Chapter 2: The Hypocrite's Blood

The celebration feast had stretched long into the night, filled with salt-cured fish and fermented kelp wine that burned the throat going down. Elias had barely touched his portion, the memory of Claire's serene smile haunting every bite. Now, as the last of the revelers stumbled home through Saltcradle's narrow streets, he sat alone with his father in their cramped shack, the silence between them heavy as storm clouds.

Cain Thorne hunched over the rough wooden table, methodically cleaning the ceremonial shear with a rag that had seen too much blood. The exposed sinew on his jaw worked rhythmically as he polished, a nervous habit Elias had noticed more frequently of late.

"You hesitated today," his father said without looking up. The bronze blade gleamed dully in the lamplight, its S-curve catching shadows that seemed to writhe. "The congregation noticed."

Elias stared at his hands, still feeling the phantom weight of the blade, the resistance of Claire's flesh. "She was... strange. Different from the others."

"They're all different when their time comes." Cain's voice carried the flat certainty of a man who'd performed dozens of Shearings himself. "Fear takes many forms. Some weep, some rage, some retreat into silence. Claire Keane chose numbness."

But that wasn't right, and Elias knew it. What he'd seen in Claire's eyes wasn't numbness—it was recognition. As if she'd been waiting for this moment her entire life, as if the Shearing was merely the first step in some larger design.

"She spoke during the ritual," Elias said quietly. "About her mother. About the God coming ashore."

The polishing stopped. For a long moment, the only sound was the distant crash of waves against the rocky coastline below their village. When Cain finally looked up, there was something flickering in his dark eyes that might have been panic, quickly suppressed.

"The girl's grief has addled her mind," he said, but his voice had lost its earlier conviction. "Pay no heed to the ravings of—"

The door exploded inward with such violence that splinters scattered across the room like wooden shrapnel. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway, his frame trembling with barely contained rage. Elias recognized him immediately: Thomas Keane, Claire's uncle, one of the village's most respected fishermen.

But the man who'd always been steady and reliable now looked half-mad, his hair wild, his clothes torn and stained with what looked like seaweed and something darker. In his grip was a gutting knife, its blade still slick with fish blood—or perhaps something else entirely.

"Murderer," Thomas snarled, his eyes fixed on Cain with an intensity that made the air crackle. "Hypocrite. False prophet."

Cain rose slowly from his chair, his hand moving toward the ceremonial shear. "Thomas, you're drunk. Go home before you say something you'll—"

"Drunk?" Thomas laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "I wish I were drunk. I wish I could drown this knowledge in kelp wine and wake tomorrow believing your lies again."

He took a step into the room, the knife trembling in his grip. "But I can't unknow what I know, can I, Cain? I can't unsee what the tide brought back."

Elias felt ice forming in his veins. "What are you talking about?"

Thomas's wild gaze flickered to him for a moment before returning to Cain. "Your father didn't tell you? About his midnight visits to my sister? About the promises he made her in the dark while preaching purity from his pulpit?"

"Lies," Cain said, but his voice cracked on the word. The hand holding the shear was shaking now, and that exposed muscle in his jaw was twitching faster than ever.

"Marina tried to leave," Thomas continued, his voice rising to match the howling wind outside. "She came to me three months ago, terrified out of her mind. Said she'd discovered something about the Shearings, about what they really were. Said she had to get Claire away from here before it was too late."

The gutting knife caught the lamplight as Thomas raised it higher. "But you couldn't let her go, could you? Not with your bastard growing in her belly. Not with your precious reputation at stake."

Elias felt the world tilt sideways. The woman who'd supposedly drowned in a fishing accident, leaving her daughter orphaned and hollow—she'd been carrying his father's child?

"That's enough," Cain snarled, raising the ceremonial shear. "You know nothing of the God's will, Thomas. Your sister was chosen for a higher purpose—"

"Chosen?" Thomas's laugh turned into a sob. "She was murdered! And not by the sea, not by some accident. I found her journal, Cain. Hidden in the caves where you thought no one would look. She wrote about the things you told her, the things you promised her about the Tide God's protection."

