Chapter 1: The Dust of Obsidian Creek

Chapter 1: The Dust of Obsidian Creek

The heat of Obsidian Creek was a physical thing. It wasn't just in the air; it was in the shimmering asphalt of the two-lane highway, in the baked-earth smell of the dust, and in the way it hammered down on the roof of Kael’s beat-up Ford Falcon, making the vinyl seats sweat against his back. He hated this heat. It was the heat of memory, of failure, of a past he’d spent the last ten years trying to outrun.

His goal was simple, a mantra he’d repeated for the entire six-hour drive: get in, sign the papers, get out. Let the state declare his old man legally dead, sell the rusted-out trailer for scrap, and use the pittance to put another thousand miles between him and this sun-scorched purgatory. Freedom. That was the prize.

Obsidian Creek hadn't changed. It was still a handful of single-story buildings clinging to the highway like barnacles, all peeling paint and sun-faded signs. The gas station, the diner, the one sad-looking bar. It was a town perpetually on the verge of turning into a ghost town, held together by stubbornness and a lack of better options.

He bypassed them all, heading straight for the Sheriff's office. The building was the town’s newest, a squat, beige block of concrete that already looked tired. Inside, the air conditioning was a frigid shock.

Behind the counter sat a face he hadn’t expected to see. Elara Vasquez. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe, practical ponytail, and the khaki deputy's uniform looked sharper on her than it had any right to. The easy smile she’d had in high school was gone, replaced by a weary professionalism that sat in the lines around her eyes.

"Kael," she said, her voice flat with a surprise she couldn't quite hide. "Figured they'd call you eventually."

"Deputy Vasquez," Kael replied, leaning an elbow on the high counter. "Climbing the ladder, I see. Finally get to boss people around legally."

A flicker of the old Elara surfaced in a brief smile before it vanished. "Some things don't change. You're still an ass." She pushed a manila folder across the counter. "Sheriff's out on a call. These are the preliminary files. He's been gone three weeks, Kael. No credit card activity, no phone calls. His truck is still at the trailer."

"He's done it before. Gone walkabout to chase moonbeams and talk to coyotes." Kael’s voice was laced with a familiar, bitter cynicism. His father, the town crackpot, communing with the desert spirits. The memory made his teeth ache.

"Not like this," Elara said, her gaze steady. "We have to treat it as a missing persons case. For you, it's mostly paperwork. We need you to go through his things, see if there's anything that points to where he went. And you’ll need to sign the declaration of abandonment for the property." She slid a set of keys across the counter. "That's the spare for the trailer."

Kael pocketed the keys. "Fine. Point me at the dotted line."

"Go to the trailer first," she insisted, her expression hardening slightly. "Do your part. Then we can talk papers."

There it was. The obstacle. Never simple, not in this town. He gave a curt nod, turned, and walked back out into the oppressive heat, the simple goal already fraying at the edges.

His father’s trailer was at the edge of town, in a dusty lot where the unwanted things in Obsidian Creek ended up. Weeds grew like brittle skeletons between the cracked concrete pads. The trailer itself was a monument to neglect, a long aluminum box streaked with rust, its windows clouded with grime. An unsettling quiet hung in the air, broken only by the buzz of flies and the whisper of a hot wind carrying grit. It felt… watchful. Kael shook the feeling off. It was just the desert playing tricks on his mind, same as it always did.

The door wasn't locked. It hung slightly ajar, a dark wound in the trailer's side. Kael’s hand hovered over the pistol he didn't carry. Old habits from a different life. He pushed the door open.

The inside was chaos.

It wasn't the usual mess of his father's eccentric life. This was violent, targeted destruction. The threadbare couch was slashed open, stuffing pulled out like guts. Cupboard doors were torn from their hinges. Every book had been swept from the shelves, their pages ripped and scattered. But nothing of value—not the old television or the meager kitchen appliances—was taken. A strange, coppery tang hung in the air, like old pennies and something else. Something metallic and vaguely organic.

They were looking for something specific.

Kael stepped carefully through the debris, his boots crunching on broken glass and torn paper. His simple plan was now a distant memory, replaced by a cold knot of dread in his stomach. Who would do this? His father had no money, no enemies except the ones in his own head.

In the small back bedroom, the rampage was even worse. The mattress was shredded. The floorboards near the bed had been pried up. And it was there, tucked beneath a loose board, that Kael found it.

A thick, leather-bound journal. It was the one thing in the entire trailer that was untouched.

He sat on the edge of the ruined bed and opened it. The pages were filled with his father's familiar, spidery handwriting, but the words were more frantic, more unhinged than he’d ever seen. It wasn't just ramblings about desert spirits anymore. This was something darker.

Page after page was filled with sketches of a strange, circular symbol, a spiral with three jagged lines cutting through it. There were names and phrases repeated over and over again, circled and underlined.

The Numa is thirsty. It bleeds.

The Children of the New Dawn are not what they seem. They wear smiling masks but carry obsidian knives.

Thorne. He is the high priest. He builds a glass altar in the heart of the sun to enslave the Thirsting God.

Kael’s head swam. Numa. New Dawn. Thorne. It was the same old paranoia, just with new names. Silas Thorne was that tech billionaire who’d been on the news, setting up some big solar project out in the basin, promising jobs and a future for dying towns like this one. A savior, not a devil worshipper. The old man had finally lost it completely.

He was about to toss the journal aside when a final, chilling entry caught his eye.

They know I have the key. My own blood is the lock. They want what’s in me. They can’t have it. I gave it to my son, and he doesn’t even know.

A cold sweat prickled Kael’s neck. This was different. This felt less like a delusion and more like a warning. He stood up, the journal clutched in his hand, his simple desire to leave now warring with a terrifying, nascent need for answers.

That’s when it happened.

The wind outside ceased. The buzzing of the flies stopped. A profound, unnatural silence fell over the trailer, so deep it felt like pressure against his eardrums. The air grew thick and heavy, and the oppressive heat intensified tenfold, baking the very oxygen from his lungs. The faint coppery smell flared, sharp and overpowering.

Kael’s gaze fell to the floor.

Scratched crudely into the dusty floorboards, hidden beneath the scattered papers, was the same symbol from the journal. And it was beginning to glow.

A faint, sickly crimson light emanated from the lines, pulsing like a weak heartbeat. Kael froze, his cynicism vaporizing in a blast of pure, primal fear. His mind screamed that it was impossible—a trick of the light, a hallucination brought on by the heat.

But then the sand started to move.

A fine layer of dust and grit covered everything in the trailer. Now, it began to stir. Not from a breeze, but on its own. Grains of sand lifted from the floor, hovering in the crimson light. They swirled, coalescing with a faint hissing sound, rising into the air in a shimmering, impossible vortex directly over the glowing symbol. The sand twisted and solidified, forming the three-dimensional shape of the spiral and its jagged lines, a perfect replica of the drawing, hovering a foot above the floor.

It hung there for three agonizing heartbeats, a silent, terrifying testament to a world he refused to believe in. Then, with a soft thump, the construct collapsed, the sand raining back down onto the floor, inert once more. The crimson glow from the symbol faded, leaving only the scratch marks in the wood. The silence broke, and the normal sounds of the desert—the wind, the insects—rushed back in.

Kael stood trembling, his knuckles white where he gripped the journal. His heart hammered against his ribs. He was no longer a son dealing with a crazy father’s legacy. He was a witness.

The ravings weren't ravings. The paranoia wasn't paranoia.

Something was terribly, impossibly real in Obsidian Creek. And his quick exit had just turned into a dangerous descent into the heart of his father’s madness.