Novels by Jarish143

The spear flew.Lightning illuminated its arc—white, sharp, inevitable.Jenna didn’t have time to scream.David tackled her sideways. The spear tore through the space where her throat had been just a heartbeat earlier, burying itself deep into a tree trunk with a brutal thunk.Jenna hit the ground hard, breath knocked from her lungs. Mud splashed around them, the taste of soil hitting her tongue. Steeve stumbled beside her, crashing to his knees.Behind them, the Bone King roared—angry, wounded pride echoing like thunder.

The night split open with a scream.Not from a survivor. Not from a tribesman.But from the darkness itself.The storm had swallowed half the sky, leaving the jungle drenched and trembling. Jenna hung from the ropes binding her to the wooden post, rainwater soaking through her hair and dripping into her eyes. Every breath hurt. Every heartbeat felt like it might be her last.The tribe danced in a widening frenzy, chanting toward the sky as if begging their gods to witness the slaughter.**"Vorah ka'ren! Vorah ka'ren!" (Blood of dawn! Blood of dawn!)Steeve was barely conscious beside her, shivering violently.

The ropes bit into Jenna’s wrists as the warriors dragged her across the dirt, the ritual ash still burning on her skin. The storm overhead thickened, clouds rumbling like distant war drums. She barely kept her footing as they tied her to one of the wooden posts lining the sacrificial grounds—thick beams made of weathered trunks, stained with old, dark streaks she didn’t want to identify.Steeve was bound to the post on her right, trembling uncontrollably. Lucia and the two remaining male survivors were tied to the others, forming a crooked semicircle facing the massive bonfire at the center of the village. The flames raged high, spitting sparks that drifted like fireflies.The tribe bustled around them, preparing for the night’s ritual. Warriors sharpened obsidian blades against stones. Torches were planted in a wide ring, crea

The creature—no, the man—that stepped into the torchlight looked as though he had been carved out of night itself. Taller than any warrior in the village, his shoulders were broad enough to eclipse the fires behind him, casting the survivors’ cage in deep shadow.Bones crowned his head—long, curved horns wrapped in sinew and painted black. His chest was streaked with white ash symbols, each one pulsing in the firelight like the marks of some ancient rite. He carried a spear twice Jenna’s height, its tip shaped from obsidian and something disturbingly pale.The villagers bowed.“Vor’kai… (Bone King)

Chapter 143 – Ritual PreparationThe moment the chieftain’s bone staff singled Jenna out, the atmosphere in the village shifted—like the jungle itself leaned closer to listen. The chanting died down into excited whispers, then rose again in feverish waves. Warriors pounded their chests. Women began preparing fires, dragging out carved stone bowls, ropes, and baskets woven from sinew.The ritual was beginning.Jenna forced her back straight, though pain pulsed through her ribs with every breath. Her wrists throbbed where the restraints had rubbed skin raw. But she refused to shrink back from the bars.Fear would not keep her alive.Her mind would.

The world narrowed into jagged shapes and bruising hands as Jenna and the others were shoved through the towering wooden gates. Her ribs ached, her wrists burned, her cheek throbbed from the blow she’d taken—but nothing compared to the shock that seized her lungs when she saw what waited inside.The village wasn’t a village.It was a graveyard pretending to live.Bones—large, small, human, animal—were bound into the very architecture. Ribcages served as lantern frames, skulls lined the pathways like guiding stones. Every structure had bones woven into it: huts reinforced with femurs, archways decorated with teeth, drums stretched with skin.The air stank of decay and smoke. The fires were the wrong color—too orange, flickering with an oily sheen.The warriors dragged the survivors across a clearing toward a set of towering cages. Not metal—bamboo lashed together with vines, reinforced by bones tied horizont