CHAPTER ELEVEN

  -How to Wake a Sleeping Spirit

  Somewhere there is a bird that eats the cold out of people’s hearts, one beakful at a time.

  – Old Shaman Korkut, “The Sorrow-Scattering Bird”

  The echo of the bell still hung in the air.

  Boys scrambled to obey. Chains clinked. Bare feet slapped the cold floor. Ouz moved with them. Habit carried him, muscle and bone falling into old patterns even while his mind raced ahead.

  He tasted blood at the back of his throat, but not from this morning. Snow. The weight of a falling body driving the breath out of him. The shock of a spear punching through someone else before it scraped his ribs. The thud when they hit the bottom of the ravine. The heat of fire chasing away the cold. He had died there. He knew that as surely as he knew the bell meant move.

  Under boots in the yard, he had died as well. That memory sat beside the others now, sharp and ugly. That had to be the First Passage, the thing Aldac?’s words had been pointing at. However he tried to stack them, the sum stayed the same. Death had found him. The same morning had dragged him back.

  First I was Ouz, next I became Seventeen, after that Chanyu. Now I’m Seventeen again.

  Days did not start over. This one had. Last time this morning had come, the first time he had tried to run, he had waited for dusk. He had thought the dark would hide him. It had not. Panic and fear had narrowed his world until all he had seen were dogs and chain and shouting. He wasn’t going to be that careless again. Not after everything he’d learned from the Hermit.

  They spilled out of the barracks into the yard. The cold hit him harder now that he understood it might not be the last cold he ever felt. Frost silvered the packed earth. The sky overhead sagged low, the color of dirty wool. Smoke rose from the cookhouse chimney and drifted toward the river.

  His feet stung. Bare skin on frozen ground. For a moment he felt a ghost of thick socks and worn boots, of a rough coat that smelled of smoke and stew and pine sap. Hermit’s hand shoving a bowl into his, grumbling. All of that was gone. The ground did not care that he had once been warm.

  The overseer stood by the cookhouse door, whip at his belt, half an ear missing. The man drank from a chipped cup, steam slipping past his face. His eyes moved along the line of boys without interest. Counting bodies, not people. Last time Ouz had flinched from that look. Today he watched back. Let the bastard count.

  Now, at least, he told himself he knew why. He should have died under that whip the first time. He had not, because a man in a cabin had taken him in, and because a spirit with a name he was not allowed to know had dragged him away from the pit and put him back together.

  The overseer was a gutless traitor, a two-faced snake who had sold his own people for a warm coat and a master’s scraps. The thought burned hot and steady. Under it sat something worse. He had watched the Hermit turn and stand alone in the snow. He had felt Iye’s body between him and the ground when they fell. He had been too weak to stop any of it.

  They might already be dead. They might have died once in front of his eyes and he had done nothing but choke and listen. This time he knew exactly when the men in skull masks would come. Before that happened, he needed to get out of this shithole.

  He took his porridge like the rest. Lukewarm, sloppy, more water than grain. It still smelled better than the river, but nowhere near the Hermit’s cooking. A boy in front of him stumbled and a strip of thin porridge slid over the rim onto Ouz’s fingers. He wiped it on his shirt without thinking. His hands wanted to shake. He locked them tight around the bowl.

  The crooked-nosed boy behind him shoved his shoulder.

  “Move, rat,” he muttered. “If you stand there dreaming, they’ll beat us all.”

  Last time this morning came, those same words had been a warning before Ouz even noticed the overseer’s glare. Today the overseer didn’t even look up.

  “I heard,” Ouz answered, voice rough. It was all he trusted himself to say.

  He ate, forcing each sticky mouthful down. He needed the strength. Need came before want now. Before fear. When the bowl was empty, he licked it clean and handed it back to the cook. The man barely glanced at him. As long as there were enough backs to carry sacks and hands to scrub boots, no one cared which boy’s heart beat under which dirty shirt. They were all the same to him.

  Ouz stepped away from the line. He should plan. Think. Draw a map in his head. Beyond the dogs, at the far corner of the yard, the same knot of sheds and the smokehouse sagged against the wall, their roofs sloping up toward the palisade like a broken stair.

