Chapter 1: The Dinner Invitation

Chapter 1: The Dinner Invitation

The air on Isla Perdida was a wet blanket, thick with the smells of salt, rot, and cloying sweet flowers. It clung to David’s skin, pasting the thin linen of his shirt to his back. He clutched his weathered Bible, its gilded edges long since flaked away, and felt the familiar weight of the silver cross against his chest. It was a poor shield against the oppressive heat, and an even poorer one against the stares of the locals in the dusty port town.

Their eyes, dark and suspicious, slid over his pale skin and tired blue eyes, lingering on the book in his hand before dismissing him completely. He’d spent three days trying to hire a guide, anyone who would take him into the island’s interior. His mission, as ordained by the church elders back home, was to bring the Word to the "unreached." But here, on this forgotten spit of land, the Word was an unwelcome currency.

“The jungle eats men,” one fisherman with a face like cracked leather had told him, spitting a stream of tobacco juice near his worn boots. “And God does not live there.”

Each rejection felt like another small crack in the crumbling facade of his faith. He was here seeking a sign, a purpose—anything to silence the hollow echo in his soul left by the accident he could never forgive himself for. Instead, he’d found only suffocating humidity and a wall of superstitious silence.

He was watching a trio of children chase a skeletal dog through the town’s single muddy street when a new voice cut through his thoughts.

“You’re going about this all wrong.”

David turned. A woman leaned against the peeling wall of a cantina, arms crossed over a sweat-dampened tank top. Her posture was defiant, her dark hair pulled back in a messy but practical braid. A machete with a well-used handle was strapped to the side of her worn cargo pants. She had the sharp, intelligent eyes of a predator, and they were fixed squarely on him.

“They see that book,” she continued, nodding at his Bible, “and they see a fool looking for a place to die.”

David’s jaw tightened. “I’m a missionary.”

“I know what you are,” she said, her voice devoid of judgment but full of a weary cynicism that resonated with his own. “It doesn’t change the fact you’re a liability. No one here will guide a man who thinks prayer will stop a pit viper.”

He had no response to that. She was right. He pushed a hand through his damp brown hair, the gesture doing little to ease the deep-seated anxiety coiling in his gut. “And you? Have you had better luck?”

She pushed off the wall and walked towards him. He noticed old, faded scars on her toned arms. She was capable, he could see that instantly. She moved with an economy of motion he, with his clumsy town-bred body, could only envy.

“My reasons are my own,” she said, stopping a few feet from him. “But I’m getting the same answers you are, just for different reasons. They look at me and see a woman who doesn’t belong. Someone who asks too many questions.” She extended a hand. “Cassara.”

He took it. Her grip was firm, calloused. “David.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, filled only by the chirping of unseen insects in the looming green walls of the jungle that surrounded the town.

“There is one name,” Cassara said finally, lowering her voice. “Every time I push, every time I offer more money than they’ve seen in a year, they get scared. And they whisper one name.”

“Savannah,” David finished for her, the name feeling strange and heavy on his tongue. He’d heard it too, spoken like a curse and a prayer rolled into one. The local priest, a tired old man reeking of rum, had crossed himself when David mentioned her. “The wise woman.”

“Or the witch, depending on who you ask,” Cassara countered. “They say she lives on the edge of the jungle, where the town gives up. And they say she’s the only one who knows the deep paths.”

Desire, sharp and desperate, cut through David’s exhaustion. A path. Any path was better than this stagnant waiting. “Then that’s where we go.”

Cassara sized him up, her gaze lingering on his simple cross. “Just so we’re clear, missionary, I don’t believe in witches. But I don’t believe in coincidences either. We go together, we watch each other’s backs. But if things get strange, I’m gone. I’m looking for answers, not a grave.”

He nodded, a grim alliance forged between faith and pragmatism. “Agreed.”

Savannah’s hut was less a structure and more a part of the jungle that had been given a vague, man-made shape. Gnarled vines clung to the sagging thatch roof, and the air around it was heavy with the cloying scent of strange herbs, woodsmoke, and something else… something metallic and faintly sweet, like rust and burnt sugar.

