He knows they will come for him as soon as he learns what they are.
They shamble out of the water on rotting limbs, their faces slack and unknowing in the flickering light of the bonfire - his bonfire, the pyre he made for them. The lighting is too dim, moves too much to see the details on their bodies, but he knows their faces in his heart, knows better than he knows anything that dagger wounds will be the cause of death on each and every one.
I didn’t put you in the water, he wants to tell them, but the words stick in his throat.
The roof he crouches on is the perfect vantage point to see them emerge one by one, to meet their eyes as they turn and stare up at him with unerring accuracy. On and on they come, and forward they go slowly but surely, until an emaciated corpse pulls itself free, wearing the true form of the face he stole. Magic crackles at the child’s fingertips, his skin so tight around its bones to be skeletal; his throat was cut, and Cole accepts that, knows it’s the right of it even if things didn’t happen exactly that way.
It isn’t like when spirits or demons come to a corpse, puppetting it for their own or someone else’s pleasure. He can feel the remnants pressing in on him from hollow eyes, hear the hurt and the hatred that’s all that’s left of what was.
They remember that he killed them. They will come for him.
He cannot move. Maybe he shouldn’t.
