Chapter 2: The Bridge of No Return

The white stones ended at a sight that made Ethan's blood turn to ice water in his veins.

The bridge to Glass Harbor was nothing like the grand crossing he'd imagined from the town's reverent descriptions. It was a skeletal thing—rotting wooden planks held together by rusted cables that groaned in the wind like the dying breaths of some enormous beast. Below, invisible in the absolute darkness, a river roared with such violence that the sound seemed to rise from the earth's very core.

Ethan stood at the threshold, the leather bell still warm and pulsing in his grip, and felt the weight of his deception settling around him like a shroud. The burner phone pressed against his ankle bone—useless out here, no signal bars even when he'd checked it secretly during the walk. The compass needle spun wildly, as if the magnetic field itself was corrupted in this place. Only the knife felt real, solid, a small anchor of normalcy in a world that had revealed itself to be built on lies and children's bones.

The ticks covering his skin had gone completely still, their bodies rigid as if listening to something he couldn't hear. In the silence between the river's roars, he could make out another sound—footsteps on the bridge, steady and unhurried.

A figure emerged from the darkness on the far side, and Ethan's heart clenched with recognition and revulsion. Jackson Reeves, twelve years old, last year's Selected. The boy who'd supposedly been "perfected" and returned to the community transformed.

But the thing walking toward him wasn't really Jackson anymore.

The child's body was unchanged—same sandy hair, same freckled cheeks, same slight build—but everything else was wrong. His movements were too precise, like a marionette guided by expert hands. His expression was serene in a way that no twelve-year-old should ever be, empty of the chaos and joy that defined childhood. And his eyes... his eyes held the cold intelligence of something ancient and patient.

"Ethan Thorne." Jackson's voice carried none of the high, excitable pitch Ethan remembered. It was measured, adult, terrifying in its calm certainty. "You're late."

"Jackson?" Ethan took an involuntary step backward. "What happened to you?"

The thing wearing Jackson's face tilted its head, considering the question with the detached interest of a scientist examining a specimen. "I was perfected. As you will be. As your sister was, before her unfortunate... malfunction."

The casual way it spoke of Amelia's death sent rage flooding through Ethan's weakened body. "Malfunction? She was murdered!"

"She was flawed." Jackson stepped onto the bridge proper, his bare feet making no sound against the rotting planks. "Some vessels prove inadequate for the honor bestowed upon them. The transplant didn't take properly. She rejected the gift."

"What gift? What transplant?" But even as Ethan asked, he was backing away, every instinct screaming that this conversation was a trap, a delay tactic while something else moved into position behind him.

"You'll understand soon." Jackson continued his approach, unhurried but relentless. "Mother Piper is waiting. She's been so patient, so generous. A century of feeding on what the town offers freely, sustaining your people, ensuring their prosperity. All she asks in return is new blood. Fresh vessels. Young minds to add to her collection."

The leather bell in Ethan's hand pulsed harder, and he realized with growing horror that it was synchronizing with Jackson's footsteps. Whatever the bell was made of, whatever purpose it truly served, it was responding to the thing that had once been a child.

"The bridge must be crossed willingly," Jackson continued, now close enough that Ethan could see the pale veins beneath his skin, pulsing with something that wasn't quite blood. "That's part of the pact. Part of the rules. You can walk across on your own, or I can help you. But you will cross."

"And if I refuse?"

Jackson's smile was beatific and empty. "Then you'll join your sister in her failure. The town cannot afford to lose another vessel to weakness. Mother Piper grows hungry, and the other children are... sustaining her less efficiently than expected."

The implication hit Ethan like a physical blow. Other children. Plural. How many of Glass Harbor's "perfected" had there been over the years? How many young lives had been fed to whatever waited in the abandoned town across the bridge?

"I need to think about this," Ethan said, playing for time while his mind raced through options. Run back to the festival? They'd already made it clear he couldn't return unchanged. Fight? Jackson might look like a child, but the intelligence behind his eyes belonged to something that had been consuming human lives for decades.

"There's nothing to think about." Jackson's patience was wearing thin, his voice taking on a sharper edge. "The crossing will be made. Tonight. Now."

He lunged forward with inhuman speed, his small hands reaching for Ethan's shoulders to push him onto the bridge. But weeks of physical weakness had honed Ethan's reflexes to a knife's edge, and his grandfather's wilderness training kicked in like muscle memory.

Ethan twisted away from Jackson's grasp, his foot coming up in a defensive kick that caught the smaller boy in the chest. The impact felt wrong—too solid, like kicking a tree trunk instead of a child's fragile ribcage. Jackson staggered backward, more surprised than hurt, his mask of serenity slipping for just a moment.

