MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

The plaza was a sea of hostile faces.

Lindsey stood at the center of the ritual circle, her pale silver eyes reflecting the flickering gaslight that cast dancing shadows across the cobblestones. The mist rolled in thick from the harbor, carrying with it the smell of salt and decay. She hated this, the weekly ritual to soothe the restless dead, performed under the scrutiny of hundreds who blamed her for everything wrong in their lives.

Her hands moved through the prescribed motions, tracing symbols in the air with powdered bone and crushed lavender. The crowd pressed closer, their whispers like the hiss of a thousand serpents.

"The spirits have been silent for weeks."

"My daughter cannot wake."

"The Soul-Scribe has failed us."

Lindsey's jaw tightened, but she kept her focus on the ritual. She was twenty-four years old and had been performing this duty since her mother's death six years ago. The gift, or curse as she privately called it, had been passed down through her bloodline for generations. To speak to the dead. To guide lost souls. To stand as a bridge between the living and whatever came after.

The crowd did not see it as a gift. They saw her luminous stare and they saw a scapegoat.

She finished the final gesture and waited for the familiar warmth that signaled the spirits' acceptance. Instead, the air grew colder. The gaslight flames guttered and went out, plunging the plaza into darkness broken only by the pale glow of her eyes.

A woman in the front row made a warding gesture, recoiling as Lindsey's gaze swept past her.

A spirit materialized in the center of the circle, but it was not peaceful. It writhed in agony, its translucent form twisting as if being torn apart from within. Black veins spread across its spectral body like cracks in porcelain. When it opened its mouth to scream, no sound emerged. It simply dissolved, leaving behind a faint residue of corruption that made Lindsey's stomach turn to ice.

The crowd erupted.

"She is making it worse!"

"The Scribe is cursed!"

"This is her doing!"

Lindsey stumbled backward as the first piece of rotten fruit hit her shoulder. Then another came flying. The crowd surged forward, their fear transforming into rage. A cabbage exploded against her temple, and she tasted blood.

She ran.

The narrow alley behind the plaza offered temporary refuge. Lindsey pressed her back against the damp stone wall, her pulse hammering. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, another aspect of her curse. She could see the shadows shifting, hear the crowd's angry voices echoing through the streets.

Then she heard something else. A wet, rattling cough.

A small boy lay crumpled against the opposite wall, his mother kneeling beside him. Even in the dim light, Lindsey could see the telltale signs of the Whispering Blight. The child's skin had taken on a waxy translucence, veins visible like black ink spreading beneath parchment. His chest barely moved. His eyes were open but unseeing, staring at nothing.

When Lindsey touched his forehead, it was neither warm nor cold. It was nothing, like touching the dead.

Her breath caught. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but her cursed eyes could see what others could not. The boy's soul was still tethered, flickering like a candle in a storm.

The Blight had been spreading through Veridia for three months. Those it touched fell into a deathless sleep, their souls trapped somewhere between life and death. No one had found a cure. The physicians were baffled. The priests offered prayers that went unanswered.

And the city blamed her.

The mother looked up, and Lindsey recognized her from the marketplace. A weaver named Marta, who had always been kind, who had never crossed the street to avoid her like so many others did.

"Please." Marta's voice cracked. "Please help him."

Lindsey moved closer, kneeling beside the boy. She reached out with her gift, trying to sense his spirit, but there was nothing. It was as if his soul had been carved away, leaving only an empty shell.

"I cannot," Lindsey whispered. "The Blight is beyond my power. I am sorry."

"No." Marta grabbed her arm, her fingers digging into Lindsey's flesh with desperate strength. "You can. I know you can. They whisper about your bloodline, about the forbidden rites." Her eyes were wild with grief. "The summoning. The Guardian. They say he was beautiful once, before he died. Before he became whatever he is now."

Lindsey's blood turned to ice. "That ritual was forbidden centuries ago. No Scribe has performed it since the last time the city was dying."

"Please." Marta's grip tightened. "He is my only child. He is seven years old. He likes to collect stones from the beach and he is afraid of thunderstorms and he is everything to me."

Lindsey looked at the boy's pale face. She thought of all the other children already lost to the Blight. She thought of the empty promises she had made to their families, the useless rituals she performed week after week while the plague spread.

She thought of the ancient texts hidden in the archives, the ones she had read by candlelight when she was supposed to be studying approved methods. The forbidden summoning rite that could call forth Veridia's spectral guardian, the warrior who had sacrificed his mortal life eight hundred years ago to become the city's eternal protector.

The elders said the ritual was too dangerous, that the bond it created between Scribe and Guardian was a violation of natural law, that the last time it was performed, it had nearly destroyed the city.

But the city was dying anyway.

"I will not watch this city die because I was too afraid to save it," Lindsey said, her voice steady despite the fear coursing through her.

Marta's face transformed with desperate hope. "When?"

"Tonight. Before midnight." Lindsey pulled a scrap of parchment from her pocket and scribbled an address. "Take him to Sister Margaret at the hospice. Tell her I sent you. If this works, he will wake by dawn."

"And if it does not?"

Lindsey met her eyes. "Then the Blight takes him forever."

Marta pressed something cold into Lindsey's hand. An obsidian knife, old and stained. "My grandmother was the last Scribe to perform the summoning. She left this, and instructions." Her eyes glittered with fever or desperation or madness. "The blade must taste Scribe blood before midnight, or the threshold closes."

Lindsey looked down at the knife, then at the dying boy. Her decision was made.

She would defy the elders, break the sacred laws, and summon a power that had not walked the earth in living memory.

She would save this city, or damn them all trying.