The Novice and the Missing Amulet
Chapter 9 · free to read
The first hut had no roof and no floor and had been full of ferns since 2011. It took them forty minutes to reach and eleven seconds to eliminate.
Eleven years old. One sandal on, one off, up a mountain in the rain, and she had walked out of that hut on her own two feet, because there was only one set of small prints and they went out through the door.
He had come up the same track an hour ahead of them, and he had been in the trees the whole time they searched, and he was, they both realised later, entirely unarmed.
Downhill was the temple, the road, and safety. She had gone uphill, which made no sense at all until eight days later, when it made all of it.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.