Read Chapter 28: Collecting Pieces

The rain had stopped, leaving the forest dripping and restless. Callum crouched beside Ishbel, her breathing shallow but steady. Ewan had vanished back into the shadows the way he'd come, muttering warnings about the Ur's roots reaching deeper than any map.

"He's gone mad," Ishbel said, wincing as she shifted.

"Maybe." Callum's eyes tracked the treeline. Distant shouts echoed through the glen—still searching, still hungry. "But that doesn't make him wrong."

Ishbel looked at him, reading the set of his jaw. "You've a plan."

"Morag." The name tasted like ash. "She's the vessel who wants to be. She fed the Ur her memories for power. She killed my father—or as good as. If she becomes the Ur's vessel, everyone's gone. The forest, the village, the pact—none of it matters."

"So you mean to stop her."

"I mean to make her the keeper." Callum pulled the worthless dirk from his belt—the copy Alistair had carried to his death. He turned it over in his hands. "The true blade is buried with the first keeper. But the house—my house—has the oath stone."

Ishbel's eyes widened. "The one from the ritual chamber?"

"Aye. And Morag's claim to power came through careful ritual, ritual that binds by blood. The true dirk was made to cut those bonds, to sever the Ur from a would-be vessel." He spoke quickly, as if trying to convince himself as much as her. "Alistair's memory showed me the placement of things. The stone records oaths. The dirk enforces them."

"You're talking about forcing her into the keeper's seat."

"Better her than the Ur walking free." Callum's voice cracked. "The curse is mine by blood. But the keeper holds the boundary, not the power. If Morag wants to be the Ur's bride, let her taste the weight of the chair instead."

Ishbel studied him, her face pale beneath the grime. "You'd bind her with her own ambition."

"Or die trying."

They moved through the forest as the light faded, keeping to the deer trails Callum had known since boyhood. The village was a sprawl of torches below, a hive of angry ants. But his house sat apart from it, at the edge of the treeline, a grey stone shell that had been MacRae ground for four generations.

It hadn't been searched. Not yet.

They entered through the back, the door groaning on rusted hinges. Callum went straight to the hearth, knelt, and pried up the loose flagstone. Beneath it lay a shallow hollow. From within, he pulled a bundle wrapped in oilskin.

The dirk was plain when unwrapped—unadorned, iron-bladed, with a handle of blackened oak wrapped in leather. It looked older than the hills themselves. But the moment his hand closed around it, a thrumming passed up his arm, like the deep note of a great bell struck underwater.

"Bloody hell," Ishbel breathed.

Callum held it up. The blade reflected no light. Instead, it seemed to drink the dimness around it, gathering shadows to its edge. Tiny marks ran along the fuller—knotwork and symbols he could almost read, like words just out of reach.

"The first keeper buried this with his bones," he said. "It's been waiting."

"For you."

"For whoever breaks the pact." He sheathed it at his belt, replacing the worthless copy, and felt the weight settle differently, as if the blade had claimed him rather than the other way round.

The oath stone was in the cellar, set into the wall above the old well. It was a flat grey slab, unremarkable, worn smooth by centuries of MacRae hands. Callum touched it, and a tremor ran through his fingertips.

"My father's blood was on this," he said quietly. "He slit his throat to break the pact. He failed."

"Because the dirk was false."

"Because he used the copy to cut his own bonds—and the Ur used that opening." Callum's throat tightened. "He thought he was freeing me. He only cursed me deeper."

Ishbel laid a hand on his shoulder. "You're not him."

"No." Callum's jaw set. "I've seen what comes of trying to break it from within."

From outside, a crash, followed by a shout. Torchlight flickered through the gaps in the boards. Villagers, closing in.

"Darach," Ishbel said. "We need to go."

But Callum didn't move. He was staring at the oath stone, at the faint cracks running across its surface—cracks that hadn't been there before, marks that traced a pattern he recognized from Alistair's memory. The tenth witness stone had been set at the site of the original witness, at the place where the first keeper's blood had been spilled.

"They'll tear this house apart for us," he said. "But they won't find us. You need to trust me."

"Callum—"

"Morag wants the ritual at the circle. She'll bring the Ur with her—she thinks she's leading it to sacrifice. But the Ur can't cross a threshold it hasn't been invited to cross." He looked at her, eyes burning. "My father's blood made this stone an open door. We'll use that."

"How?"

"The dirk binds. The stone anchors. Morag has fed herself to the Ur piece by piece—her memories, her humanity. When she comes to claim the final thread, we'll be waiting with the blade to the stone, and we'll cut her free of the Ur's hold—then bind what's left of her to the keeper's oath."

"She'll be made guardian of the thing she tried to become."

"Aye." Callum's voice was cold iron. "Justice has a bitter poetry."

Ishbel was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded.

"What do you need from me?"

"To stay alive long enough to witness." He turned toward the stairs, the dirk warm against his hip. "And to make sure she doesn't see me coming until it's too late."

They slipped out through the washroom window, into the night. Behind them, the villagers broke down the door with axes and screams. Callum didn't look back.

The path to the standing stones was ancient, older than the village, older than the Morag's lineage. When they reached the clearing, he felt it immediately—a wrongness in the air, a pressure like the moment before a storm.

The tenth witness stone stood at the circle's heart, gleaming wetly in the moonlight.

It wasn't empty.

Morag was there, her arms spread wide, her eyes dark with the Ur's shadow. She was already beginning the ritual—and she was speaking words that Alistair's memory had warned him about.

Not the binding words.

The unleashing ones.

Callum's hand went to the dirk. The blade sang against his palm.

"Wait," Ishbel hissed, grabbing his arm. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Morag's shadow. "Look at her feet."

He looked.

Morag's shadow wasn't her own. It stretched long and wrong, reaching into the trees, toward the village—and in its depths, he saw his own face. His mother's. His father's.

Ewan's.

The Ur had been collecting more than memories from Morag.

It had been collecting them all along.