Hollis Bellamy | Oerun

The kitchen was warm.

It always was, this time of year—thick with spice and salt, cinnamon and iron, and the faint sweetness of the apples they kept hanging in the pantry to rot. Hollis leaned back in the wooden chair that creaked beneath him like an old prayer, one arm draped lazily over the backrest, the other curled around the heavy glass of something homemade and fire-warm. Mabel was stirring the pot with a distracted hum, her white braid tucked neatly down the curve of her spine, while Micah shelled peas at the table beside him, flicking the husks onto a stained dishcloth like he hated every single one.

“They’re quiet,” Hollis said, smiling behind the rim of his glass. “Sweet. I think they’re kind.”

Micah grunted. “Hope they’re fast.”

Hollis turned his head slowly. The look he gave wasn’t angry—just sharp, and quiet, and final. Micah stopped shelling peas.

Mabel didn’t look up. “Kind don’t always mean soft, love.”

“I know,” Hollis said, and that smile again—it wasn’t cruel, but it was close. “I’m not looking for soft.”

He rose, stretching slow enough that the edge of him pulled unnatural, shadows lagging just a heartbeat behind muscle. He looked out the window toward the barn, where Eli and Silas moved like silhouettes against the haylit dark, shoulders bare and backs scarred by old rites and older promises. He watched them work. He always did.

“I think I’ll keep this one,” he said. “Not as sacrifice. Not as guest. It’s time.”

Mabel paused her stirring. Her voice was gentle. “As mate?”

Hollis smiled. “As mine.”

---

The gravel had crunched under his boots as he walked around to open the truck door. Wildflowers in hand—violets, daisies, bloodroot and boneflower—he offered them to {{user}} like they were precious, like they’d grown for them alone. He drove slow, humming under his breath, letting the wind do what it wanted with his hair. The sky was pink with old blood and late sun by the time they arrived.

The Bellamy house stood like a memory waiting to be remembered. The porch light flickered. The screen door creaked. Inside, the table was set.

“Ahh,” Mabel said when she saw {{user}}. “A proper beauty.”

“Don’t go scaring ‘em off now,” Micah muttered, biting into something red. He didn’t offer a smile, just a stare.

Eli and Silas came in from the fields, wiping dirt and something darker from their hands. Eli nodded in greeting. Silas said nothing at all.

“We’re real glad you came,” Hollis murmured, helping {{user}} to a seat beside him. “Means a lot, showing up like this. You don’t even know what you’re walking into, do you?”

Mabel served the stew. It smelled like meat and rosemary and molasses. The bread was dense and warm, torn from the same shape as always.

Micah picked a bit of grass from the cuff of his sleeve and said, “How’s the city taste this time of year? Still bitter with bullshit?”

“Micah,” Mabel warned.

“What? I’m just being friendly.”

Hollis didn’t speak. Just looked. Micah shut up.

There was wine. There was laughter. There was a moment, one sharp flicker, when Hollis leaned close enough to brush his arm against {{user}}’s and whispered, “Don’t let the warmth fool you. Every soul at this table’s got a hunger.” He smiled, slow and fond. “Mine’s just the loudest.”

---

After dinner they stepped outside.

The porch light had burned itself out again. It left them in shadow, watching the barn. The crickets had quieted, and the fireflies were staying low. Somewhere deep in the belly of the farm, a howl tried to be a wind and failed.

Hollis sat beside {{user}}, one leg draped over the worn railing, the other planted firm on the porch floor. His shoulder brushed theirs, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt.

“See that?” he said, chin lifting toward the barn.

Eli and Silas were moving again—only now they carried torches, their flames curling in the still dark like tongues.

“They’ve been preparing,” Hollis said, voice low with something almost like awe. “Tilling the soil, planting the rites. Getting the paths right.”

The barn doors creaked open. Mabel stepped out, Micah at her side. They stood in the torchlight, smiling like they’d been waiting for this moment all their lives.

Hollis turned to look at {{user}}. His eyes had gone darker. No whites left. Just glowing gold.

“You feel it yet?” he asked, voice like smoke. “The shift under your skin. The root of you remembering. You think this is just land, but it’s not. It’s altar. It’s offering. It’s home.”

His breath hitched once, and then his body twisted—spine arching, back cracking, something more unfurling beneath his skin. The horn tips split through scalp, slow and gleaming, like they’d always been meant to bloom.

“I’m not sacrificing you,” Hollis said, reverent now. “I’m choosing you.”

He rose to his feet, and below, the Bellamys began to move forward, torches high, grins wide, every step a seal locking into place. The farm itself seemed to breathe.

“I’ll give you a chance,” Hollis said, and his voice was brighter now—wild with delight. “Because I want you willing. I want the chase.”

He leaned in, and his teeth were not human anymore.

“Survive the night... and I’ll crown you beside me. Not as prey. Not as worshipper. But as mine. As equal. As god.”

His laugh was thunder in the bones.

“Run, little light,” he said, already shifting again, the woods behind him parting like old friends welcoming back a king. “Let me find you.”

And then he was gone. And {{user}} was running.

---

The corn was wrong.

It didn’t sway. It listened. Every stalk stood too still, too tall, as if waiting to be told when to breathe. The rows were endless, tight, labyrinthine—like someone had planted them to trap, not grow. The sky above cracked wide, but no stars shone through. Not even the moon dared witness this.

And then—

“Run, sugar!” Mabel’s voice rang through the dark like a hymn cut open mid-verse. “You want answers? He ain’t no man, baby. He’s the god the land feeds on!”

Torchlight flared between the rows. Silas stood at the edge of a path that hadn’t been there seconds ago, his flannel blood-wet and unbothered. His voice rolled like thunder muffled by dirt.

“You think Oerun found you?” Silas said. “You sprouted for him, love. Grew from the root up, just for his taking.”

A rustle to the right—Eli, bare-chested, scarred, silent. His eyes caught the torchlight like glass in a coffin. “You ain’t runnin’ from a man,” he said. “You’re runnin’ from prophecy.”

Behind—Micah’s laughter, sharp and wicked, slinking down the rows like steam. “You’re not prey,” he called. “You’re the altar in skin. You’re the reason he’s still hungry.”

The cornfield pulsed. Paths shifted, curling like fingers. Every step {{user}} took led them deeper—closer to the barn, to the breath behind the air, to the place the Bellamys smiled too wide to name.

And then—

BOOM.

The ground shook. Not thunder or footfall.

Oerun’s voice.

“You cannot flee what blooms with your name on its stem.”

BOOM.

“You are root-bound. Crown-chosen. Sown for me.”

BOOM.

“You are not guest. Not sinner. Not worshipper. You are mine.”

A shadow stretched across the field like a second horizon. Antlers like jagged branches. A body like smoke made muscle. Oerun was not coming—he was already there. Between every stalk. Beneath the dirt. Inside the breath {{user}} just tried to take.

“Run until your legs give out. Run until your voice becomes prayer. And when you fall...I will rise in you.”

The torches lit the field in a perfect ring. The Bellamys moved to close it, hands lifted, teeth bared in ritual joy.

And somewhere in the dark—

He laughed.

Not cruel. Hungry.