Bought by the Keres: Monsters' Bride Market

Daphne

If anyone had asked me two months ago what madness tasted like, I would have laughed at them. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I might have said. “Something that’s in your mind doesn’t have a taste.”

I of all people should have known better. Fate had taught me a brutal lesson, one I’d never forget. Madness tasted like tears, blood, and the sour bile that rose in my throat after every vision. It smelled like feces, piss, and the stale sweat that clung to my skin like a filthy pelt. It was the stench of my own body, of a vessel breaking down under a weight it was never meant to carry.

My body went limp as the last convulsion subsided, a final, violent shudder that left me boneless and aching. For a long moment, I didn’t move, listening to the frantic hammering of my own heart.

It was the same sound I remembered from when I was six and hiding from older boys in an empty water barrel. I’d pressed my fists against the wood as their footsteps grew closer, the thudding of my own pulse the only thing I could hear in the suffocating dark. The boys had run past the barrel. I wasn’t nearly as lucky now.

The vision was gone, but the echo of it, a spike of pure agony behind my eyes, remained. It felt like a splinter of bone driven through my skull, a festering shard of some other reality. My body screamed at me to stay down, to let the gray earth swallow me whole. It would be so easy.

“Too much...” I mumbled, the words a thick paste in my dry mouth. “The screaming...”

It hadn’t always been this way. Once, the gift had been a whisper, a secret ally. It had been the faint, shimmering thread that warned me away from the satyr with cruelty in his heart. It had been the gentle guide that tugged me toward the baker who would give a starving orphan a loaf of bread for a smile. The threads of fate were then my shield, a divine favor that kept me alive.

But the whispers had grown to a roar. The single threads had become a suffocating tapestry. I’d fled, trying to escape my own gift in the depths of the Korinos Wilds, where no one could find me. But there was no escaping destiny.

This last month had been a steady descent into disaster. It had all started with the one vision to end all visions. Not a glimpse of a possible future, but a brutal plunge into the heart of creation.

I had seen it. A colossal loom, an impossible artifact of bone and petrified wood, where three ancient figures wove the very fabric of existence. My mind had been stretched to the breaking point, forced to comprehend a pattern too beautiful and terrible for any mortal to witness. Voices had erupted from every thread, a deafening chorus of every moment that ever was and ever would be.

The experience had shattered me. It had broken the dam, and now the flood was constant. The visions were no longer gentle nudges. They were violent seizures, overwhelming torrents of information that left me drained, broken, and lying in my own filth.

But within that fracturing of the soul, a single, desperate hope had been forged. A name, a place, a ritual I’d glimpsed in the chaos.

Asphodelia. Charon. The trade.

The words were a mantra, a prayer whispered in the ruins of my sanity. It was the only path left that didn’t end in a shallow grave. I had to find him. I had to trade this curse for the one thing I craved more than life itself. Silence.

A different voice, my own, raw and guttural, fought back from the depths of my exhaustion. “Get up.” I didn’t move. The pain was a heavy blanket. “Get up. You didn’t come all this way to die in the dirt.” I’d crawled out of my own life, left the home I’d built with my own two hands. I’d walked for days, letting the poison of the Blighted Lands seep into my bones and the visions tear me apart. For what? To give up now, when the end was so close? No. Never.

With a pained groan, I summoned what little strength remained. My palms scraped against unforgiving rock as I pushed myself upright. I staggered to my feet, swaying.

Before me, the landscape unfolded in a portrait of decay. I had heard stories from travelers of how the Blighted Lands were expanding, but to see it was another thing entirely. The air carried a metallic tang that coated my tongue. Each step was an effort. The journey stretched before me, an endless expanse of black rock and skeletal trees.

Hours bled into one another, the unchanging sunless twilight making it impossible to mark the passage of time. There was only the struggle of putting one foot in front of the other. Ahead, through the gloom, the dark silhouettes of collapsed buildings began to resolve themselves. A village.

My path forced me through it. I passed a moss-covered stone marker, half-buried in the dead earth. Carved letters, barely legible, spelled out a name. Agrion.

A chill that had nothing to do with the air passed through me. This place was haunted by a violent history that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. As I stepped onto what must have once been a main path, the voices came.

“Barren witch! How dare you deceive us?”

The shriek was a phantom, sharp with an ancient rage that bled from the very stones. I flinched, my gaze darting around the empty ruins. The silence here felt different from the quiet of my isolated cottage. It was the profound emptiness of a graveyard.

I didn’t stop, my boots crunching on gray soil and something that might have been bone. I saw a blacksmith’s forge, the hammer lying rusted beside a silent anvil. The ruin felt personal, its decay the brutal, sudden work of violence, not the slow unraveling of time.

“My husband is dead because of you! The monsters tore him apart!”

A woman’s wail of grief echoed from the collapsed roof of a nearby cottage. It looked like the carcass of a deer I’d once found in a harsh winter, its ribs picked clean by scavengers, a monument to a slow and lonely death.

This was a place of profound sorrow, a wound in the world that had never healed. I hurried my pace, desperate to be free of its grasp.

