The next second, the world tilts.
My arm is seized. I’m spun hard by the elbow, my balance torn from beneath me. Cold steel presses into my stomach, the point buried against my flesh. It does not pierce my clothing, yet the promise of it is unmistakable.
My own blade rests against his throat.
A thin line of blood beads along his skin and spills slowly down the curve of his Adam’s apple. Not deep enough to open his jugular—but a single flick of my wrist could end him.
We stand locked in place, balanced on the knife’s edge between breath and oblivion.
His amber eyes capture mine—ancient, steady, utterly unafraid.
I catch the faint heat of his body, the scent of leather and cedar clinging to him. His breath ghosts across my lips, warm enough to stir the fine hairs along my skin. His gaze drifts from my eyes, tracing the lines of my face with disturbing focus, as though memorizing me. Foreign words fall from his lips. They’re low, resonant, shaped in a language I do not know.
They send a chill down my spine. The tattoo at the back of my neck prickles as if awakened. It was given to me as a child, and over the years, I’ve learned it serves as a kind of warning—a physical signal when something significant, good or ill, is about to unfold.
Shock fractures the vision.
I sever the daydream and drop my blade. The illusion dissolves like smoke. A crude dummy fashioned from burlap sacks and rope stands where Death stood, mounted to a weathered beam.
My limbs trembled slightly as if my bones no longer cared to be caged inside my flesh.
Feeling out of sorts and wanting to rid my mind of thoughts of the Black Horseman, I leave the makeshift training yard I’ve created and retreat to the house.
After grabbing soap and what other supplies I’ll need, I make my way to the river to bathe. The cold water steadies me and clears my mind. It’s chilly this time of year and just the right temperature to focus my thoughts on the tasks ahead.
When finished, I grab cleaned clothes from the clothesline behind the house and dress.
I spend the better part of the afternoon working in the garden, doing my daily chores, praying, and reading one of the books I recently found in an abandoned farmhouse.
I head for my workshop next, opening the heavy cellar door before I descend slowly, counting each step. Fourteen. My foot touches the cold dirt floor. The air is damp and heavy, thick with the scent of earth and oil. Five steps forward and to the left bring me to the worktable and the waiting lamp. I feel through the darkness until my fingers find the box of matches. The wick catches with a soft flare, casting trembling light across the room.
I light two more lamps and place them along the workbench, pushing back the shadows until the space glows a steady amber.
Then I retrace my steps and seal the cellar door behind me.
I take some time weighing which mark I will ink next into my skin. Three sigils call to me, each promising, but I have not yet decided which will serve me best.
I first came up with the idea of tattooing the sigils from the Good Book on my skin years ago, but I warred with myself over how I might go about it. Chemistry has never been one of my strengths. In fact, it had been the only course in my youth where I hadn’t excelled far and above the other girls in the Order. As a result, many of my early attempts to alchemize the elixir into ink were failures—ruined mixtures, wasted resources, and markings that faded into nothing.
It took months of studying high school workbooks and other resources before I could grasp the basics that had for so long boggled my mind.
In those early experiments, I used far more elixir than necessary, and even now, those first markings glow beneath the moonlight and are invisible by day. Had those initial results not shown promise, I might have abandoned the pursuit entirely. Thankfully, I discovered key phrases in the text that helped me decipher and better understand the meanings behind each sigil, written records of them gifting power when used.
The symbols for protection, strength, and courage seemed harmless enough for my first attempt. I doubted they would do anything at all. Yet afterward, the difference was undeniable—enough so that I couldn’t dismiss it as a coincidence.
In the years following, I experimented. I tried various liquids, inks, and substances. Then I began dialing back the quantity of elixir until I discovered the precise balance required to harness its power without overwhelming the body.
That is why my markings vary—some faint, some vivid, while others are more prominent. Certain sigils worked, while others did not.
Through deeper study, I discovered that the failures were not always due to flawed mixtures, but rather to the sigils in the Good Book being flawed. It took comparing them against ancient texts, mountains of old scrolls I discovered in the basement of an old library, some written in Aramaic, Arabic, and others in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
It unsettled me, this discovery. That was what was written in the Good Book was imperfect.
With no higher authority left to guide me, I did not know whether I was stepping beyond my teachings or embracing forbidden knowledge. Was I courting heresy? Was carving these symbols into my flesh a sin?
But with no one to answer my questions, where did that leave me? Without answers. Forced to trust my own judgment. Trust my intuition. I reasoned that it was knowledge, outdated, yes, but also maybe as old as the Good Book or older, and though it might be somewhat outside the bounds of the Children of the Blessed’s religious doctrine, it still held knowledge and power that I might need to give me the upper hand in the coming battle against the Horsemen.
Would Grand Minister Judiah not demand that I use every weapon available to fulfill my purpose?
