Chapter Text
Gasping for air, he gave the great timber a struggled heave, finally hoisting it enough to slip out from beneath it. The scrawny boy shuffled aside before the beam crashed to the ground, kicking up dust and debris. As he choked on the airborne sediment, he wiped his eyes and stared in terror. The home he had loved, where he had spent all his life with his family, was nothing but ash and broken planks, some still burning away.
Swallowing back tears, he frantically searched through the rubble. He just had to find her. His voice failed him as he tried to call out to her, his words spilling forth as unintelligible screeches. Where is she?! The smoke in the air masked the fleeting daylight, only heightening his desperation. Shifting, shoving, digging. His hands stung, splinters pricking his fingertips, but he refused to stop until he found her.
Everything was gone. The furniture, nothing but charred frames. His mother's trinkets, his father's carving tools, his grandfather's baubles, all burned to ashes.About to give up hope, he forced himself to keep going. Somehow, the enormous wooden door to their cellar had escaped destruction, resting upon a pile of wreckage. Mustering the last of his strength, he uneasily slid the door aside, revealing a grotesque sight. Falling to his knees, the tears he had restrained freed themselves, plummeting to the dusty ground.
“M-mom!” His body quivered as he cried her name, knowing she could not hear him. Trembling, he crawled to her side, where she laid motionless. He snatched her wrist up in his hands, desperately hoping to feel her pulse between his fingers. “Mom!” He cried out again, giving her lifeless body a futile shake. “Mom, please, wake up,” he begged, but his plea was too little, too late. She was gone.
When he realized she was not going to wake up again, he crumpled beside her, clinging to her, praying for the safety of her embrace. As he gave her a squeeze between sobs, he heard a strange sound, like the plink of something small and hollow hitting the ground. Again, the sound echoed beside him. Curious, he sat up, wiping away the moisture from his cheek. Tucked beneath his mother's scorched arm, he found a set of wooden totems, five in total. He recalled these fondly, he had watched his father meticulously carve them for hours at a time, however, he could not understand why they were undamaged. Picking up the smallest one, he stared angrily at its smile. Why? Why did you survive this, but not her?! How dare you smile at me!
As rage welled up within him, he grunted and chucked the small wooden puppet across the room, watching it bounce and roll across the floor. Why did you save these, and not yourself?! He had seen it all, until she had told him to run and hide. The fire wasn't what killed her, his own grandfather had done all this.
He snatched another figure from her arms, but as he was about to throw it, it began to glow a faint green. “Wh-what?” He stared at the effigy in his hand for a long moment, until a searing pain on his forehead distracted him. His fingers instinctively traced along the bridge of his nose, his skin ached beneath his fingertips. “What happened... to my face...?” Glancing around the rubble, he found a shard of broken glass. As he gazed at his reflection, he was shocked by what he saw. Stretched across his face was a black figure, where his skin had previously been bare. He scrubbed his hands across the mark, but it remained. Screaming angrily at the marked boy in the mirror, the tears fell once more. He knew all too well that the mark would never go away, that he was permanently branded by his grandfather's evil magic.
Seething with rage for his ancestor, he turned back to the puppets, which all pulsed with the dim glow. “What the hell?” he whispered, crawling across the floor to reclaim the one he had tossed. Picking it up, he turned it over in his hands, examining it closely. He could not understand what was so special about these dolls, or how anything could smile after what had just happened. With a loud sniffle, the figures started to levitate, hovering just above the ground, causing him to jolt and stumble backwards.
Staring at the small puppets as they started to dance around him, he found himself motionless, unable to look away as the corpse before him radiated with light. Her body was engulfed in emerald brilliance, trails of light swirling about her. The shimmering rays grouped together above her, creating a massive orb. As his eyes focused to the sheer brightness before him, the orb raced towards him, colliding with the totem he held in his hand. Looking up, he saw four more large orbs float in from the street and crash into the other figurines, finally noticing that the destruction extended far beyond his own home. Suddenly, he realized what was so special about these pieces. These were not the toys his father typically crafted, these were vessels for souls.
He gulped as he realized he was holding a life in his hands, literally. The effigy, no longer glowing, drifted into the air in front of him, its painted eyes staring back at his own.
“Bicks...low...?” The voice was weak and distorted, but he would always know who it belonged to. Grabbing the figure, he clenched it close to his chest, crying as he squeezed it tightly.
“I'm here, Mom,” he squealed between bursts of sobbing. “I'll keep you safe, I promise.”