And then I saw it. Tucked in the heart of the ruins, a faint, inner glow flickered. Hope lanced through me, as sharp and painful as a dagger.

I nearly fell with relief when I reached the first flower. And beyond it, another, and another, forming a path leading out of the village. The sight of it brought a memory of the great vision rushing back to me. Not the screaming chaos, but a single, clear image that had been buried beneath it. A woman with hair like spun gold, kneeling beside a great, dark beast that was more shadow than wolf.

They had been right here, in this very spot, and this impossible life had bloomed from her touch. It had been a bizarre, incomprehensible fragment then. Now, seeing the flowers with my own eyes, I knew it had been real.

I dropped to my knees, the sweet scent of the asphodels cutting through the rot like salvation. The ghostly voices of Agrion faded. I took a breath that didn’t feel like poison. The nausea began to recede, the throbbing in my head easing.

My trembling fingers plucked the ethereal blooms. I wove them into a messy circlet, tucking more into my tunic before placing the fragile crown on my head. “Thank you,” I whispered to a single flower I held in my hand. “Thank you for being real.”

The flowers gave me a weak but steady purpose. I rose and began to walk, following their glowing trail. The path of asphodels created a bubble of life around me. The journey was still long, but it was no longer impossible.

As I kept going, the landscape began to change. The ground became harder, more solid stone. The air grew still, and the suffocating mist I had seen in my vision began to creep in. The silence deepened, becoming profound and unnatural.

Finally, the path of flowers ended at the edge of a barren shore. The lake of the dead stretched before me, a perfect sheet of obsidian glass. I stood and waited, a lone, small figure against the silent emptiness.

After what seemed like forever, a dark shape detached from the fog. A black barge glided across the surface of the water without a single ripple.

Poled by a towering silhouette, the vessel came to a silent stop at the shoreline. The figure was tall, impossibly so, wrapped in shadows that seemed to cling to him like a cloak. I couldn’t see a face, but I could feel his presence, almost as ancient as the Shift itself. When he spoke, his words echoed in my bones, not my ears.

“You were looking for me.”

***

When I’d been a child, orphaned on the streets of Dodona, visions had come to me surrounded by a thick, heavy fog. The gloom of the lake felt just like that. It seemed to have physical substance, a cool, damp weight that pressed against my skin and muffled the world.

As the barge glided through the impenetrable gray, I could almost pretend this was a familiar dream.

“Is it... supposed to feel like that?” I murmured, the words a faint tremor in the oppressive quiet. “Like I could breathe it in?”

The shrouded figure at the fore of the barge didn’t turn. His pole dipped into the motionless surface of the lake. “It is the breath of the Acheron,” Charon rumbled. “It is not for you to breathe.”

His words did little to comfort me. They only told me what I already knew, that I was a speck of dust in a land of ancient, unknowable forces. But if that was the case—if in this place, even lakes breathed—then maybe my chance of finding my freedom was greater than I’d hoped.

This lake, the Acheron as Charon had called it, was the final barrier between me and my sanity.

The soundless journey felt like an eternity suspended in gray, a passage to the edge of the world. Then, through the darkness, faint lights began to appear. Bronze braziers marked the end of a long pier that stretched out from a dark island. Their flames burned without a flicker, an unnatural stillness that sent a chill down my spine.

As we approached, the architecture of Asphodelia began to take shape. The sight was so alien it stole the air from my lungs. Pristine white marble rose in elegant columns, so clean and flawless they seemed to reject the very idea of dirt. Structures of dark basalt drank in the muted light, a perfect blackness that felt like a void.

“It doesn’t look real,” I whispered, overwhelmed. “What is this place?”

“It was not built by mortal hands,” Charon replied, his voice devoid of any emotion. “It is the gift of the Shift, granted by Thanatos’s blessing.”

His words landed like a judgment, a simple statement of fact that held the weight of a condemnation. A blessing. I looked down at my own filthy, broken body, the grime under my nails, the stench of sweat and fear that clung to me. I didn’t feel blessed, or protected by the gods any longer. But maybe I could fix that here.

The barge slid to a stop against the stone of the docks with an unnerving silence. Charon secured the vessel with practiced motions and gestured for me to disembark. I followed him onto the walkway. The heavy silence pressed in, broken only by the frantic, erratic thud of my own heart. My world narrowed to that single, dark path and the flawless circle waiting at its very end. The destination of my desperate pilgrimage. The altar.

“Most who make this journey show some hesitation,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me, but I felt his gaze on me all the same. “They carry the scent of the living world, a fear of what they are leaving behind.”

“Fear is a luxury.” I hugged my arms to my chest, and was proud when my voice came out steady. “I’m running toward the only thing I have left to hope for.”

“Silence,” he said, his words as still as the lake that had welcomed us.

It wasn’t a question. I didn’t need my gift to know that. It was a statement of fact, of what I had come here begging for.

“Yes.” I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, the words a raw, desperate prayer. “It’s the only thing I want.”

