AM Blackmere Short Story Promps for The Bold
The Red Pilgrimiage
The frost was sharp, but they barely flinched. Six people, not worshippers, but keepers, who had seen too many years and remembered too many things, walked the moor. They were barefoot, and the ground accepted them quietly. Their destination was the Black Root, not a place found on any map, but a memory held deep in the bones of their family line.
The burden of the journey lay with Elona, the oldest. She carried something wrapped in rich heavy silken red cloth, a crimson weight against the pale, endless winter day. Inside, something was terribly alive.
It was the Omen Stone. It wasn’t beautiful, just dark, cold basalt carved with symbols that seemed to shift if you looked too long. Its terrible purpose was to hum; a low, deep vibration that rattled the chest whenever it sensed fresh blood. Today, that sound was a constant, anxious tremor in Elona’s palms.
They finally reached the ridge where the world retracted. Below, the ground simply wasn’t there, only a mist, silent, wispy, and damp.
Elona knelt and unwrapped the stone. The cloth fell to the side, and she began to speak the prayer never meant for human tongues. It wasn’t a call to any god, but a sound of negotiation, a sequence of rough, resonant notes pulled from the earth itself. It was a terrible plea. A desperate effort to stall the world, to buy them another year free from the ruin they carried knowledge of.
As the sound faded, Elona made the sacrifice, a thin, steady cut on her forearm. The hot blood, shockingly dark against the stone, spilled onto the surface and down onto the silk woven cloth.
The Omen Stone pulsed, its frantic humming rising and then suddenly vanishing into a dreadful silence. The crimson cloth, now fully saturated, lifted, unwinding into the air like a piece of quiet, silent smoke. The Black Root had been paid for.
The six rose, turning their backs to the emptiness. The pilgrimage was over, and the world was silent again, holding its breath for another turn. They had paid the cost to earn the truce, until the next winter called them to the unmapped darkness once more.
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This piece reads like a haunting, beautifully written winter ritual, carried by quiet dread and the weight of an ancient duty.
Brenda, this story feels like a memory whispered through generations cold, sacred, and quietly devastating. You’ve given us a world where silence is ritual, and sacrifice is the language of survival. Elona’s trembling hands, the crimson cloth, the humming stone each detail aches with ancestral weight. It’s not just fantasy; it’s grief wrapped in myth, duty carved into bone. The way you describe the mist, the prayer not meant for human tongues, the blood as currency it’s hauntingly beautiful. You’ve written something that doesn’t just tell a tale, it remembers. And in that remembering, it breathes. I felt the frost. I heard the silence. I won’t forget it.