Book One – Chapter 18

“All pacts are bound by consequence. Consider the Flame. It is a fire of the most delicate mercy. It does not burn on the body alone, but on the very essence of the selder’s being. The longer it blazes, the more it consumes its own light, until little remains but the ember of existence. Others may draw from the Albweiss itself when their strength falters. Such debt must be repaid with care before the selder leaves the mountains. Should they refuse to return what has been given, the mountain will exact its claim. It will take it all, the moment they attempt to depart. Those who live on borrowed life are mountain-bound.”

Her scales never ceased their soothing rustle. Even now, as they shifted and folded back once more, the rhythmic whisper remained undisturbed. It was calm, comforting, almost entrancing, and yet, all of Yu’s feather stood on end, every one of them dishevelled, as though a terrible wind had swept through him. It was as if he was caught in the middle of a storm that he could not see.

“Did that happen?” His torn-up voice cut through the whisper, and suddenly, he heard the stinging in his ears again. It was still there, dull yet insistent, swept to the unsettling recesses of his mind. “Is he exhausted from that? From a pact?”

The whispers continued, but Yu refused them. They circled and embraced him, but he held fast onto the pain instead, focussing, following. The stinging led him away from the center of the storm that he did not feel, to its very edge, where he began to hear himself again. All the words behind the mask were here. You are not supposed to do this! You are not supposed to read the pacts! Bubs told you to leave him alone!

“It remains unsaid what this band of travellers encountered on the peaks,” the voice of the shaman never wavered. The maw waited for the needle, barely moving, as she finally sank it into the seam. “But surely, this state befell him with the payment of a debt. Or the breaking of a pact. Or perhaps the judgment that he was unworthy to bear it any further.”