I didn’t tell him about Rath, though. Didn’t tell him about the black fog that hung over my sleep and sucked the breath from me. Didn’t tell him about my dreams of blood-covered altars and butchered children or the heartbeat I heard in my earthen floor each night when I lay down. From the corner where I’d buried the little idol, the sound rippled out like waves from a stone thrown in water. Even after I dug up the wooden man and burned him, the sound haunted me.
