Chapter 6: The Fae Pact

Chapter 6: The Fae Pact

The thorny creature lunged, a blur of bark and malice. Its claws, sharp as obsidian shards, aimed for Marcus’s throat. He screamed, a pathetic, strangled sound, stumbling backward over a pile of overflowing trash bags. There was no time to think. Instinct, cold and sharp, took over Lyra.

She threw herself in front of Marcus, her hands coming up in a defensive gesture. She expected the impact, the tearing of flesh she no longer truly possessed. Instead, the creature shrieked as its claws made contact with her. A brilliant, ethereal blue light flared from her palms, the same shimmering energy that sometimes wreathed her hands. It was solid. The Fae was thrown back as if it had run into a wall of glass, landing in a heap of tangled limbs and sputtering rage.

Kael's words echoed in her mind. A wound, a tear in the fabric. She wasn't just a beacon; she was a gateway, and some small measure of the power that defined her unnatural state was hers to command.

“What the hell?” Marcus stammered from the ground, staring at her glowing hands.

“Get up!” Lyra yelled, the strange power humming in her bones. “Run!”

The other Fae creatures, their initial caution overcome by a collective, predatory hunger, swarmed into the alley. Their chittering giggles were gone, replaced by a high-pitched, clicking snarl. They scuttled over the walls and piles of garbage, dozens of glowing red eyes fixed on the necrotic feast that was Lyra.

She grabbed Marcus’s arm, hauling him to his feet. “Move!”

They burst out of the alley and onto the main thoroughfare of Old Town. A cold, miserable drizzle had begun to fall, slicking the cobblestones and making the distorted neon glow of the distant city center bleed across the wet ground. The street was deserted, the supernatural patrons of The Gilded Pixie having had the good sense to vanish.

Behind them, the Fae swarm poured from the alley, their clicking claws a horrifying percussion against the ancient stones. They were unnaturally fast, their wiry forms a tide of skittering death.

“This way!” Marcus yelled, his fear finally giving way to a desperate survival instinct. He knew these streets. He pulled her down a narrow, winding lane, the rain plastering his thin hair to his scalp.

They ran, a ghost and a broken man, through the forgotten heart of Port Blossom. The Fae were relentless, flowing over obstacles like a river of thorns. One leaped from a low-hanging roof, landing directly in their path. Lyra didn't hesitate. She shoved Marcus aside and thrust her hand forward. The blue, spectral energy erupted again, not as a shield, but as a concussive blast. The creature was flung into a brick wall with enough force to shatter its bark-like shell, dissolving into a shower of splinters and foul-smelling dust.

The display gave the others a moment's pause. It was all the time they needed. Marcus yanked open a heavy, iron-wrought gate, pulling Lyra into a small, enclosed courtyard behind what looked like an abandoned apothecary. He slammed the gate shut, the rusty bolt groaning as he slid it into place.

For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing—his real, hers a phantom echo—and the drumming of the rain. Then, the clicking started again, right outside the gate. Thorny claws began to probe the gaps in the ironwork. The creatures weren't giving up. They were just waiting.

They were trapped.

“They were drawn to you,” Marcus gasped, his back sliding down the wet brick wall until he was huddled on the ground. “Just like he said they would be.”

“He? Who is he?” Lyra demanded, her own adrenaline beginning to fade, replaced by a cold dread. She stared at the gate, where small, red eyes were beginning to peer through.

Marcus buried his face in his hands, his body wracked with tremors. “The Ferryman… the Patron… the thing we made the deal with.” His voice was muffled, broken. “It wasn't just Jenna and me, Lyra. It was all three of us.”

Lyra felt the ground shift beneath her feet. “What are you talking about? I never made a deal with any… Fae.”

“You don't remember, do you?” He looked up, his eyes hollow with a twenty-year-old guilt. “He said you wouldn’t. That was part of the price.”

He began to speak, the words tumbling out in a frantic, desperate confession as the creatures outside began to rattle the gate. He painted a picture of their youth that she had forgotten, a forgotten chapter written in desperation. Port Blossom was dying. Their parents were losing their jobs, their friends were moving away, and their own futures looked as grey and bleak as a winter sea. They were three angry, ambitious kids trapped in a sinking town.

“Jenna found the book,” he choked out. “In the old library archives. An old, leather-bound thing. It described a ritual. A way to bargain with one of the Old Ones, a powerful Fae entity tied to the land itself. To ask for a boon.”

Lyra stared at him, trying to find a flicker of memory, a hint of this impossible story in the recesses of her mind. There was nothing. Just a blank, black wall where this memory should be.

“We did it,” Marcus whispered, the rain dripping from his chin. “All three of us. On the solstice, down at Blackwood Cove. We drew the circle, we spoke the words. And he came.” He described a being not of thorns and bark, but of shadow and moonlight, a creature whose voice was the rustling of leaves and the cracking of stone. It promised them everything they wanted. It would awaken the town’s ley lines. It would bring prosperity, wealth, power. It would give them a future.

“And the price?” Lyra asked, her voice a dead, flat whisper.

“A pact is a pact,” Marcus quoted Jenna, his voice trembling. “The price was to be named later. One significant sacrifice, to be paid upon demand, to cement the bargain with blood and soul. We were kids! We were stupid! We thought it meant money, or an artifact, or… I don't know what we thought! We never thought it would be a person.”

The pieces fell into place with the force of a physical blow. Her death wasn’t just a murder; it was the collection of a debt. A debt she had helped incur.

“He wiped your memory of the ritual,” Marcus continued, his words barely audible over the increasingly violent rattling of the gate. “He said the sacrifice had to be… untainted. Unaware. So its soul would be a purer anchor for the magic. We didn’t know what that meant until twenty years later, when he came to collect. And Jenna… she had already decided who would pay.”

The argument on the pier. Marcus hadn't just been trying to save a friend. He was trying to stop the horrifying conclusion of a magical contract he’d co-signed.

“She chose me,” Lyra said, the words tasting like poison.

Marcus nodded, tears mixing with the rain on his face. “She said it had to be you. Your family has been in Port Blossom for generations. Your spirit… it was always so bright, so defiant. The Fae requires it, she said. You were the strongest ‘key’ we had. The perfect price to unlock the town.”

The ultimate betrayal. It wasn't just that her best friend had killed her. It was that she had used their shared history, their shared dreams, and even Lyra’s own life force as currency to build her glittering new world. Lyra Corvus hadn't just been murdered. She had been liquidated.

The iron gate groaned, a rusty hinge screaming in protest as a dozen wiry creatures threw their weight against it. It wouldn't hold for much longer. Lyra was trapped, a monstrous truth behind her and a swarm of hungry monsters before her, the forgotten sins of her past having finally, literally, come to collect.