Imara
THIRTEEN
The quarterly offering begins at dawn.
I stand among the other harvesters on the pit’s eastern rim, my ritual drum heavy against my hip.
The Sacrificial Pit stretches before us—a natural sinkhole where crimson springs converge into a churning pool of blood-tainted water, nearly a hundred feet across, its depths layered with centuries of bones calcified into formations that resemble coral made of fingers and ribs. No one has ever found the bottom.
The pit glows from within. All those accumulated deaths releasing their stored energy, casting the gathered clan members in shifting red light. The screaming here is loudest—echoes of every life ended in these waters layered into a constant background wail that most of us have learned to ignore.
I’ve never learned to ignore it.
Dozens of depleted stock line the pit’s edge, bound and blindfolded.
The quarterly purge—every three months, the clan disposes of those whose bloodlines have been deemed exhausted, whose bodies can no longer produce the quality of blood the rituals demand.
Some have been here for decades. Some are barely out of childhood.
This is my forty-second offering ritual. I’ve attended every one since my promotion to harvester, standing in my designated spot, beating my drum in the prescribed rhythm, watching bodies fall into the churning waters below.
Forty-two times. I’ve never stopped one.
Today is different.
Today, Kharvek stands among the Harvest Guard on the pit’s western rim.
His scars catch the pit’s glow, that faint red pulse visible even at this distance. I can see the tension in his shoulders, the stillness he adopts when assessing a battlefield. His gaze sweeps the crowd, the guards, the bound stock.
When his mismatched stare finds mine, understanding passes between us. Not a signal—we haven’t planned one yet. We weren’t supposed to move for weeks. The ward corruption isn’t ready. The escape routes haven’t been finalized.
We’re not ready.
I pull my attention back to the ritual. The Blood Matron hasn’t arrived yet—she’ll make her entrance when the ceremony reaches its climax, appearing from the Sanctum’s depths to preside over the final sacrifices.
Until then, Sister Vela conducts the preliminary rites, her voice rising and falling in the old chants that make the blood-wards pulse brighter.
The stock shuffle forward in their chains. First group of ten, moving toward the pit’s edge.
That’s when I see her.
Third row back. Small, dark-haired, trembling despite the warmth that rises from the pit. Her blindfold has slipped slightly, revealing one terrified eye—the same shade I see in my own reflection.
Dena.
The nine-year-old from the Red Children’s training pens. The one with my bloodline running through her veins, the one the Matron noticed three months ago for her “promising potential.”
She must have failed a test. Must have disappointed someone. Must have acted—or failed to act—that got her reclassified from “promising” to “depleted.”
She’s nine years old.
My hands tighten on the ritual drum until my knuckles ache. I count the guards around the pit—twelve, plus Kharvek. I count the ritualists maintaining the blood-wards—eight. I count the other harvesters, the Attendants, the observers who’ve come to watch the quarterly purge as entertainment.
Too many. Far too many.
It doesn’t matter.
Dena’s eye finds mine across the crowd. She knows me from the healing sessions I conducted after her training injuries, from the extra bread I smuggled into her sleeping quarters, from the whispered stories I told her about the world beyond the Vale.
She mouths something. A word I can’t hear over the pit’s constant wailing.
Please.
Everything I’ve built—ten years of careful preparation, networks of saboteurs, plans within plans—all of it balanced against one child’s silent plea.
There’s no choice here. There never was.
I shift my grip on the drum. Catch Kharvek’s attention across the pit. His head tilts—that assessment I’ve come to recognize.
Three beats. That was the signal we agreed on last night. Three beats on my drum, off-rhythm from the ritual’s cadence, and he would know a shift had occurred.
We’re not ready. The wards aren’t corrupted. The escape routes aren’t secured. The Matron could arrive at any moment.
But Dena is nine years old, and she’s going to die in the next few minutes unless I act.
I raise my drumstick.
The first beat lands wrong.
Not the prescribed rhythm—a sharp crack that cuts across Sister Vela’s chanting, draws startled glances from the other harvesters. I keep my expression blank. Confused. As if my hand simply slipped.
The second beat follows a heartbeat later. Another wrong note. Another crack in the ritual’s careful harmony.
Vela’s gaze snaps to me. Her lips thin. I know that look—have been under its scrutiny since I was fourteen, since Vela herself plucked me from the Red Children’s pens and handed me a stylus. She taught me everything the Sanctum needed me to know. She never taught me how to stop.
The third beat.
Kharvek moves.