He Used My Blood Then Chose Me novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Road West

On the road, Min-jun hides the cut on his arm from Ren. Seo-jun watches the black tear in the sky widen and counts the shinigami crossings. They reach the burned shrine where the first priest family died.

We left the mill before the sun cleared the ridge.

My father was still asleep in the house. I didn't wake him.

I left a note on the table that said the prince needed a guide and I'd be back.

That was a lie I'd have to live with.

Ren walked ahead. Min-jun walked behind me.

We went west along the old logging road, and the trees got thinner as we climbed.

Min-jun kept his sleeve down over the bandage.

When Ren looked back, Min-jun turned his shoulder away and let the sleeve fall where it wanted.

He didn't want the man to see it.

I watched him do it twice before I understood.

Ren wasn't his friend. Ren was somebody he had to look strong in front of.

I filed that away.

By mid-morning we came out of the tree line onto the ridge road.

From up there you could see the whole valley, and past the valley, the sky.

The tear was there.

It hung over the western hills, black and wet-looking, like oil spread on water.

I'd seen it every day of my life from the mill. It had always been the same size.

It wasn't the same size now.

It had grown. Not much. But I'd looked at that thing for twenty-five years, and I knew its edges the way I knew my own hands.

It was wider than it had been last week.

"How many?" Ren said.

He'd stopped and turned around.

"Crossings?" I said.

"Yes."

I looked at the tear.

"Four this morning," I said. "Two last night before I slept."

"You can see them?"

"Little threads coming out of it. Like hair."

Ren looked at Min-jun.

Min-jun was watching the tear.

"That's more than last month," Min-jun said.

"It's more than last week," Ren said.

We walked on.

The road went down into the next valley, and the burned smell came up to meet us before we saw anything.

Not woodsmoke. Older than that. The smell of a fire that went out a long time ago and never got rained on.

The shrine sat at the bottom of the valley, in a bowl of black ground.

It had been a building once. Stone walls, a roof, a bell tower.

Now it was a shell. The roof was gone. The bell tower was a black stump.

The ground around it was bare for a hundred paces in every direction. Nothing grew there. Not even weeds.

Nobody had put that fire out. It had burned until there was nothing left to burn.

I stopped at the edge of the bare ground.

"This is it," I said.

"First of the priest families," Ren said. "The massacre started here."

Min-jun walked past me onto the black ground.

His boots left prints in the ash.

"This is where they died," he said.

"Yes."

"The king's men came at night," Ren said. "They barred the doors from the outside. There were nine people inside."

He said it like he was reading it off a page.

I looked at him.

"How do you know that?"

"I carried the report," Ren said.

He didn't look at me when he said it.

Min-jun turned around.

"What report?"

"The one Luca's captain wrote the morning after," Ren said. "I was a courier then. I took it from the captain's hand to the king's table."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Min-jun said, "How many families?"

"Four," Ren said. "This was the first. The others came after. This one took the longest."

I walked onto the black ground.

The stone walls were still up in places, chest high. The doorway was a gap with a lintel over it, and the lintel had carvings on it.

I put my hand on the stone and traced them.

Circles. Rows and rows of circles, one inside the other.

I knew them from somewhere. I didn't know where.

Inside the walls, the floor was covered in ash, and the ash was soft and deep, and under it there were shapes.

I didn't want to look at the shapes.

I looked anyway. There was a long one near the doorway, and a short one beside it.

Min-jun came and stood next to me.

"You don't have to stay in here," he said.

"I know."

"You're shaking."

"I know."

I crouched down and put my hand in the ash.

It was cold. Cold as river water in winter.

I moved my hand through it, slow, the way you'd move it through grain.

And my fingers caught on something.

I pulled it out.

It was cloth. Small, folded, burned at one corner but not through.

Cream colored. Soft. The size of a newborn.

There was a little stitched border along the edge, and the stitching was the same color as the circles on the lintel.

Gold thread. Almost gone. But there.

I held it up.

Nobody spoke.

I turned it over in my hands, and there, on the inside corner, was a single mark stitched in dark thread.

A small circle with a dot in the middle.

The same mark that was on my wrist.

The mark my father had told me about two days ago, sitting at the kitchen table with his hands shaking, saying he'd found me in the forest as a baby with that mark on my wrist and no mother anywhere.

I stood up with the blanket in my hands.

Min-jun was watching me.

Ren was watching Min-jun.

The wind came through the broken walls and lifted the ash off the floor, and for a second the whole shrine was full of gray.

I looked down at the little blanket in my hands.

It was mine.

I had been here before.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend