Page 95 of Run Little Omega

Understanding crashes through me like physical impact. "These are graves."

The Survivor's eyes—now the color of oxidized blood—fix on mine. "Yes. Seven Hunt cycles of omegas deemed unworthy of continued breeding."

My legs tremble as I descend toward the first row of mounds. Each step feels like wading through nightmare, my body simultaneously desperate to flee and morbidly compelled forward.

The nearest graves are from the most recent Hunt, earth still dark and unsettled. Small markers of twisted wood stand at each head, bearing not names but numbers and court insignias carved into their surface.

"They didn't even record who they were," I whisper, rage crystallizing beneath horror.

"They were never people to the courts," the Survivor replies, voice flattened. "Only vessels."

I kneel beside one grave, noticing strange blue-black flowers emerging from the freshly turned soil. Their petals are translucent, revealing veins that pulse with faint luminescence, almost like a heartbeat. Unconsciously, I reach toward one.

"Don't touch those!" The Survivor's warning cuts sharp and urgent. "Death blooms. They grow only where fae blood has saturated tainted ground."

I withdraw instantly. "Fae blood? But these are omega graves."

"Look closer." She gestures at the mounds.

I force myself to study their dimensions. They're wrongly proportioned—too wide in the middle, too narrow at the ends, forming unnatural shapes that suddenly make horrific sense.

"They bury them still swollen with child," I whisper, bile rising.

"The pregnant ones, yes." The Survivor's voice holds calculated detachment, as if distancing herself from horrors witnessed too many times. "The courts consider failed omegas waste, though not entirely without use."

"But..." My mind strains against the implication. "If they were pregnant, what happens to the children?"

"Fae young develop rapidly after claiming. They survive for days, sometimes weeks, without the mother." Her words fall like execution blows. "Still growing in her cooling womb."

Understanding strikes with such force that I double over, retching into the poisoned soil. The death blooms. The pulsing light in their veins. The mounds bulging in the middle.

"They bury them alive," I choke out. "The infants. They bury them alive."

The Survivor neither confirms nor denies, but her silence answers completely. I struggle upright, rage and revulsion surging through me, ice spreading from my fingertips to crystallize the ground beneath.

"Why?" I manage through constricted throat. "Why not kill the infants cleanly if they're unwanted?"

"Because they retain value." The Survivor leads me toward a narrow stream cutting through the valley's center, its waters murky and faintly luminescent in the waning light. "Their prolonged death releases magical components the courts harvest."

I stare at the contaminated water, its surface slick with magical residue that shifts with unnatural movement. "What do you mean, 'harvest'?"

"This water carries magic released by dying fae young to collection points downstream. The courts use these components in various rituals, potions, enchantments. Particularly potent ingredients unattainable any other way."

Horror builds like physical pressure behind my ribs. "Where does this stream flow?"

"It joins the Thornwick River approximately five miles south." Her words fall like a final condemnation.

The realization staggers me. "The wasting sickness... it comes from this? From drinking water contaminated by..." The truth is too monstrous to articulate.

"Magic released by dying fae infants poisons humans with latent sensitivity." The Survivor's voice softens slightly. "Your mother. Your friend Willow. Anyone with even trace fae heritage or magical potential sickens first."

My mother's face materializes in memory—her slow, agonizing decline when I was twelve, her body consuming itself from within. And Willow, my gentle friend who even now lies in her Thornwick bed, skin turning translucent, life ebbing daily.

All from water tainted by murdered fae children—children whose deaths were authorized by the same man who has claimed me repeatedly, whose seed might even now be taking root inside me.

I examine my hands, ice forming between my fingers. The silver-blue markings no longer appear beautiful but monstrous—binding me to centuries of calculated atrocity, to a man who signed death warrants for countless infants without hesitation.

"Why show me this now?" My voice sounds foreign, hollow.

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