Story 1049: Bride of the Bone King

The winds that wound through the grave forests of Drelmere carried only one name on their breath: The Bone King.

No one dared speak it aloud, for his court of skeletal horrors was said to slumber beneath the earth, waiting for the time of the Binding Moon, when he would awaken and take a bride from the land of the living. And that time… had come.

Marla, daughter of the gravekeeper, never believed the tales. Her father told her the stories to keep her from wandering beyond the ironwood fence. But curiosity, like death, does not care for walls.

On the eve of the Binding Moon, Marla followed the song she’d heard in her dreams—a symphony of rattling bones, wailing violins, and soft whispers promising she was destined for more.

She crossed the fence.