Chapter Five - The Offering Nears

(Adelaide)

When all sixteen stood ready, the attendants lined them up and led them through the back corridor toward the platform. Adelaide’s bare feet slapped softly against the cold stone. Every footstep echoed, stacking on top of the last until it sounded like a crowd was walking with them—ghosts of every Offering that had come before.

As they emerged outside, the night hit her—sharp, cold, smelling of pine sap, woodsmoke, and something else beneath it. Something metallic. The air tasted like the moment before lightning strikes; charged, expectant, holding its breath.

The entire village had gathered. Torches crackled on tall iron poles, casting orange light across the crowd. The platform was draped in black cloth. Bells tolled. Wind stirred the hem of Adelaide’s thin white dress, and the cool breeze pebbled her nipples. The thin material rubbed against her perked pink nipples, teasing her. Heat licked low in her belly, unwanted and out of place, fury mixing with the humiliating awareness of her own body under so many eyes.

It made Adelaide want to tear the dress off, stand before the village naked and bare, exactly like the sacrificial goat they believed her to be. If they insisted on pretending this was holy, she would have liked to strip it of every illusion and make them look at what they were really doing.

The wind rose again, whipping strands of her damp hair across her cheeks. She lifted her chin, refusing to show even a flicker of fear.

The crowd parted as the girls were led onto the stage. Sixteen white dresses. Sixteen bare feet. Sixteen scented bodies. The wooden boards beneath them creaked faintly, as if straining under the weight of all that dread.

The Elders stood before them, hands raised in solemn greeting.

“My people,” Elder Thane proclaimed, voice booming unnaturally loud in the cold night, “we gather for the sacred Offering. A ritual older than our oldest stones. A pact that has kept our village safe for a thousand years.”

Adelaide’s nails dug into her palms. Safe? That’s what they call this? Safe? Her fingers bit crescents into her own skin until she felt the sting, the tiny beads of blood—proof that she could still hurt herself before he ever laid a claw on her

Thane continued, “Tonight, sixteen brave daughters stand before us. Blessed. Chosen.”

A murmur of reverent awe rippled through the crowd.

Adelaide felt heat crawl up her throat—not from embarrassment, but from pure fury.

Blessed?

Blessed to be chased by a demon? Blessed to be hunted like deer? Blessed to be killed to sate him off for another ten years?

Her jaw ached from how hard she was clenching it. She could almost hear her teeth grinding over his name, turning it into dust.

Thane stepped forward, gesturing broadly. “These noble girls—the pride of our village—take on the burden so that the Devil need not take many. He will hunt only one. Only one shall be claimed.”

A few villagers nodded gravely, pride shining in their eyes. Adelaide wanted to scream. She wanted to shout their names back at them, to ask if they’d still look so proud when it was their daughter’s dress hanging empty at dawn.

Thane pressed one hand to the ceremonial brazier. Flames licked around his wrist but did not burn.

“And the one he claims shall be honoured—kept in the Devil’s realm, her soul forever protected by him, blessed by him.”

Blessed. Blessed. Blessed. The word kept stabbing into her. Her vision blurred for a second—not with tears, but with the white-hot pressure of rage. Lies. All of it. Lies to sleep better at night. Lies to cover the horror of sending daughters into the woods barefoot. She imagined those lies stacking up in the chapel like stones, heavy and cold, until even the saints in the glass turned their faces away.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She could feel eyes on her—hundreds of them, villagers staring at the wild-eyed girl on the far left of the line. The one with her chin lifted like she wanted to fight the night itself. The one who didn’t smell like compliance. The one who offered herself in her sister’s place.

Some looked at her with pity. Some with admiration. Some with fear. Let them fear her. Let them fear what she would become. If she lived through this, she would never again let them hide behind words like 'duty' and 'honour'.

As the Elders droned on about sacrifice and honour, Adelaide let her gaze drift over the crowd.

Her mother stood near the front, face pale, hands clasped tightly over her charm. Lyra was beside her, tears tracking silently down her cheeks. Adelaide forced a small nod at them. A silent “I’m still here.” Her mother lifted trembling fingers to her lips in return. Lyra pressed her free hand flat over her heart, as if she could physically hold it together.

