Chapter 8
The rider stumbled backward over a loose stone in the dirt street, landing hard on his knees in the dust right where Caleb had knelt hours before. The two little identical sisters closed in around him like silent wolves, their bare feet kicking up tiny puffs of sand. Between them, they held out the single piece of gray bread, offering it down to the fallen man as an invitation and a shackle.
Caleb watched from the shadowy porch, his chest burning with every beat of his heart as the branded star beneath his coat flared with an intense, fiery heat. He wanted to run down the steps and pull the man to his feet, but his boots were rooted to the floorboards by an invisible, binding weight.
“You can't save him, mister,” a voice whispered right beside Caleb’s ear.
Caleb spun his head around. Jonah was standing right there on the porch with him, leaning casually against the weathered wooden pillar. Jonah’s skin was pale and waxy, smelling faintly of river mud and old tobacco, but the silver star on his vest was gone—leaving a jagged, empty hole where the metal had been ripped away.
“What did you do to me?” Caleb choked out, his voice hoarse. “How long has this been going on?”
Jonah smiled, a sad, humorless expression that didn't reach his dead eyes.
“Long enough to forget what green grass looks like, brother,” Jonah said softly, patting Caleb on the shoulder with a hand that felt like cold stone. “I held the watch for twenty years before you showed up. Now it’s your turn to stand guard while I take a walk.”
Down in the street, the rider grabbed the older sister’s wrist, his face contorted in sheer panic.
“Who put you here?” the rider demanded, shaking the child. “Tell me who’s running this town!”
The older girl didn't flinch. She stared up at him with dead, glassy eyes, her expression as cold as winter stone.
“You are,” she said simply.
With a sudden, violent shudder, the entire desert landscape dissolved into a wave of swirling black sand. The sun vanished, replaced by the bruised, starless sky over the underground sea. The wooden porch beneath Caleb’s feet began to tilt downward as the water rushed back up through the floorboards, foaming angrily around the knees of the kneeling rider in the street.
The rider screamed as the cold tide crashed over his head, dragging him down toward the submerged trapdoor that burst open beneath him. Jonah gave Caleb one final, lingering nod, stepped off the porch into the rising water, and vanished beneath the surface without a ripple.
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Caleb stood alone on the sinking deck, the two little girls floating inches above the water on either side of him. The younger sister reached out, gently resting her hand on Caleb’s shoulder as the water rose to his chin, whispering into the dark.
“Someone’s coming up the trail,” she said, her voice echoing into the abyss.
