The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 12: Chapter 11 — The First Hunger

Read chapter 12 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Chapter 11 — The First Hunger The temple doors had warped from the heat. Yara set her shoulder against one and shoved. Wood splintered. Iron hinges tore free with a metallic screech. The door hit the ground like a falling tree. Smoke poured through the opening, thick and gray. She stepped outside into dawn light the color of old rust. Bodies surrounded the temple entrance. They knelt in concentric rings facing the doors, hands reaching toward the threshold like supplicants frozen mid-prayer. Pilgrims in scorched robes. Guards still gripping useless weapons. Civilians who'd run here thinking the temple meant safety. All of them dead. Yara's stomach turned. Their skin had dried and tightened until it clung to bone. Faces sunken, cheeks hollow, eyes half-open and glazed. Mouths slack. They looked like they'd starved to death over months, not hours. Like something had reached inside them and drunk them empty from the inside out, leaving only husks behind. The Gem had drained them. Every spark of life, every breath of vitality, pulled out through the green light while they knelt paralyzed, unable to run, unable to look away. She'd stopped it. Swallowed it whole so it couldn't keep feeding on anyone who wandered too close. But the hunger hadn't gone away. It had just moved. Now it lived in her chest, patient and waiting, and feeding it was her problem. The plaza sloped down toward what had been Market Rise. The vines that had crawled everywhere the night before were gone—withered to brittle brown stems that crumbled to powder when the wind touched them. Where they'd wrapped thickest around bodies and buildings, gray ash marked their paths. The cobblestones beneath looked porous and fragile, like touching them too hard would make them collapse. The wind smelled like a crypt that had been sealed too long. Runewick wasn’t dying anymore. It was simply broken. "How long?" she asked. Her voice came out hoarse and cracked. No answer. No clocks left running. No bells to mark the hours. By the double-pulse in her chest and the exhaustion in her bones, maybe a day since the blast. Twenty hours since she'd been stealing bread at the baker's stall. Less than a day since the world ended. “I need to rest,” she told the doorway, the empty square, and the small pulse behind her breastbone. Feed me first. “Potion first,” she said, just as stubborn. “Or I’ll bleed out before I can find you dinner.” A stillness, then a cool reply brushing the back of her thoughts. Faster, then. She took inventory because counting steadied her hands. Magic: the knot behind her knuckles—the constant source—remained. Other abilities—protection, reshaping, healing—would require real sleep, the Gem would not allow. Wounds: palm, reopened; flank, deep bruise under ribs; shoulder, throbbing from recoil; ankle, still a whisper of pain if she forgot herself. Gear: knife; ruined spear shaft; three tar-resins; two warm crystal shards; one thin ward-ring with a worn sun; one heel of bread gone to stone. "Shops first," she told herself. "Apothecaries, guild stores, anything with red glass. After that…" She stopped. The word "survivors" stuck in her throat like a promise she couldn't keep. "After that, I'll think again." She needed to see how far the damage spread. She climbed to the temple roof, boots finding purchase on carved stone still warm from the night's glow. The city spread below her like a map written in ash and ruin. She rolled to the roof's lip. Below, the ring of bodies around the temple doors lay untouched, the way a city sets an offering and the hill refuses. Unmoved. Unclaimed. She swallowed hard. “You could’ve left some mercy behind,” she said to the ruin. Mercy is a waste. Her jaw tightened. “Spoken like something that’s never been human.” Spoken like something that remembers what hunger costs. She didn’t answer. Instead, she lay back, eyes tracing the washed-out sky. The quiet pressed until she could feel her own pulse counting time against the Gem’s steadier hu