The door creaked open before they could knock.

“You are late,” a voice rasped from the shadows within. “The spirits grow impatient when they wait.”

They stepped inside, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the gloom. The single room was cluttered with bundles of dried plants, strange carvings, and bowls of dark liquid. In the center, sitting on a low stool, was the woman they sought. Savannah.

She was ancient, her skin like wrinkled parchment, her body frail enough that a strong wind might carry her away. But her eyes… her eyes were a terrifying contradiction. They burned with a bright, cunning, and unsettlingly youthful light. They were not the eyes of a simple old woman. They were the eyes of something that had been watching the world for a very, very long time. A strange, intricately carved wooden staff rested against her knee.

“You seek a guide,” she stated, not a question. Her gaze flicked from David to Cassara, seeming to peel back the layers of their being, to see the raw, secret motivations they held closest. She looked at David’s cross. “You look for a god who has abandoned this place.” Then her eyes settled on Cassara, and a faint, unsettling grin touched her lips. “And you… you look for a ghost. A memory.”

Cassara stiffened, her hand instinctively moving closer to the hilt of her machete. Tucked away in her pack was a small, faded photograph of a woman with her same defiant eyes—her mother, who had vanished on this very island two decades ago. How could this crone know that?

“We need to get to the Sunken Valley,” Cassara said, her voice hard, trying to reclaim control of the situation.

“And I,” David added, “need to reach the villages of the interior.”

Savannah chuckled, a dry, rattling sound like dead leaves skittering across stone. “The valley and the villages are intertwined. The paths are treacherous. One wrong step…” She let the sentence hang in the thick air. “I can guide you. I know the way better than I know the lines on my own hand.”

A surge of hope, fragile and desperate, rose in David’s chest. This was it. The sign.

“But,” Savannah said, her piercing eyes locking onto them, “my guidance is not bought with money. I require a different price.”

“What do you want?” Cassara asked, her suspicion a palpable force in the small hut.

“You will be my guests,” Savannah said, her grin widening, showing gums as dark as old wine. “For dinner. Tonight.”

David felt a prickle of unease. “Dinner? We can eat here.”

“No,” she said, a chilling command in her grandmotherly coo. “Not here. We will dine at a more… appropriate venue. A quiet place, rich with history and power. We will eat in the Old Grounds, where the island’s first souls sleep.”

The air in the hut suddenly felt ten degrees colder. A cemetery.

“Absolutely not,” Cassara said immediately, taking a step back. “That’s insane.”

“Why there?” David asked, his voice barely a whisper. His desperation was warring with a primal sense of wrongness. This was a test. It had to be. God worked in mysterious ways, didn’t He?

Savannah leaned forward, the strange, youthful light in her eyes flaring. “It is a place of honor. Perfect for making introductions to powerful friends.” She rose from her stool, moving with a sinister grace that defied her frail frame. A fine, pale dust seemed to swirl subtly around her bare feet.

“My patron requires a tribute. A show of respect. You will join me, and you will share my table. Do this, and tomorrow, I will lead you wherever you wish to go.”

It was a trap. Every instinct Cassara had honed over years of surviving in the world’s forgotten corners screamed it. But the image of her mother’s photograph flashed in her mind. This old woman knew something. This might be her only chance to find out what happened, to finally lay that ghost to rest.

David, meanwhile, saw a trial of faith. A dark path that might lead to the light he so desperately needed. To refuse now would be to admit defeat, to let his doubt win.

He looked at Cassara, and she looked at him. In their shared moment of tense silence, a decision was made. They were caught, two different kinds of desperation leading them to the same terrible conclusion.

“We accept,” David said, the words feeling like a judgment.

Savannah’s smile became a triumphant, chilling thing. It did not reach her ancient eyes.

“Excellent,” she rasped. “Meet me at the cemetery gate when the sun bleeds on the horizon.”

She paused, her gaze sweeping over them one last time, as if she were a butcher sizing up two prize cuts.

“And do come with an appetite. My friend is… ravenous.”