I slammed into the altar of the sun and howled as something broke. Well, something else. The high priest had been beating on me for a while. Lots of things were already broken.
It hurt to scream. It hurt to breathe. It hurt.
Please. Stop. I tried to say the words. They wouldn’t come out. My mouth was full of something salty and hot. Blood. I spat it out. It sprayed onto the gold of the altar. Only it wasn’t so gold anymore. Everything was coated in red. Who’d have thought I had so much blood in me? And more was coming. Filling up my throat. I was choking.
I was dying.
I was dead.
Except I still hurt, and it seemed like being dead should mean no more hurting. But the pain was fading, the high priest had vanished, and everything had gone shadowy and grey.
Something soft brushed against my skin. The wind? It smelled of trees and whispered with a thousand voices. Okay, not the wind. This was the Ancestors.









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