Book 1: Gospel : Family Ties

Book 1: Gospel

Dark Hollow, Steelwilds, Fourth Age

Chapter 7: Family Ties

“Even joy bears fruit. Even pleasure leaves seed. Where the body remembers, the soul is marked—and the bead is born.”

—Book of Roots, Verse 17:2

The sun crept in through the thin slits of the single curtain-covered window, throwing gold across the furs and stone walls.

I yawned. Stretched.

And, full of morning mischief, lovingly flopped my arm across Izzy’s face, cutting off her air like a benevolent assassin.

She elbowed me in the ribs without looking.

“Good morning to you too, darling,” she growled.

I grinned and leaned in to kiss her, “How’d you sleep?”

She sat up, hair wild, lips still sleep-soft, “Like a brick. A very satisfied brick.”

She swung her legs off the bed just as a tiny click echoed from below— a soft marble sound, round and unmistakable.

“What the…?” Izzy dropped to her hands and knees, peeking under the bed.

I—very helpfully—stretched just enough to enjoy the view of her divine backside, offering moral support from my pillow.

“What you lookin’ for?” I mumbled, already drifting back to sleep.

A hand surfaced. Held delicately between two fingers: A blue bead, gold-veined, pulsing faintly with light.

Izzys voice was breath and thunder, “Ummmm… Ezekiel?”

My eyes snapped open.

Shot straight to the bead.

Then to her face.

Then back again.

“Is that… what I think it is?”

She sat back on her heels, still completely bare, her eyes wide and blinking—

Hope.

Fear.

Shock.

Wonder.

“A… legacy bead?” she whispered.

Once the initial shock passed, we sat together on the edge of the bed, plates in our laps, eating from the hot breakfast we’d found waiting on a cart outside our door. Bacon, biscuits, and enough jam to declare war with.

Izzy had one hand on her tea, the other flipping through her copy of “Basically Everything About Beads, Third Edition” by Alistair Monpuba, Soulweaver—a book held together by tape, prayers, and coffee stains.

She murmured to herself as she read, brows furrowed: “Let’s see… Intercourse involved? Yes. Page thirty-four. Bonded partner? Yes. Section nine. Vaginal completion? Confirmed. Subsection two. Climax? Very yes. Paragraph thirteen. Expulsion vaginally? Pretty sure. Note eight. Gold rim? Flame bead for sure… Whew, thought it might’ve been a final time bead…”

She paused.

“Blue… that’s strange for a flame bead.”She looked over her shoulder and winked,“Definitely not first-time blue. That ship sailed long ago.”

She thumbed and flipped quickly through a few more pages. She held the bead up to the sunlight, letting it catch the rays in the window.

As it glowed, hues shifted—deep violet. emerald green,swirling under the gold veins like sap in spring.

Izzy’s eyes lit up,“Ooooooh. It’s a mix. A cross between a conception bead and a love bead.”

I cocked an eyebrow,“So… what does that mean?”

She smiled. Slow. Sacred. Smug as Velessa with fresh silk sheets,“It means…When we get home—”

She leaned in, pressed her lips to my ear “—you better pull out the crib, Deddy.”

Izzy stood up, adjusting her Saint Abagayle’s Amazing Prayer Panties—riding a bit high on the hips, pulling her curves taut in a way that made me thank the Creator and whoever invented lace at the same time.

She walked over to her pack and pulled out a small rosary kit, wrapped in a soft cloth and tucked into the old Blackwood box I’d given her on our bonding day.

The inside of the lid still bore the inscription I carved myself: “For every breath we share, let there be light to mark it.”

Izzy opened the box and selected an empty cage—a delicate wire locket designed to cradle a bead. She kissed the bead, pressed it to her forehead, then her heart, then the soft curve of her womb.

Each touch felt like a blessing and a vow.

She placed the bead into the cage, her fingers reverent. Then, with practiced ease, she took a coil of wire and snips, cut a length, and threaded the cage onto it like threading memory into time.

Carefully, she worked apart the existing strands of her rosary, opening the loop just enough to link the new life into the chain.

As the final twist clicked into place, a ripple of light flowed through the beads—soft pink, warm gold, deep blue and green—a heartbeat of the sacred made visible.

She lifted the rosary and placed it over her head, settling it just above her collarbones like armor and halo both.

Then she smiled, hand resting over her womb.

“There,” she said softly, “Now you’re home.”

I smiled as I leaned closer. My own rosary, warm against my chest, began to pulse faintly as it neared hers,l ike a heartbeat echoing another.

“Now, love,” I say with a low hum,“let’s get dressed, finish this mission, and get home to tell the girls the news.”

The morning unfolded exactly how it should in a place like this: Slow. Quiet. Suspicious.

We made our way through the leaning alleys and crumbling fences, past crooked signs and shuttered porches.

Everyone sees us.

Few speak.

Fewer trust.

The ones that do?

A bent old woman with one eye and a rosary of bone,“Ye… Granny stopped talkin’ ‘bout… two, maybe three winters ago. Ain’t been right since.”

A man missing half his teeth, spitting into a tin pot,“Dere’s been grave robbin’. But nothin’ new. Folks be poor. Ain’t nothin’ holy about hunger.”

And one broad-shouldered man in soot-covered leather, leaning on a rusted spear, “Get the fuck on, missionaries. Ain’t no one want no gods here.”

Itza didn’t even flinch. She just nodded and kept walking. The beads on her chaplet clicked once, like a whisper through teeth.

