Light in the Black

Renna was halfway down the cobbled road from Brina’s cramped hut when a swell of shouting reached her, filling the narrow street. Beyond the crooked alleys, the square outside the Grand Sanctum seethed with bodies. The Sanctum’s white spires burned under the sinking sun, the golden sigil of the Highest gleaming on each one, a reminder, they claimed, of his triumph over the demons that once ruled.

Crowds after a sermon were common, but this felt different. The dying light slid over the helms of the guard, their pikes held like a wall. Near the platform, a wagon stood waiting under a white banner marked with a red sigil. Dried blood crusted its wheels. Renna’s throat went dry. A death cart. It’s an execution.

Pulled by dread and a deeper fear she dared not name, Renna eased into the edge of the crowd. Beside the raised wooden platform loomed Brock, the executioner. He was massive. Gold-trimmed white robes swirled at his sides, a scarlet band tight across his brow. In his palms he held out a sword longer than a man, its dark scabbard glinting like polished marble.

Not far from him knelt Percy, the healer’s apprentice. He looked the part too well; a young man dabbling in magic. Townsfolk believed such men were the most likely to consort with witchcraft. His hands were fixed behind him, forcing a strained hunch. His face was blank, as if he had not yet woken into this nightmare. She had seen him not long ago, kneeling in the dirt, wrapping a stray cat’s leg, murmuring soothing words as if the frightened creature were a child. Years before, he had spoken the same to her as he’d bound her scraped knee in the orchard. They had been children then.

Someone whispered near her ear that he had been given nightshade, mercy for the mind. She hoped it was true.

A man in black robes stepped onto the platform. Witchunter Crowe. He pulled a dark veil over Percy’s head. Renna’s chest ached with a fluttering of trapped birds. Part of her longed to slip into the alley, to disappear into the shadows she so often called refuge. But she could not. She had to watch.

Crowe’s voice rang across the yard.

“At last, the cindral who has plagued us is caught.”

He held a bundle high, twigs bound with red thread, their tips crusted in black residue.

“This hex charm was taken from his home, still reeking of the taint.”

The crowd murmured.

“This is the filth the demons left behind when they shattered themselves to escape the Highest’s wrath. This is the poison that festers in the Tainted Lands.” In Sable, possession of such a charm was as damning as a confession. For weeks, the town had endured wilted crops and stillborn calves, each misfortune a sign of the slow, creeping stain of chaos-born magic.

“And this witch wields it!” He thrust the bundle at Percy. “A cindral, embracing chaos, the essence of demons!”

He pivoted toward Brock. “Do the work the law demands.”

Renna’s eyes swept the mass of onlookers, searching for Percy’s family: his mother with the gray braid, his two sisters who never left her side. They were not there. She knew why; at executions, tempers ran hot, and families of the condemned could expect spitting, jeers, even blows. Still, it did not seem right. No one who cared for him was there to watch the end.

Renna wished for the impossible: the baron’s voice booming from a balcony, granting sudden reprieve and changing the sentence to banishment. But this was no comforting tale told by a cozy hearth.

Brock stepped forward and drew the great blade. It came free with a hiss, the scabbard clattering to the planks. Silence pressed down like a hand, broken only by Percy’s gagged wailing, prayer or plea.

Brast, the candlemaker, lifted his son high onto his shoulders for a better view. The boy clapped at the sight of the great blade.

Near the pike line, old Lysa from the weaving hall clutched her shawl, whispering blessings to the Highest.

Healer Glen stood to the side, leaning on his staff. His face was like stone, showing no horror or pity, just the cold composure of one long resigned to grim inevitabilities.

Brock planted his feet wide and raised the blade, light flickering along its spine.

Renna shut her eyes.

The sound came anyway. Schlunk.

“Glory to the Highest!” someone roared.

Renna didn’t open her eyes until she’d pushed through the crowd, and the shouts had faded behind her.

She ran home, slammed the door, and curled up on her bed without removing her cloak.

She thought of Percy and his mother, his sisters—anyone who loved him—and she cried. The tears came for him, yes, but also for another thought that twisted and stabbed at her like a knife.

Her hand closed around the hex charm hidden in her pocket, thumb brushing the residue clinging to its edge. It was dry beneath her skin, yet she remembered it wet and warm when she had smeared it with blood from the carcass of a stag whose eyes had turned black in the Tainted Lands. Now that same crust stained the bundle that Witchunter Crowe held aloft.

It worked. She was safe for now.

She had worked that blood into the twigs herself, crafting not a weapon but a lens. For weeks she had peered through it, chasing flickers of a future she could never quite grasp. Through it Renna had watched a black sun rise from the Tainted Lands and swallow the red. Heat had pressed against her skin, and she’d heard people scream in the dark. The wind had torn through her hair and stung her eyes as it scattered dying embers. Renna had felt the world breathe its last beneath a sky of fire and shadow.

Time and again she had watched, straining for the faintest light, for a single spark.

But it always ended in black.