They strung me up for a lie I never bothered to deny.
I remember the rope. That's all I had time to memorize. Not the crowd, not the smell of hot iron and damp wool. Just the rough hemp scratch of the noose and the way it creaked like an old song when they tugged it tight.
The priest read the rites. Said my name wrong.
They always did. Nera, not Naira. The scribes spelled it wrong on every wanted poster. "The Witch of Black Hollow," they'd call me. Never mind I'd never seen Black Hollow. Never mind I couldn't spell.
Didn't matter.
The crime stuck. The kind that doesn't need proof—just a quiet girl and a few missing children.
I was twelve when I stopped believing in saints. I was nineteen when I became one.
---
I didn't die.
Or maybe I did. Hard to tell. The rope snapped when the sky turned black. Or maybe it turned black because the rope snapped. I remember silence—complete, pressing, velvet. Then a voice, one that didn't come from any throat.
"We take what the gallows leave behind."
I woke up underground. Buried. Alive. Or something like it.
Fingers raw, throat bruised. Eyes full of dirt.
I clawed my way out like a stillborn myth.
---
The forest was wrong.
No birds. No leaves. Trees bent inward, like they'd been listening to something for too long. The moon blinked. Once. I never saw it again.
I walked until my feet split open. Then I walked more.
I found a village on the third day. Or it found me.
Empty. No bodies, no sounds. Just dry bread left on windowsills and tiny shoes lined up outside doors. As if they'd stepped out of themselves.
I slept in the church. The altar was warm.
I woke to whispering. Not in my ears. In my bones.
---
They followed me after that. Shapes that didn't cast shadows. Children with mouths sewn shut and hands too long. A man made of bells that never rang. I didn't run. They didn't chase.
We just... traveled. Like ghosts orbiting each other.
I learned to listen. That's all they wanted. Someone to listen to the rot.
They called me Saint Nera in one town. Said my blood healed frostbite. Said I spoke to the dirt. I didn't correct them. I didn't speak at all.
Because when I did, things bled.
---
Now I sit in ruins, hands cracked with salt, eyes dry as prayer.
The gate is waking. I hear it humming beneath my feet. Like a heartbeat inside a dead god.
Something's coming. Or escaping.
I drew a circle in ash and bone. Not for protection.
For invitation.
---
I heard a name in the static last night.
Don.