The knife in Thomas's hand was no longer trembling. It held steady now, pointed directly at Cain's heart. "She wrote about how you changed your tune when she started asking questions. When she threatened to expose what the Shearings really were."

Elias wanted to speak, to demand answers, but his throat felt sealed shut. The wrongness that had been growing in his chest since that morning's ritual was spreading now, cold tendrils wrapping around his heart.

"The God demanded her silence," Cain said, but even to Elias's ears, the words sounded hollow. "She would have corrupted the faithful, turned them against—"

Thomas lunged.

The attack came with the desperate fury of a grief-maddened man, but Cain was ready for it. He side-stepped the initial thrust, bringing the ceremonial shear up in a practiced arc. Bronze met steel with a ringing clash that echoed through the small room.

But Thomas was younger, stronger, driven by a rage that gave him inhuman strength. He pressed his attack, forcing Cain back against the rough stone wall. The gutting knife found its mark, sliding between ribs with a wet sound that made Elias's stomach lurch.

"This is for Marina," Thomas gasped, twisting the blade. "And for Claire. For what you've turned her into."

Cain's scream was cut short as blood filled his throat. But even as Thomas's knife found his heart, the cult leader managed one final act of violence. The ceremonial shear, blessed by decades of ritual sacrifice, carved a line across Thomas's throat that opened him from ear to ear.

Both men collapsed in a tangle of limbs and spreading blood, their final breaths mixing with the salt air that seeped through every crack in the shack's walls.

Elias stood frozen for what felt like hours but was probably only seconds, staring at the carnage. His father—the man who'd taught him everything about faith, duty, and the sacred obligations of their bloodline—lay dying in a pool of his own hypocrisy. And beside him, Thomas Keane gurgled his last, his accusation hanging in the air like incense smoke.

"Boy," Cain whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind. "Come... come here."

Elias knelt beside his father, his knees squelching in the spreading blood. Up close, he could see that the wound was mortal—Thomas's knife had found something vital, and no amount of prayer or ritual would close it.

"The... the caves," Cain gasped, his eyes already glazing. "North of the tideline... marked with the deep sigils. There's... things you need to know. Things about the bloodline. About what we really serve."

Each word seemed to cost him enormous effort. Blood frothed at the corners of his mouth, mixing with the saliva that leaked from his ruined jaw.

"Father, I don't understand—"

"The girl," Cain interrupted, his grip suddenly fierce on Elias's wrist. "Claire. She's not... not what she seems. The Shearing today, it wasn't just an offering. It was an invitation."

His eyes rolled back, showing only white, but somehow he kept talking. "Run, boy. Run before she... before it realizes what you've become. The bond... the bond is forming. Between Shearer and shorn. Just like... like it did with me and Marina."

The words came out in a rush of blood and desperation. "I tried to save her. God help me, I tried. But once the God tastes you, once it knows your flesh... there's no escape. No redemption."

Cain's head fell back against the stone floor with a wet thud. His breathing grew shallow, rattling in his chest like dice in a cup.

"The journal," he whispered. "Find Marina's journal. Learn the truth about what we've been feeding. What we've been becoming."

His eyes found Elias's one last time, and in them was an emotion the boy had never seen from his father before: pure, undiluted terror.

"It's coming ashore," Cain breathed. "After all these years... it's finally coming ashore. And it's wearing her face."

Then he was gone, his final breath mixing with the salt wind that howled through the broken door. Elias knelt there in the spreading silence, surrounded by blood and betrayal, as everything he'd believed about his life crumbled around him.

Outside, the tide was turning. And somewhere in the village below, Claire Keane was probably lying in her narrow bed, cradling her wounded hand against her chest, dreaming dreams that belonged to something far older and hungrier than any human girl should know.

Elias looked at his blood-stained hands, at the ceremonial shear that had fallen from his father's death grip, and knew that his old life was over. Whatever came next, whatever truths lay hidden in those sea caves his father had mentioned, he would face them alone.

The wind picked up, carrying with it the scent of brine and something else—something that smelled like deep places and ancient hungers. Somewhere in the distance, barely audible over the storm, he could swear he heard laughter.

Soft, feminine, and utterly, terrifyingly serene.