"Interesting," Jackson said, straightening. "You have more fight than most. Mother Piper will be pleased. She enjoys vessels with spirit."

This time when Jackson moved, there was nothing human in his approach. He came low and fast, his movements fluid and predatory, no longer bothering to maintain the pretense of being a confused child. Ethan scrambled backward, the rotting edge of the bridge crumbling under his feet, loose stones tumbling into the roaring darkness below.

Jackson's hand closed around Ethan's wrist with crushing strength, fingernails that had grown sharp and yellow digging into his skin. The ticks covering Ethan's arm began to move frantically, swarming toward the point of contact as if drawn by Jackson's touch.

"Let go!" Ethan swung the leather bell like a club, catching Jackson across the temple. The moment it made contact, the bell made a sound—not the clear ring of metal, but a wet, organic noise like tearing flesh. Jackson released him with a shriek that was definitely not human, stumbling backward with black ichor streaming from where the bell had struck.

They stared at each other across three feet of crumbling bridge, both breathing hard. Jackson's perfect facade had cracked completely now, his face contorting with rage and something that might have been hunger.

"You don't understand what you're refusing," Jackson snarled, his voice layered with harmonics that made Ethan's teeth ache. "The honor. The immortality. To become part of something greater than your small, insignificant life."

"I understand plenty." Ethan hefted the bell, which was now warm enough to be uncomfortable against his palm. "I understand that you're not Jackson anymore. I understand that whatever's waiting for me across that bridge killed my sister. And I understand that I'd rather die fighting than become another puppet in your collection."

Jackson's laugh was the sound of breaking glass. "Die fighting? Child, you can't even stand without swaying. The blood loss alone should have put you in a coma by now. You're operating on borrowed time and misplaced heroics."

He was right, and they both knew it. Ethan could feel his strength ebbing with every breath, the weeks of parasitic feeding taking their toll. But he could also feel something else building inside him—not strength, but clarity. The kind of desperate focus that came when all other options had been stripped away.

"Maybe," Ethan said. "But I bet I can last long enough to make this expensive for you."

Jackson moved again, but this time Ethan was ready. He sidestepped the rush and brought his knee up hard, catching Jackson in the ribs. The impact drove the smaller figure backward, arms windmilling for balance.

For a moment, Jackson teetered on the edge of the bridge, his expression shifting from rage to something that might have been genuine surprise. Then his foot found empty air, and he toppled backward into the roaring darkness with a sound that was part scream, part static, part something else entirely.

Ethan rushed to the edge, peering down into the absolute blackness below. The river's roar swallowed any sound Jackson might have made upon impact, but surely there should be something—a splash, a cry, even the sound of a body striking stone.

Instead, there was only the endless thunder of water and wind, and a silence that felt somehow expectant, as if the darkness itself was holding its breath.

"Jackson?" Ethan called, though he wasn't sure why. The thing that had worn the boy's face was gone, fallen into whatever depths lurked beneath the bridge. He should feel relief, or triumph, or at least the grim satisfaction of having survived his first real encounter with Glass Harbor's horrors.

Instead, he felt only a growing certainty that this had been too easy. That Jackson's fall had been exactly what something wanted him to believe.

The leather bell in his hand pulsed once, hard enough to make his fingers cramp, and then went still. The ticks covering his skin began to move again, but differently now—not the random migrations he'd grown used to, but purposeful streams flowing toward specific points on his body.

Behind him, the path back to the festival was dark and empty. Ahead, the bridge stretched across the chasm toward Glass Harbor and whatever waited there. And below, in the crushing darkness, something that had once been a twelve-year-old boy was learning new lessons about what it meant to be truly alone.

Ethan wiped Jackson's black blood from the bell and stepped carefully to the very edge of the bridge. He had to know. Had to see if there was any trace of what had fallen, any sign that his desperate gambit had actually accomplished something.

The darkness below offered no answers, only questions that multiplied like parasites in his mind. But one thing was becoming clear as he stood there listening to the river's endless roar: his real journey was just beginning, and every choice he'd made so far had been exactly what something ancient and patient had been guiding him toward.

The bridge waited, its rotten planks creaking invitation and threat in equal measure. Behind him lay the lies of his community, the comfortable deceptions that had fed on children for a century. Ahead lay truth, terrible and transformative.

Ethan Thorne, marked by ticks and armed with secrets, stepped onto the bridge between worlds and began the crossing that would change everything.