Chapter 8: The Red Harvest

Chapter 8: The Red Harvest

The platform high in the boughs of the Ossuary Tree was a stage set for the end of the world. Below, a sea of silent, upturned faces watched from the cavern floor, their features indistinct in the ghostly fungal light. All around them, the audience of the dead swayed in the gentle drafts, thousands of empty sockets bearing witness. Leo knelt on the blood-stained wood, his wrists bound so tightly the vine felt fused to his bones. Beside him, Harlock was a statue of despair, while Aris remained lost in his own shattered mind, a gentle, rhythmic rocking the only sign he was still alive.

A figure ascended the final steps of the ramp and moved into the center of the platform. He was ancient, his skin a roadmap of wrinkles, his body adorned not with paint, but with a gruesome collection of relics. A necklace of human teeth. Bracelets of polished finger bones. A cloak woven from the sun-bleached hair of a dozen different victims. He was the shaman, the high priest of this cathedral of death, and he moved with the slow, deliberate grace of a man who had performed this ceremony countless times.

He raised his hands, and a deeper hush fell over the assembled tribe. In his right hand, he held a long, flat knife carved from an iridescent seashell, its edge sharpened to a wicked thinness. In his left, he held up a small, wooden object for all to see.

Leo’s blood turned to ice. It was the idol. The one from the creek. The one from his pocket.

They must have taken it from him when they’d bound him, a silent, knowing confiscation. The shaman held it aloft not as an accusation, but as an offering, a key. He was presenting the catalyst for the ritual to come. Leo’s act of theft, his secret transgression, was not a secret at all. It was the centerpiece of the ceremony. He hadn't just trespassed on their island; he had delivered the sacred instrument for his own crew's destruction. The guilt was a physical blow, knocking the last of the air from his lungs.

The shaman’s dark, pitiless eyes scanned the three kneeling men. He walked past Leo, past Harlock, and stopped in front of Aris Thorne. The scientist didn't even look up, his body still locked in its gentle, rocking motion. The shaman reached out and, with a surprising tenderness, cupped Aris's chin, tilting his face toward the fungal glow. He studied the botanist's features for a long moment, a connoisseur appraising a specimen.

Then, he turned to the tribe below, held the idol high once more, and began to chant. It was a low, guttural song, a series of clicks and throaty syllables that spoke of the deep earth and the cold, dark water. It was a language of absolute finality.

Two tribesmen seized Aris, their movements practiced and efficient. They dragged the unresisting scientist to the heavy wooden frame in the center of the platform, lashing his wrists and ankles to its corners. He was spread-eagled, a living canvas. He did not fight. He did not scream. He simply continued his gentle rocking, a motion of madness against the stark, geometric cruelty of the frame.

The shaman approached, the shell knife glinting. The tribe watched in ecstatic silence. There was no shouting, no bloodlust in their eyes. There was only a profound, religious focus, a rapt attention as if witnessing a miracle.

The priest began his work. He was not a butcher; he was an artist. With the meticulous precision of a surgeon, he made a shallow incision around Aris’s wrist. Then his ankle. Then the other wrist, the other ankle. He moved with an unhurried, systematic rhythm, his chant never faltering. He made long, clean cuts up the insides of Aris’s limbs, then a straight line down his torso. The blood welled up, shockingly red against pale skin, and began to trace dark paths on the wooden frame.

Through it all, Aris did not make a sound. His mind was gone, a mercy of sorts, a final retreat from a reality too hideous to bear. For Leo, it was the ultimate horror. He was forced to watch, to hear the soft, wet tearing sound as the shaman began to peel the skin away from the muscle, working with the patient skill of a man who had done this a hundred times before. The smell of fresh blood and incense filled the air, a holy, sickening perfume.

It seemed to go on for an eternity. The tribe never moved, never spoke. They were transfixed, their spirits nourished by this terrible harvest. When it was finally done, when the shaman stepped back from his work, Aris Thorne was no longer a man. He was a raw, red anatomy lesson, a twitching sculpture of sinew and flesh. Only then did a single, low moan escape his lips, a final, reflexive sound from a body that had forgotten its mind. The shaman raised his hands, the chant ended, and the last flicker of life in Aris Thorne went out.

Next, they came for the captain.

They hauled Harlock to his feet. Unlike Aris, the captain’s mind was brutally present. The fire had returned to his eyes, but it was the fire of a cornered animal, of pure, defiant rage. He fought, he spat, he roared curses at them, his voice echoing in the vast cavern.

They did not bind him to the frame. For him, they had something different. Something symbolic. Two men held his arms while a third approached with a long iron poker, its tip glowing a malevolent orange from a small brazier Leo hadn't noticed before.

Harlock saw it. He knew what was coming. "You bastards! You godless bastards!" he screamed.

They forced his head back. The shaman stood before him, intoning a different verse of his terrible song. He took the poker. Harlock’s scream as the glowing tip touched his first eye was a sound Leo would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life. It was a sound of absolute violation, the sound of a man's entire world being extinguished in a sizzle of burning flesh. They did the other eye without pause.

The blinded captain sagged, his strength gone, his defiance incinerated. They held him up as two more tribesmen approached with heavy, stone-headed clubs. With methodical, percussive cracks that echoed through the cavern, they broke his legs, then his arms. They shattered his bones, destroying the powerful frame that had commanded ships and crossed oceans. They were unmaking him, piece by piece, destroying the Captain before they killed the man.

He hung between them, a broken, sightless thing, blood and tears streaming down his face. The shaman gave a sharp nod. From the edges of the platform, a half-dozen warriors raised short, heavy spears. They threw them not with fury, but with a simple, final efficiency. The spears thudded into Harlock’s chest, a volley of mercy after an eternity of torture. His agony was over.

Leo knelt, shaking, his mind a vortex of horror and disbelief. He had watched Aris unmade, Harlock dismantled. His two companions were gone. He was the last one.

He felt hands grab his arms, hauling him to his feet. They were dragging him toward the bloody frame, toward the final act of the ritual. The faces of his captors were impassive, their grips like iron. He could smell the blood, see the raw, flayed thing that had been Aris. He could see Harlock's broken body, pierced with spears.

And in that moment, something inside him snapped.

The terror that had paralyzed him, that had frozen his blood and stolen his breath, reached its absolute peak. It could climb no higher. And so, it collapsed, and in the ruins of his fear, something else was born. It was white-hot. It was pure. It was rage. A cornered-animal fury that burned away all reason, all despair.

The images of his dead friends flashed behind his eyes—not as horrors to be feared, but as injustices to be avenged. They had skinned Aris. They had broken Harlock. They would not have him. Not like that. He would not be a sacrifice. He would not be a harvest.

As they dragged him the last few feet toward the frame, his trembling stopped. The shaking in his limbs coiled into tension, his muscles bunching like springs. The terror in his eyes hardened into a glare of pure, homicidal hatred.

He would not die like them.