  Last time, that broken stair had been nothing but a blur at the edge of his vision. Now he stared at it and tried to think like the Hermit had taught him. If this happens, what do you do? If that happens, what do you do next?

  He could try to wake Iye. Maybe she remembered more. Maybe she remembered everything. The idea flared bright and stupid in the same breath. She was a spirit bound in stone. Time might not touch her the way it touched him. Or it might. He had no way to know.

  He remembered the lines that had flashed through his head after the darkness.

  [Skill: Practicing Death]

  [Second Passage recorded.]

  [Error: First Passage cannot be found.]

  [Warning: Additional skills locked until First Passage is recovered.]

  Back in the cabin, skills had flickered in and out of his vision, names he did not understand tagging things he barely knew how to do. Now even that strange guidance sat behind a closed door. Something in him had broken or been taken. Until he fixed it, he was on his own.

  He had the Hermit’s drills. Rope mazes. “If the dog turns left, you turn right.” “If the man looks at your hands, move your feet.” He had the memory of two years’ worth of questions and answers, all those nights of “what would you do if” until he could barely keep his eyes open.

  Right now his ankle was chained. Overseers and wardens ringed the yard. Three half-starved dogs prowled near the cookhouse, ribs sharp under their patchy fur, teeth ready for anything that moved. If he wanted to live, he had to use every piece he had. Waking Iye would be one more piece.

  But not in the yard. Not with fifty boys, three dogs, and half a dozen wardens watching. Not yet. He bent his head and joined the line hauling sacks. The work ate the morning. Grain from the storage rooms to the granary. Slop from the cookhouse to the troughs. Buckets of waste to the ditch. The light stuff went into the ditch to bleed toward the river. The heavy things – broken beams, carcasses, anything that wouldn’t wash away – they hauled outside the walls, to the pit. His muscles burned in the old familiar ways. His mind refused to settle.

  At midday, the horn blew: three sharp blasts that cut through the cold air. Work paused. The boys sagged where they stood. Some crouched. Some sat. Someone coughed in a wet, tearing way that made Ouz’s chest hurt just to hear it.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He leaned against the side of a shed and let his breath slow. The jade-moon stone rested against his skin under his shirt, a small, solid weight. He pressed it through the cloth. He could smash it against the packed earth. That would wake Iye. It would also break the stone. He’d already seen what happened when her home cracked. He could almost hear her voice now, flat and brittle in his head:

  You break it again, boy, I break you.

  Maybe there was another way. A gentler way. Blood and stone went together in stories. Blood and pacts. Blood and binding. If the Hermit had been here, Ouz could have asked him. The thought hurt in a way that had nothing to do with cold or hunger.

  The horn blew again. Rest was over. The world didn’t care about his plans. Afternoon blurred into the same grind. More sacks. More stairs. More shouted orders. He moved where they pointed him, did what they told him, and held back the part of him that wanted to bolt for the broken stair and dare the dogs to stop him. There would be a time for that. It was not while the sun was still high.

  By the time the sky faded from dirty wool to bruised iron, his legs felt hollow. The boys were herded back toward the barracks, counted in, shoved through the door. The bolt slid into place with a solid thud.

  Inside, the air was thick with breath and old smoke. Someone started a story in a low voice, the kind meant to make boys glance at the door and at the shadows in the rafters. Someone else told him to shut up before he scared the younger ones. A few thin laughs flickered and died. The cough in the far corner kept scraping at the air. Eventually even that faded as sleep dragged the boys down one by one.

  Ouz lay still until the last whisper died. Until the only sounds left were the soft rasp of breathing and an occasional restless shift on rough planks. He slid his hand under his shirt and closed his fingers around the stone.

  “Sorry,” he whispered to it. “I’m going to try this the easy way first.”

  Sitting up, he moved slow and careful, listening for any change in the room. Nothing. No footsteps outside. No scrape of the bolt. No bark. The dark pressed close, broken only by the faintest grey at the gaps in the shutters.

