered if he felt the same hollow exhaustion, the same bone-deep dread that nothing was truly finished. "It’s best you leave this place soon," he said, his voice rough. "The house remembers the curse, even if you’ve shed it."
Outside, the distant clang of a metal gate and the echo of voices in a neighboring yard reminded me how absurdly normal the world could sound after such horror. I wanted to stand, to escape this room that still stank of old incense smoke and half-buried secrets, but my limbs ached with a leaden reluctance. What if, in stepping out, I carried the curse into the world with me?
Laras reached for my chin, gently turning my face so that I met her gaze. “Aris. We can’t stay here forever.” Her tone was soft, resolute. Her thumb brushed the line of my jaw—a tender, insistent gesture. "Let’s go home. Or at least get some air."
A cough rattled from the Elder, and he beckoned me closer. I hesitated, glancing at Laras, but his eyes held an urgent warning. When I drew near, he pressed something cool and hard into my palm—a small, irregular fragment of bamboo, blackened at one end. "Take it as a token," he whispered, voice barely audible. “Not all wounds flee at dawn. Some must be watched."
The shard felt heavier than it looked, humming with a subtle, icy vibration. I closed my fist around it, pulse jackrabbiting in my throat. The room seemed to contract, shadows thickening at the corners, the air suddenly thin.
Laras stood quickly, gathering our bag and coat, her movements flinty and determined. “We’ll go now," she announced, but her voice wobbled. Her gaze flicked to the bamboo splinter in my hand. “What’s that?”
Before I could answer, a sharp rapping sounded at the door—three staccato knocks that sent a jolt through my body. The Elder’s eyes darted to the entrance, his lips forming a silent curse. The knocking came again, louder, more insistent. Something about it—too precise, too knowing—made the hair on my arms rise.
Laras clutched my sleeve, her bravado faltering. The toothpick on the table seemed to quiver in the sudden tension, and the splinter in my palm pulsed, hot and cold at once. The Elder stood frozen, gaze fixed on the door as if expecting it to burst open at any moment.
A faint voice, muffled but unmistakable, threaded through the wood: “Aris… I know you’re in there. Let me in. We need to talk. Now.”
A cold sweat broke out along my spine. I recognized the voice—someone I hadn’t seen in months, someone who knew nothing, supposedly, of the horrors that had plagued my nights. But why had she come? And why now, just as the curse had broken?
The knocks fell again, urgent, almost desperate, echoing through the room like the last beats before a storm breaks.