Autumn Touched


11/30/4722

The room at the inn is cold despite the fire. Your companions are already asleep—you can hear Jorato’s steady breathing from the next bed, Nadja’s almost imperceptible silence in her corner. Even the ever-vigilant Kong has finally succumbed to exhaustion.

Your hands still feel strange, the cut from the leaf is healed but your palm is stained October red and harvest-gold. The color won’t wash off because it’s not on your skin. It’s in your skin. The color won’t wash off no matter how hard you try to scrub. Finally you stop trying to scrub it away and make your way to your bed. The pillow is soft. The blanket heavy. Your eyes close.

And autumn takes you.

You stand at the heart of an endless field of wheat; golden, silent, waiting. Not pleading. Not begging. Just watching. The way predators wait.

“He comes, they whisper to each other. Autumn’s hand. The one marked.”

A scythe grows FROM your hands. Roots spreading up your arms. Wood merging with flesh.

“You are the harvest, the wheat says.” Not to you. About you. “Always were.”

“I’m a guardian—”

“Were,” says Commander Hareth’s voice says from everywhere. “Until Gallowspire. Until we fell and you were… saved.” The word drips poison.

The scythe moves without you. Where it cuts, things age. Rot. You taste every death—copper and rust.

“Wrong side of the blade now,” Hareth says.

You try to scream but an October wind pours from your mouth. Wind that kills flowers. That strips trees bare. Your breath is autumn itself.

Suddenly you stand in familiar ruins where your garrison stands in rows. Every knight who died at Gallowspire. Patient. Still. Not quite dead. Not quite alive. Preserved in the moment of their deaths. Forever falling. Forever bleeding. They don’t speak to you. They just watch with eyes reflecting nothing but the changing of the season. The scythe grows heavier. You look down. Your armor rusts as Autumn slowly eats the metal. Your hands are still yours but the nails are too long, pointed, dark as old wood. When you flex your fingers, they move wrong.

Looking up you see Mira standing among the knights. Neck still broken from your hammer.

“Autumn doesn’t lie”, the ghost of Mira says. “Autumn just shows what summer tries to hide. What you are trying to hide from since Gallowspire. “

For a moment you see yourself at Gallowspire, buried under rubble, something cold watching from the dark. You at the crossroads, holding a leaf that is not a leaf. You in a hundred years, still ending things. All at the same. All versions of you holding the same scythe. This isn’t transformation, its recognition.

Your body moves without asking swinging the scythe. One knight. Then another. And another. They fall like leaves. Bright autumn leaves, always falling. Their armor crumbles to rust leaving holes in the world. And the leaves whisper to you about inevitability of it all.

You are back in the field but the wheat becomes children. Every child you failed to save. Silent. Waiting their turn. Mira is there too looking up at you with accusing eyes.

“You killed me to save me,” she says in a voice like wind through rotted out hollow tree. “But who’s going to save you, Hugh? Who’s going to harvest the harvester?”

The scythe swings. You don’t want it to but you can’t stop it. She falls and becomes leaves. Becomes compost. The other children step forward. Not eager. Not afraid. Simply ready. And you do it. The scythe swings and swings and with each swing you you can feel the wood replacing your bones. until you are not holding the scythe. You are the scythe.

Then you’re back where it started beneath Gallowspire. Buried again under rubble. Something vast watching from darkness. The dead knights around you aren’t rotting. They’re being transformed. Ribs opening like seed pods. Spines becoming vines. Mushrooms growing in hollowed out skulls.

“Join them or serve. You chose this at Gallowspire. You chose this at the crossroads.”

But there is no choice. Never was. Only autumn. You rise. The scythe growing from your palm. This is what saved you. This is the price.

You wake. The bed is covered in leaves. Real leaves. Brown and gold and red. They crunch when you move. Your hands—for just a moment—are bark-skinned, thorn-nailed, branch-fingered. Then normal again. You sit until dawn and you know the nightmare wasn’t just a dream. Something has changed.



And autumn is patient.
Autumn is everywhere.
Autumn always, always comes.