  The cord slid over his head. The jade-moon stone lay in his palm: wolf-shaped, its edges worn smooth, its surface dull in the dark. Old, dried blood clung in the lines and creases. It had always been there. He had never thought much about it.

  He raised his hand, meaning to smash it against the floor, and froze. If he broke it, there would be no putting it back together. No new stone yet. No promise kept. He lowered his arm and let out a slow breath through his teeth.

  “Wake up,” he muttered instead. He tapped the stone against the packed earth. Not hard enough to chip it. Just enough to send a tiny shock up his fingers. “Come on, Iye. I’m not trying to break it. Wake up.”

  Nothing.

  He tapped it again. And again. “Wake up. Please. I don’t want to smash your stone. I know how much you hate that. But I need you.”

  The jade stayed dark and warm. He frowned down at it. Dried blood. Spirit sealed inside. His own life tangled up with hers.

  “Maybe blood,” he whispered.

  There were no knives in the barracks. No nails. Nothing sharper than splinters, and those were buried in the boards. He lifted his hand to his mouth, hesitated for half a heartbeat before biting down on the side of his finger. Pain flared. He tasted iron. He bit again until skin tore and warm wetness welled up.

  “Sorry,” he muttered around his own hand. “You’re not the only one who hates this.”

  He let the blood drip onto the stone. It beaded and slid, streaking over the carved lines, touching old brown stains with fresh red.

  “Wake up, Iye,” he whispered. “Please. Wake up. At least if you’re there, it proves I’m not mad.”

  The stone stayed dull. He stared at it until his eyes burned.

  “All right,” he said softly. “You left me no choice.”

  He tightened his grip, lifted the stone high, and drew his arm back.

  Light answered him. It started as a thin pulse under his fingers, a heartbeat he could feel more than see. A faint glow bled through the stone’s surface, pale, like foxfire. It painted his fingers in dim color, barely enough to touch the boards at his knees.

  “Iye?” he breathed. “Did it work? Are you awake?”

  The light steadied. The air seemed to thicken, pressing against his eardrums. A voice slipped into the space between one heartbeat and the next.

  “Are you the idiot who dares to disturb my slumber?”

  Ouz let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. His shoulders shook.

  “Iye,” he whispered. “You’re awake. You’re really awake.”

  “You are an idiot,” the voice said crisply. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, from the stone, from inside his chest, from the air right in front of his nose. “I do not know you.”

  He swallowed.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Ouz. Seventeen. No, Chanyu. You saved my life in the fort pit. You dragged me out. You took me to the Hermit. We lived in his cabin for two years, until the men in masks came and we—”

  “Stop.” The word snapped like a whip. “You are mad.”

  “I’m not,” he said quickly.

  “Yes, you are.” Her voice cooled further. “Why would I risk my life for somebody like you? How would some mere knight kill me? And if I had died, why are we still here instead of nowhere at all?”

  He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.

  “I don’t know all of it,” he admitted. “But I know this much. I died. Twice, at least. And I am still here. There is a god who likes lines that bend. And I have… something. A skill, maybe. When I die, I don’t stay dead.”

  Silence stretched. He could hear boys breathing in the dark, the slow, heavy rhythm of sleep.

  “Are you a ghoul?” Iye asked at last. “A vampire?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Wait. Are those real?”

  A soft, very put-upon sigh brushed the inside of his skull.

  “So what do you want from me?” she asked. “Since you have ruined my rest and bled on my stone.”

  “Can you help me escape from here?” he asked.

  “No,” she said at once. “Why would I help you? At present I am still bound. I cannot leave the stone unless it breaks. If you break it, I will kill you first for the trouble. Then I will see what is left of the world.”

  “I know, I know,” he said quickly. “That’s why I tried to wake you without breaking it. I know how much it matters to you. But we need to save the Hermit.”

  “I do not know if you are a full idiot or only touched in the head,” she said. “If I were out of this stone, I could read your memories and settle it. I am not out. I am also not curious enough to tell you to smash my home just to test your story. So I am going back to sleep. Do not bother me again.”

  The light in the stone dimmed, just a little.

  “Wait,” Ouz whispered.

