Page 1 of Bonepetal
PROLOGUE
FINN
Devil’s Night, One Year Ago
The first time I saw Salem Vale, she was draped in red velvet, barefoot in the chapel, learning to pray to the devil like he was her father.
She was six. I was eight, and even then, I knew.
Knew she wasn’t meant for the sacrifice they thought she was.
Knew she was meant for me.
The cult called it salvation.
They said she was “chosen.” The only blood pure enough to close the rift and feed the starving god they kept chained to bone and ash in the dark beneath the chapel. Said her veins carried something sacred. That her death would bring us glory. Power, and endless harvest.
They called themselvesThe Thorned Path.
We called them family.
But now, I call them dead men walking.
The Thorned Path wasn’t just a gathering, it was a cult. Hidden in plain sight on the outskirts of town, tucked away ona stretch of land owned by one of the founding families. A place where the fences weren’t made of wood or wire but of silence, fear, and bloodlines. We were raised there. Bound to it. Rarely allowed to leave, and if we did, it was never without an elder’s shadow at our back.
We were taught that the outside world was poison, that survival meant obedience, and that blood always came first. The boys learned to hunt, to track, to read the woods like scripture. The girls were drilled in the old ways—sewing, cooking, farming, mending wounds, birthing children. Every lesson was a thread meant to stitch us deeper into the Path, until there was no seam between who we were and what they made of us.
Off-grid. Self-sufficient. That’s what they called it. But really, it was a cage. One where the locks were disguised as family and faith. The local police didn’t touch us. The sheriff didn’t ask questions. Out of fear, maybe, or because they knew better than to wander onto land that smelled of smoke and secrets. To the rest of the town, we were the shadow in the tree line, the name whispered in bars and schoolyards, the reason people double-locked their doors on October nights.
We were the people you didn’t cross. The people no one claimed to know, but everyone feared.
The trees bend to the wind as I crawl up the ridge, boots sinking into rot. The ritual grounds burn with candlelight, bonfire roaring behind the altar, shadows dancing in robes, and there she is.
Salem.
Bound to a slab of carved obsidian.
Draped in lace, the color of surrender. Eyes wild. Tear-streaked. Betrayal etched across every trembling inch of her face.
“No—no, please don’t—please—!” Her voice breaks like a bone snapping under pressure, raw and shaking, ripped straight from the pit of her lungs.
“This isn’t right!” she cries, eyes wide and wet, lashes soaked as she thrashes against the altar. Her legs kick. Her back arches. The ropes dig deeper into her wrists, tearing lace and skin as she thrashes against them. “Mama—stop them! Don’t let them do this to me!”
The scream rips through the night, shrill and splintered—less like a girl begging, more like a soul being ripped from its body. Her eyes dart wildly through the flickering candlelight, finally locking on the one face she thought would save her.
Her mother.
She stands just beyond the altar, lips moving in time with the others, chanting in that low, humming cadence that makes the air itself feel thick with smoke. Her hair—once the comfort Salem buried her face in as a child—hangs loose and wild, catching the firelight like a crown of ash. Her eyes, though… they are fixed ahead, glazed and unblinking, not a flicker of recognition in them. Not for her daughter. Not for the blood.
“Mama!” Salem’s voice cracks, raw and desperate. “Please! Please look at me—help me!”
But her mother’s gaze never shifts. Her hands rise with the others, palms slicked in oil and blood, fingers weaving ancient signs in the air. Her voice threads into theirs, steady, fervent, a hymn to the dark.
She’s not a mother in that moment. She’s a vessel. A believer. A body lending itself to the ritual.
But Salem’s pleas don’t touch her.
The realization shatters something deeper than the ropes ever could. Salem isn’t just pleading for her life. She’s pleading for her mother’s love. For it to still be there, to mean something.