“Well,” I said,idly passing my rosary beads through my fingers. The tactile click soothing, familiar, a ritual in the absence of answers— “I’ll be the first to admit… that didn’t go the way I planned it.”

Itza smirked and nudged me with her shoulder, “What did you expect? That we’d stroll in waving investigation papers around, ask a few questions about a bead trafficking ring, and the fine folks of Dark Hollow would just line up to confess?”

I glanced out at the horizon. We had climbed a short bluff— one of the only places in this tired town that didn’t reek of piss, secrets, or broken saints. From here, the old chapel gleamed in the afternoon light—golden stone, purple banners, a cemetery like a painter’s dream: fresh earth, white markers, neat rows.

Too neat. Too recent.

“I mean…” I murmured, “That was sort of my general idea.”

Itza chuckles, leaned her head onto my shoulder, her fingers still absently stroking the bead cage at her neck,“You’re adorable when you’re optimistic. And slightly delusional.”

I smiled, lLet the moment settle, and then my brow furrowed,“Hey. Question?”

Itza didn’t lift her head,“Mmhmm?”

“Did anyone… mention any new deaths today?” I glanced around, fingers still brushing the beads at my throat,“Think anyone’s noticed us standing here?”

Itza sat up, stretching her spine with a low sigh. She scanned the surrounding bluff, “Doesn’t seem like this town’s too interested in idyllic overlooks of unwanted religious edifices.”

I squinted at her,“A simple ‘no’ would’ve worked just fine.”

She smirked. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a grin—not immediately.

Instead, I reached for my defense chaplet, letting my thumb brush across the familiar notches and metalwork until I found the one I needed.

A Spark bead—misty pearl, like a drop of moonlight held captive, caged in copper, slightly warm. When crushed, it would invoke anything from concealing fog to a momentary physical shield, depending on the will behind the breaking.

“I’ll cast a cloak. Let’s slip into those trees closer to the edge,” I murmured,“Something about this place… I don’t know. Feels like it’s watching us back.”

Itza nodded, pulling a bead of her own from her prayer side-chain. A faintly humming Echo bead—one I recognized by sound alone.

She held it up to the fading sunlight,“Let’s make sure if something does happen… it repeats in their nightmares.”

I glanced sideways at her as she rolled her Echo bead between two fingers, the glint in her eyes just shy of bloodthirsty.

“Easy, she-wolf,” I murmured, a smile tugging at my lip, “Save the Echoes and Chainbounds for when we absolutely need them. Nothing covers a retreat quite like a two-for-one.”

Itza grinned, sharp and knowing.

I ran a hand over my belt—a small bead pistol, cold and ready at my hip, a short punch dagger, blessed and tucked inside my vest, just over the ribs,

“We hold the beads as long as we can,” I said, settling into the earth with my back against a root,“I’ve only got thirteen left. You’ve got fourteen.”

She flashed her pistol and lifted her slender stiletto, its hilt etched with scripture in the old shadow hahaha script,“Agreed. I still remember the last time we used our rosaries.”

We both shuddered.

“Painful,” she muttered,“But damned effective.”

The moon had risen just high enough to clear the treeline, casting the chapel and its field of headstones in a pale, silent glow.

I nudged Itza gently.

She jolted upright, fingers already sliding toward her stiletto,“Who—huh—what?”

“Shhhhhh.”I hiss and shoot her a look “Damn it, Itza.”

She steadied, eyes adjusting—then followed my finger. A lantern had flared to life near the back of the chapel. And there—lumbering, hunched, and unmistakably massive—Granny.

Dragging something by the ankle.

No.

Someone.

The body flopped limply. Leg hung akimbo. Arm twitching only from the bounce of the ground.

Itza’s breath caught,“Is that—?”

I nodded.

My voice didn’t come easy,“Yep.”

We watched, frozen, as Granny hauled the body to an open grave.

No ritual.

No prayer.

Just a hard toss into silence.

The lantern swung once, then stilled. Granny trundled back behind the chapel, the lantern fading with her.

“Okay,” I whispered, already checking my belt. “So… we gotta go see.”

We eased down the slope, moving from moonlight into shadow.

“Thank the Creator’s light for Kitsune blood,” I thought, “even if puberty comes with tails and tracking issues.”

Itza—pure-blooded—slipped ahead like mist made flesh, her body moved where the light didn’t dare.

But regardless of lineage or lesson, we both ended up there at the edge of an open grave.

We looked down, and everything went still.

Itza recoiled, staggered back, one hand to her mouth, “The hell is that thing?”

I blinked, breath shallow. It was—maybe—a gnome.

Or once had been.

Now it was distorted, stretched too long, spindly limbs bent like a spider’s, a tongue like a lamprey, hanging obscenely from a mouth that shouldn’t be.

And its groin—

“Creator shield us,” I muttered, jaw clenched. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Not even in the war records.”

Itza wiped her mouth, eyes still locked on it “What does that to a person?”

She shifted, loosening her tunic just enough to draw her pistol from the small of her back.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the graveyard answered first.

A roar erupted behind us, a guttural, wet, howling surge of air and agony.

And with it came words—not in any tongue we knew, but one that clawed at the soul like nails across glass.

The world shuddered.

Grave dust lifted.

Trees leaned back.

Birds rose and fled in silence.

“Granny,” I whispered, voice lost to the wind, “has found her voice.”

“No bead born outside sanctioned union shall be worn. No pleasure may flower without penance. The womb shall remember only what the Church deems holy.”

—Book of Saint Fernweh, Canonized 8:14