  He stared at the faint glow, mind clawing for anything, any proof he could offer that did not rely on her kindness. Memory stirred: cold air and packed earth against his back, snow melting on his cheek, ribs sawing at his breath, green light pouring out of the stone, thin lines of writing hanging over his eyes.

  “Iye’s Tín,” he said.

  The light flared once, sharp and clear.

  “What did you just say?” Iye asked. No humor now. No boredom.

  “Iye’s Tín,” he repeated. “I don’t know what it is. Last time you saved my life, that was the ability I acquired. It showed up in front of my eyes. Your name on it.”

  Silence. Longer this time. He almost wondered if she had gone after all, leaving the glow as a cruel joke.

  “If what you say is true,” she said finally, “then you do not need me. You already have what you need to escape. Yet you are still here, mewling at my stone. That tells me either you lie, or you are too stupid to use what you have.”

  “I’m not lying,” he said. “But I can’t use it now. Something went wrong. When you saved me, something broke. I cannot remember what it was. And until I remember, there is a curse on me. Or a lock. I do not know the word. Either way, I cannot touch my other skills.”

  “Who told you this?” she asked.

  He shook his head in the dark.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s true.”

  “So if you remember whatever you forgot,” Iye said slowly, “the curse or lock or whatever foolish thing you call it will break. And you can use Iye’s Tín. Is that what you believe?”

  “I don’t even know what Iye’s Tín means,” he admitted.

  “You do not need to know everything,” she said. “If you hold the skill, your body will know what to do. If you do not, then the name is useless to you. But let us say, for the sake of argument, that your story is not a complete waste of air. If you find these missing memories and free yourself, will you stop pestering me?”

  “I already made you a promise,” he said quietly. “When your stone first broke. I said I would find you a new one. I never did. That promise is still waiting. So there is nothing stopping me from keeping another. If you help me and I get out of here, I will not bother you unless I have no other choice.”

  “Not ‘unless needed’,” she said. “Never.”

  He could not help it. He smiled.

  “If things go badly enough,” he said, “you won’t remember this conversation anyway.”

  “Are you threatening me, boy?” Her voice sharpened.

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “Just saying. Please. Help me. Tell me what to do.”

  “First,” she said, “you give me your word.”

  “Fine,” he said. “You have it. I promise. If I ever remember what I lost and break this curse, I will leave you alone.”

  “Good,” she said. “You know what I am. You know that I sleep in this stone. You speak of Iye’s Tín as if it were some trinket you misplaced. No one here should know those things. Not you. Not any child chained in a barracks that stinks of dung and smoke. That is enough to make me listen. It is not enough to drag me out of my home to see whether your memories are real or only painted on the inside of your skull. Remember this, boy: I do not need to leave this stone to make you regret wasting my time. Now close your eyes. Whatever you think you have forgotten, whatever hole you feel when you reach for it, put your mind on that.”

  He let his eyes fall shut. The barracks faded. The cold boards under him, the stink of too many bodies, all of it slid a little out of reach. The stone was warm in his hand.

  “You know,” he murmured, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth, “for a grumpy spirit, you help a lot.”

  “Boy.” Her voice went flat. “You truly mean to test my patience.”

  The light in the stone brightened.

  And the world slipped.

  Lily Carter juggles lectures, 7-Eleven night shifts, and a secret life as Lilithia Nocturne, a top-ranked demon princess in the VRMMORPG Xantia. Then a robbery, a gunshot—and blackout. She wakes on cold stone in a glowing blood circle, wearing Lilithia’s regal armor and horns for real.

  A bargain-bin cult calling itself the Children of the Abyss has summoned her—on purpose, by accident. They wanted a real demoness and not a nerdy girl cosplaying one. They’re incompetent, fanatical, and, inconveniently, the only people who don’t want to burn a demon on sight. Lily plans to humor them, learn the world, and bail. Instead, rumors snowball, idiots congregate, and an accidental empire starts forming in her name.

  Will Lily lean into the crown and become the new Demon Queen, ghost the lot of them for a blissfully quiet life, or—against all odds—end up saving a world that keeps mistaking her for its doom?