Charon came to a stop before the obsidian circle. “The trade is absolute,” he warned me. “The lake does not distinguish between the parts of a gift you cherish and the parts you despise. It only knows the source. Your gift is a thread woven into your very being. To remove the noise is to offer the entire thread to the lake. It will take it all.”

I thought of the convulsions, the screaming chorus of a thousand thousand futures tearing my mind apart. I thought of the end that awaited me if I turned back. I looked at the altar, its promise of peace more comforting than any warm bed.

“I’m not reconsidering,” I replied, moving to the altar and lying down upon the obsidian.

I knew this was it. The end of my world, and the hope of a new one.

Charon produced four worn, ancient coins and nodded. “Very well.”

He laid the first coin on my right eyelid, and the unforgiving weight of the metal was a shock. He set the second on my left. My vision was gone, replaced by absolute darkness. The third coin, he pressed upon my lips, and the metallic taste on my tongue became the taste of surrender.

The final coin felt the heaviest of all. He settled it over my heart, and I almost flinched against the feel of oppressive metal. I was a corpse being prepared for burial, offering my toll to the ferryman.

But I couldn’t afford to show fear, not now, not ever. Instead, I lay perfectly still, every muscle tensed. Come on. Come. Please, end this.

His hands landed on my temples. It was the touch of ancient power, and with it came an invasive energy. It sank into my mind, a sharp chill that carried the shock of a winter drowning.

The gift recoiled from its presence, a thousand phantom threads writhing in my skull. The intrusion was a fresh agony, like salt being rubbed into the raw wounds the visions had carved into my mind.

Charon’s grip on me remained, the energy a steady, searching pressure. Then, it stopped. A terrifying silence descended between us. The taste of terror overwhelmed that of the metal.

He’s found something wrong. He knows I’m too broken. My breath hitched, a desperate, unspoken plea forming in the darkness behind my eyes. This is my only chance, and it’s slipping away.

“Are you certain?” he finally asked, his voice so quiet it was barely audible.

Certain? I was a drowning woman being asked if she was certain she wanted the shore. Hot tears welled in my eyes, trapped by the coins.

“Yes,” I managed to mumble, a plea distorted by the metal. “More than anything. Please.”

The energy surged with a violence that stole my breath. It was the sensation of being torn in two from the inside out, a brutal sundering I could barely even process. For a breathless, terrible moment, the pain was my only reality.

Was I going to die this way? Under the hands of the man I'd hoped would be my savior? Every fiber of my being screamed in protest at the wrongness, but there was nothing I could do.

And then, a heartbeat later, the pain vanished. It dissipated into nothing, consumed by the ritual that had caused it. In its wake, it left no screaming, no threads, only a profound emptiness that should have been a different kind of horror.

But for once, I wasn't alone in my pain. A low hum rose, not from my ears, but from my bones. It was a deep and resonant frequency that started in my marrow and spread outward. The coins on my skin grew warm, vibrating against my eyelids, my lips, and my chest.

That single, steady note built upon itself. It layered and deepened, creating a perfect, impossible chord that was both a sound and a feeling. It became music, a song of unburdened harmony that painted a new world inside the gray void.

Soft, black feathers fluttered down, each one a caress that gently unmade the wounds inside my mind. They brushed against my face, as light as a sigh. Beautiful.

As more feathers fell, they became wings, wrapping around me in a warm embrace. This was it, my salvation. The cure I had crawled through hell to find had finally come. I lay there, protected by soft, dark wings, and finally, I felt at peace.

The warmth lingered even after Charon removed the coins one by one. First from my heart, then my lips. When he lifted the coins from my eyes, I blinked, and the world rushed back in.

Everything was sharp, clear, and blessedly silent. The angry red glow of the braziers, the swirling haze, the hard line of the distant city. It was all just… there. There were no shimmering threads superimposed over it, no phantom whispers from the stones. There was only what I could see.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, the air clean and sweet without the acrid stench of prophecy. It’s gone. The thought felt like a miracle unfolding inside me. The noise is gone. I’m free.

I pushed myself up slowly, weakly, into a sitting position on the altar. The stone beneath me no longer felt like a tomb, but like the shore of a new life. The tranquility was so absolute, it felt like the whole world was holding its breath with me.

That fragile silence was torn apart by a furious shout from the far end of the dock. “I need to see him, Aion! Now!”

I flinched, my head snapping toward the sound. Two figures appeared from the mist, their forms standing out against the gloom. The first was a glowing construct of bronze, his movements calm and measured as he blocked the other’s path. The second figure moved with the predatory grace of a stalking panther. With his magnificent black wings pulled tight against his back, he radiated a palpable, unrestrained fury.

My gaze locked onto him. The recognition was a physical jolt, a sudden, inexplicable connection. The soothing vibration I’d just felt in my bones, the healing music that had filled the quiet, the warm comfort from the soft, black feathers… It all slammed into me at once.

A wave of impossible understanding washed over me. The knowledge bloomed not from logic, not even from the gift I’d given up. It was an unshakable certainty rooted in my very soul. In the beautiful quiet of my new mind, a single word crystallized. You.

Chapter I. The Taste of Madness

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