The Elders raised their hands in unison. “The hour approaches. When the moon stands at its peak, the Offering begins. Prepare your hearts. Prepare your prayers.”

Adelaide’s thoughts hissed back: Prepare your excuses when I don’t return. Prepare your guilt. Prepare to look my mother in the eye and tell her this was necessary.

Wind curled around her bare ankles like a warning. The forest beyond the square whispered. The torches flickered violently for a moment—then steadied.

Something was awake out there. Something was already moving. She felt it like a gaze pressed between her shoulder blades, a patient, amused attention that made every hair along her neck stand on end.

The girls were led off the platform and toward the shadowed tree line where they would wait in the dark, barefoot on cold earth, hearts pounding like trapped birds.

Adelaide’s skin prickled. The night of the Offering had begun.

And somewhere beyond the trees… He was coming.

The path to the forest was narrow, carved into the earth by centuries of terrified footsteps. It wound between torchlit posts and looming pines, the air thick with the scent of sap and smoke. Adelaide walked in the centre of the line, her bare feet crunching on cold soil, every step sharper than the last. Bits of grit and tiny stones pressed into her soles, a series of small, precise pains that kept her anchored inside her body and not in the terror clawing at the edges of her mind.

The guards led them in silence.

Sixteen girls. Sixteen white dresses fluttering like pale moth wings. Sixteen drifting clouds of flower-scent rising around them. The perfume trailed behind them in the dark like a path he could follow with his eyes closed.

The forest loomed ahead—vast, dark, ancient. Its branches tangled together like bony fingers weaving a cage. No light reached inside. The night pooled there, thick as ink. It felt less like approaching trees and more like walking toward the open mouth of some colossal beast.

Every instinct in Adelaide screamed not to go closer. But the guards herded them forward, lanterns swinging, expressions blank as carved stone. No one spoke—not even the girls who had been weeping earlier. Their voices had dried into silence, as if opening their mouths now would shatter something fragile and final.

Adelaide’s heart hammered. Not with fear—she refused fear—but with a gathering, simmering rage that threatened to crack her ribcage open.

They’re marching us in like lambs. And all these people…they just watch. They would go home after this, bank their fires, tuck themselves into bed, and tell each other stories about bravery, pretending not to hear the screams that might carry on the wind.

She glanced back.

Villagers lined the path behind them, holding torches and lanterns, their faces splashed in wavering orange light. Mothers clutched charms against their throats. Fathers stood rigid, jaws clenched. Children hid behind skirts, eyes enormous. All watching. All helpless. All complicit.

Her mother stood near the front, gripping Lyra so tightly the girl might bruise. Lyra’s eyes were red, cheeks streaked with tears, but she didn’t cry out anymore. She just stared at Adelaide, like watching a dream slowly turn into a nightmare.

Adelaide forced herself to look away. If she met those eyes too long, she might break. And she had promised herself that when she broke, it would be in front of no one but him.

The guards stopped when the trees towered directly overhead. The forest swallowed the moonlight, swallowed the warmth, swallowed the world.

Here, the ground was colder. Pebbles bit her soles. The air smelled of damp earth, moss, and something more profound—something that prickled across her neck like breath. The darkness between the trunks wasn’t empty; it felt thick, crowded, full of things that weren’t quite shapes yet.

“Stand here,” a guard commanded, gesturing toward a broad stretch of flattened earth before the tree line.

The girls obeyed. Adelaide stepped into place among them, chin lifted, jaw hard. Wind brushed her bare legs. Leaves whispered. Something unseen shifted deeper in the woods. She had never felt more alive. Or more furious. Her blood sang with a strange, sharp clarity, as if this was the moment she had been walking toward her whole life without knowing it.

Elder Thane approached again, his long grey robes dragging through the dirt. Torches cast leaping shadows across his gaunt face. He looked like a ghost already.

He raised a hand for silence.

“As the moon climbs toward its peak,” he said, “the Offering nears.”

A few villagers bowed their heads. Some pressed their hands to their hearts. Some clung to each other as if seeking strength to share.