The Hollow Herd, Part 5

5. The Last Ride

The sun had risen by the time Mercy Vane left the ruins of the Deadwind Plains behind. The land, once roiling with unnatural horrors, now lay silent, the thick fog dissipating into a pale morning light. The hollow cattle were gone, vanished with the last vestiges of the curse, but Mercy knew better than to think that meant peace had returned. The land had been scarred too deeply, and so had she.

Ezra Cole still knelt beside the sealed well, his face twisted in grief, his hands shaking as he whispered prayers into the wind. Mercy didn’t stop to watch. She never had much time for preachers or their redemption stories. She had her own to reckon with.

She mounted her horse, her movements stiff, the weight of the last few days dragging at her like a heavy coat. The bag of silver the mayor had offered her still sat on her saddle, but it was nothing more than a token now. There was no payment that could ever wash the blood from her hands, no coin that could ever return the lives lost on this cursed land.

“Ezra,” she called over her shoulder, her voice sharp. “You coming?”

He didn’t answer right away. She heard him muttering something, a name she couldn’t make out, before he stood, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. His face was pale, haunted, and it made her wonder how long it had been since he’d truly seen the world. Or maybe how long it had been since he’d been a part of it.

“I can’t go with you,” he said, his voice distant, as if he was speaking from a far-off place. “I have nothing left to go back to. This... this is my penance.”

Mercy didn’t bother to reply. There was no arguing with a man who’d given up on himself. She knew the type. She had seen it too many times in the mirror of her own reflection.

Instead, she kicked her horse into motion, heading east, toward the horizon that stretched forever under the heavy sky. The air felt colder now, and even though the sun had risen, it was as though the weight of night still hung on the land, pulling everything into shadow.

Ezra’s voice called out behind her once more. “Thank you. For everything.”

Mercy didn’t turn to look. Instead, she rode on, the rhythm of her horse’s hooves steady in the silence.

The world had a way of forgetting. People, too. The ghosts of Coldwater and Deadwind would be swallowed by time, like so many others, until there was nothing left but stories — whispers that grew fainter with each passing year. Maybe that’s all she was, too. Just another story, another legend to fade into the mist.

But as she rode, a new thought crept into her mind — one she didn’t want to acknowledge, but couldn’t quite shake.

Maybe that was the only way to survive in a world like this: to let the land have its curses, let the monsters come and go, and keep riding until there was nowhere left to go. Keep moving. Keep running.

Because once you stopped, once you looked back — that’s when the darkness caught up with you.

Mercy Vane was a survivor. And as she rode toward the next town, the next job, the next nightmare waiting for her, she didn’t look back.

Not once.

Whispered Prayer:
"Black the eye and hollow the horn,
Ride not near the fields forlorn.
Steel to hand and salt to door,
Let the Hollow ride no more."