Page 76 of Tethered In Blood

Why?

Why me?

Oberon’s deep voice cut through the rising panic. “Dilthen Doe.” I tore my eyes away from the corpse and found his. That silver gaze was steady and waiting.

I sucked in a sharp breath, ignoring the way my hands trembled as I gripped my dagger and ran. My boots tore across the loosened soil as I bolted, dagger clenched in my fist so hard my knuckles ached. The corpses pulled themselves free. Dirt and rotted flesh sloughed off their bones as they staggered to their feet.

Oberon stayed close behind me. His sword swung through the air as he cut through the first one that lunged at me. The sickening sound of metal splitting flesh and bone rang in my ears, but the damn thing didn’t falter. It just shuddered, gurgled, and kept going.

“Move!” Oberon barked.

I twisted away just as the corpse’s rotted fingers swiped for my throat. I felt the rush of air as it missed, the icy grasp of decay shy of my pulse.

More of them had risen, one after another, clawing out of the shattered soil, their sunken faces twisted in expressions of torment and hunger. The woman—the tallest of them—staggered forward. That guttural, wet shriek tore from her throat once more. Her arms twitched at her sides, fingers flexing, curling, and reaching.

Still focused on me.

Panic sank into me.Think. Move.“The sigils!” I gasped, skidding to a stop just outside the bodies. “They’re what’s keeping them alive!”

Oberon’s gaze snapped to the markings that glowed beneath the corpses’ feet, their symbols pulsating with a sickly, unnatural light. “Then we break them,” he gritted. He moved again, blade flashing, carving a path through the undead.

Dagger in hand, I dropped to my knees and dug into the first sigil I could reach. The moment the metal tore through the carved lines, the air shifted. The shrieking stopped. The corpses froze. Then they screamed. A death wail—a guttural, unreal sound that sent my skull splitting open with pain.

I clamped my hands over my ears, gritting my teeth against the burn in my skull, and reached for the next sigil. Then the next. Each time I carved through one, another corpse collapsed into a pile of rot and dust.

Oberon was a whirlwind of steel beside me, slicing any that got too close. But even he was wavering. His movements were slower, and his expression was tight with strain. The magic fought back. The air buzzed, vibrated, and pressed in with a physical weight as it tried to suffocate us.

One more.

Just one more.

My blade slammed into the final sigil. The surrounding sound shattered as a wave of dark energy erupted from the broken circle, rippling outward in a shockwave. Every corpse convulsed, their skeletal jaws gaping in silent agony as they crumbled to dust. The moment the last body fell apart, the air went still.

The weight had left. The magic had died. My ragged breathing was the only sound left. Oberon stood next to me with his sword lowered, staring at the wreckage around us.

I sucked in a shaky breath and lifted my gaze to where the tall woman had stood. The only thing left of her was a tattered scrap of fabric, half-buried in the broken soil. I swallowed. My pulse refused to slow. “Necromancy,” I rasped in a whisper.

Oberon ran a bloodied hand through his hair. “And not just any necromancy,” he said. “This was a warning.”

OBERONSATATtherickety wooden table in my room, flipping through the pages of my notes with an intensity that made my skin prickle. His jaw was tight, his fingers tense where they gripped the parchment, but he said nothing. Not yet. He did that thing again, where he stared too long and let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable.

I paced near the window, arms crossed tight against my chest. My mind spun like a wheel caught in the mud. My body still felt wrung out, with muscles that ached from the fight, but exhaustion wasn’t enough to prevent the unease that curled deep in my gut.

A warning. That’s what he’d said. That necromantic ritual—those things in the field—weren’t random. They weren’t a forgotten relic of dark magic buried beneath the crops.

Someone put them there. Someone wanted us to find them.

But why?

I stopped pacing long enough to rub at my temples, trying to drown out the echoes of that horrible shrieking still lodged in my skull. The smell of decay clung to my clothes, no matter how many times I had scrubbed my skin raw in the basin.

Oberon sighed and shut my journal with a decisive snap. “It’s deliberate,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

He gestured toward the notes, tapping a gloved finger over the sketched sigils I had copied earlier. “This kind of necromancy isn’t just for show. It’s layered, complex, and meant to sustain itself until something breaks the cycle. We saw that firsthand.” His silver eyes flicked up, locking onto mine. “But it wasn’t meant to last forever. It was decaying before we even touched it.”

The unpleasant thought slithered through me. “You’re saying… it was set to fail?”

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