Chapter Eight: A Bell Without Sound

The road north ran thin between frost-stiff fields, the soil pocked with early thaw. Snowmelt whispered in the ditches. Arlo trudged close to his father, breath puffing in the cold air.

Callan walked with one hand on the hilt of his Charter-etched knife, the other wrapped around the strap of their pack. They’d been moving steadily for hours, avoiding the main trade road. The quiet felt heavier here, as though the land was holding its breath.

They were two days’ walk from the next Charter garrison.

Too far.

It began with a smell.

Not the sharp scent of snow or smoke, but something sweet and wrong, like fruit left in the sun too long.

Callan stopped dead.

“Down,” he said sharply, pressing Arlo to the ditch.

Arlo crouched low, clutching Doggy. “What is it?”

“Dead,” Callan murmured.

They came into view over the rise — three shapes moving in slow, stiff lines. Two were human once. The third had been a deer, its antlers now draped in strips of skin. The wind moved through them without shifting the bodies; the magic holding them together was stronger than it should have been.

The deer’s head jerked unnaturally, as if catching a scent. Then it turned toward the ditch.

Callan swore under his breath. “They’ve felt us.”

He didn’t have bells. He didn’t even have a proper necromantic binding rod. Just his knife, his Charterwork, and an apprentice’s knowledge of the Dead.

Not enough.

The first corpse, a woman with half her jaw missing, began to run.

Callan pushed Arlo behind him. “Stay back.”

But Arlo’s mind was already racing. The bell tower. The spiral. The words from the strange projection in the square.

The Dead wanted movement. They chased life. But they also hated… light.

He looked at Doggy.

The little wooden hound’s body was etched with faint Charter Marks — not powerful ones, but meant for protection. And in Arlo’s hands, they sometimes seemed to glow a little brighter.

The first Dead thing leapt.

Callan caught it with a Charter burst, enough to knock it sideways, but the deer-thing bounded closer, antlers dipping to gore.

Arlo’s hands shook — but he lifted Doggy high and shouted, as loud as he could:

“Here, boy!”

It was ridiculous. But in that moment, something in the air changed.

The carved dog in his hands blazed with golden light, the runes along its flanks igniting. For a heartbeat, the ditch was bright as noon. The Dead recoiled, hissing in voices like tearing cloth.

“Charter flare,” Callan breathed. “But—how—?”

Doggy leapt from Arlo’s grip.

Not in a normal way — not with legs — but with a shimmer, as if it had always been alive in some forgotten place. The wooden hound landed before the deer-thing and barked, a deep, thrumming sound like the toll of a small bell.

The Dead froze.

Doggy circled them, barking again, each sound flaring with Charter-light. The corpses began to unravel, threads of their stolen magic burning away into ash and dust.

When the last faded, the hound trotted back to Arlo. By the time it reached his hands, it was just a little carved toy again, faintly warm.

Callan knelt, eyes fixed on it. “That… was no ordinary Charter charm.”

Arlo held Doggy close. “I know. I think… it knows things.”

Callan frowned toward the north. “Then we’ll need to know them too. And soon.”

They rose and kept walking.

Far behind them, in the thawing field, something watched from the tree line.

Not the Dead. Not quite alive.

And its eyes were shaped like spirals.