Jerker found his sleep disturbed by frightful dreams, which he kept to himself.
In the dream, he opened his eyes—or maybe they were already open—and he found himself standing in this huge, windowless room that feels like the inside of a kiln somebody forgot to turn off centuries ago. The walls were black obsidian, the kind that drinks light instead of reflecting it, so everything looks dim and greasy, like he was seeing the world through a film of filthy oil.
There was a potter there, hunched over his wheel like he’d been at it since the world was young. His face… By the Anointed One! His face was a mess, a patchwork of different human parts stitched together wrong—here an eye that’s too big, there a mouth that didn’t quite line up— all of it half-hidden behind this thin, greenish haze that drifted off him like smoke from bad meat. He was working seven clay serpents, fat and twisting, their scales catching the low light in these sick rainbow sheens, like oil on a puddle after a rain. He was throttling them one by one, thick fingers squeezing, but those fingers… they were fingerless at the tips, just blunt knuckles that made a dull, meaty thump every time they hit the iron-bound ledger beside him.
He was kneading something else too—a big lump of ground marrow mixed with red mud, the kind of red that looks wet and wrong. Every time those knuckles came down, the sound rolled through the room like distant thunder that was out of tune with the rest of the world.
Jerked smelled it all: wet clay, old blood, something metallic that makes his back teeth ache.
Then the sixth serpent slipped his grip.
It didn’t lunge or hiss. It just slid free, thick body pulsing, giving off that sharp stink of ozone like right after lightning strikes, mixed with hot metal. It coiled around his ankles—not striking, not even squeezing hard, just… heavy. Impossibly heavy, like it was made of lead instead of clay. He felt the drag immediately, pulling him backward, down toward this bottomless siphon in the floor that’s overflowing with viscous black stuff, the kind that doesn’t splash, just rolls and clings.
His feet slide an inch. Then another. The weight was in his bones by then.
Behind him, the potter didn’t even look up. He just kept working the clay, those blunt knuckles tapping their awful rhythm. His voice came out low, almost casual, the way a man might talk about the weather when he’s really talking about something else entirely.
“Names are worn and put away as the fashions change,” he muttered, “but a black hand print on the soul… that doesn’t wash off in the river.”
The serpent tightened just a fraction. The black below Jerker kept rising, patient, waiting.
The next morning, Jerker knelt in the quiet of the morning, the thin winter snow outside the temple of St. Orlan reflecting a cold, honest light. In the silence, his mind drifted back to the kiln-like room of his dreams—the patchwork potter and the sixth serpent that had slipped his grip to coil around his ankles like leaden guilt. He thought of the potter’s low, casual voice warning that the black hand print on the soul would not simply wash away in the river.
Sleep had become a stranger to him. When it came at all, it brought heat and smoke and the dry rasp of scales against stone. More often he lay awake until dawn, staring into darkness, counting the slow tolling of distant bells. He had taken to rising before Elaria stirred, careful in his movements, careful in his breathing. When she asked, he answered lightly, too lightly, and turned the talk aside. The shadows beneath his eyes deepened; his temper shortened; small silences stretched long between them. Elaria watched him with growing worry, sensing the fracture he refused to name.
His prayer was wordless, a heavy weight for the life of Bremlai he had taken in a moment of unrestrained rage. Seeking the narrow path Lah once spoke of, Jerker gathered his gear, determined to travel to the retreat and confess the shadows that still haunted his spirit—before they hollowed him out entirely.