Chapter 1 - The Watching Eye

  It was meant to be simple. A yearly descent. Ten knights. A glance at the chains, nothing more. And his brother would return to him safe.

  The Lord Chancellor should never have been here. Neither should a Red Priestess, nor a Deathbringer.

  Elrin stood at the side of the mountain, the city of Jotun stretched ahead—timber buildings flanked by green fields as far as the eye could see. For the first time, he could not picture what came after today.

  He turned, and the opening of the cave yawned before him, larger than the tallest building in the city and black as the void between stars. No light penetrated that darkness, as though it devoured anything that dared approach.

  Commonborn who ventured this close to the dungeon were found days later, wandering the mountainside in mindless terror, murmuring prayers to gods that never answered.

  Elrin knew he should turn back. But Eadward—his big brother—had worn the expression of a condemned man, all sorrow and resignation, just before he marshaled the expedition inside.

  Something must be wrong.

  He could still see that look on Eadward’s face. If he turned back now and his brother did not return, the boy would hate himself for the rest of his life.

  Elrin took one step forward. Then another—

  His body froze.

  Ten feet from the cave’s threshold, his legs were unable to move. Anxiously he tried moving, but his muscles refused to respond. Frantic and wild, his heart hammered against his ribs. His hair stood on end, and dread crawled up his spine.

  Help! he tried to say, but nothing came out.

  Something glimmered deep within the consuming darkness. Something small and distant. Elrin squinted, trying to focus through the terror clouding his vision.

  It blinked.

  A single eye stared at him from the depths, unmoving, unwavering.

  Elrin had known fear before. This was different. Every cell in his body shrieked for him to flee while simultaneously commanding him to remain perfectly still, like prey before an apex predator.

  The world faded around him. The mountain, the sky, the very ground beneath his feet seemed to dissolve into darkness until only he and that terrible, watching eye remained. Shadow tendrils with too many joints emerged from the earth, reaching for him with desperate hunger. They slithered up his legs like serpents.

  His knees buckled.

  The shadows poured into his mouth, choking him, drowning him from within. His thoughts scattered like leaves in a hurricane. Memory and purpose dissolved into meaningless fragments. The light dimmed to gray, then black. Then—

  Eadward.

  His brother’s face burned into the void. Those eyes, heavy with sadness, with resignation, with something unsaid.

  Eadward!

  A surge of fury blazed through him. Not from strength or courage, but from refusal. Simple, stubborn refusal to let his brother walk away.

  The darkness vanished.

  Elrin gasped, lungs burning. He was standing at the very edge of the cliff, his necklace—the one Eadward gave him—clutched tight in his fist.

  It didn’t...it didn’t try to kill me, he realized. It made me want to do it myself….

  His legs shook violently as he turned back toward the cave. Somewhere in the darkness, the eye still watched.

  I didn’t come here for nothing, thought the young boy with renewed determination. But his legs wouldn’t stop trembling.

  The lace tightly gripped in his hand, he slowly closed his eyes and stepped inside. Like a gust of wind, the malevolent energy washed over him again. Whispers slithered against his ears in a language that scraped rather than spoke. Overwhelming exhaustion pressed down on him, making every breath feel like lifting stones.

  But each time the shadows reached for his thoughts, he saw them again, his brother’s eyes, crying on the inside. That look burned in Elrin’s chest like a brand, a pain no supernatural force could touch or calm. Despite the blinding darkness, Elrin stepped inside, inch by inch. Behind him, the outside world had vanished.

  He stretched out his hands and stone met his fingers, but it felt different.

  I’ve never felt stone this soft before….

  The surface yielded beneath his touch…wet, almost warm, with an organic bounce like ripe olives pressing back against his palm. It felt like something pretending. But he had to keep going, he had to find Eadward.

  His hand followed the natural direction of the wall. Something shifted under Elrin’s palm.

  He jerked back in terror. His limbs pulled tight against his body—eyes straining uselessly to see something—bracing for some unseen attack. The moment stretched quietly in the darkness. Nothing happened.

  The wall unnerved him, but in this darkness, he had no choice. Elrin extended his trembling hand back to the surface and felt that familiar, soft texture. He paused, hoping it was imagination. Nothing moved. He continued forward, using the wall as his guide, now very aware of every texture beneath his fingers. Dread coiled tighter with every step.

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  Then something protruded from the wall, thin, angled, wrapped in soft tissue. He traced its contours, and recognition hit with horrible clarity.

  A nose. No—it can’t be.

  Frantically, he pressed both palms against the surface.

  A face. And there, an arm!

  A wall of bodies.

  Warm breath brushed his skin.

  “My Elena…” whispered an old woman’s voice. “She plays by the lake—have you seen her?”

  Elrin’s body recoiled as if struck by lightning. “Please...water...my throat burns...” came the voice of a young boy, his words rough and raspy with desperate thirst.

  “I’m blind! Oh god, I’m blind,” cried another voice. “Someone help me, please.”

  Then the floodgates opened. Dozens awakened in the darkness, then hundreds, a cacophony of pleading, confession, and endless grief. The noise paralyzed the boy with its sheer volume of despair. Elrin slammed his palms against his ears, trying to keep his sanity intact.

  “I-I’m sorry,” he choked, barely audible over the desperate chorus. “I need to find my brother.”

  He walked away, but the voices followed him, as though the entire cave had become a living throat crying out in anguish.

  He ran.

  The voices chased him through the dark, spilling from the walls, from the floor, from inside his skull.

  “My brother needs me,” he whispered, then louder, “my brother needs me!” The mantra his only anchor against the madness threatening to claim his mind. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs ached.

  Then, Elrin peeled his palms from his ears…silence.

  He stumbled to a halt. The sudden quietness struck harder than the noise ever had. His ears rang, his breath sounded loud, obscene in the emptiness.

  The boy took a few steps forward, then his foot struck something solid. Pitching forward, he hit the stone hard enough to knock the air from his chest. His palms touched the floor, slick and warm. Slowly, he brought his hand closer to his face, and the smell reached him a heartbeat later. Copper.

  “No…” he breathed. His fingers brushed cloth, then skin. Cold. A body, then another, and another.

  He moved blindly, hands shaking as they traced limbs too still, shapes too wrong. Shattered armor plates and helms. A gauntlet split open like a broken shell.

  Knights….

  Ahead, faint and wavering, a light flickered. Elrin staggered toward it, his heart hammered with every step.

  Please, he thought. Please be alive.

  The light grew brighter with each step until he emerged into an opening.

  A massive chamber stretched before him, so vast its walls disappeared into shadow. The space felt less like a room and more like standing inside the ribcage of some titan long dead.

  Dark pools spread across the stone floor like spilled ink, reflecting the light with a sickening sheen. The bodies of knights lay scattered around, some missing heads, others missing limbs, but all of them were unquestionably dead. Their gleaming armor, once proud symbols of the King’s might, now served as nothing more than blood-stained coffins.

  A dozen torches stood fixed in the ground, forming a circle. A thin man stood at its center, pale torso bare, legs armored. Countless old scars covered every inch of his back. In his right hand, he held a crimson sword. Dark red veins pulsed along the blade like living things. His elbow bore a mark, three dark lines running from elbow to knuckle, covering his last three fingers.

  The Deathbringer.

  Then Elrin’s gaze fell to the ground around the man. A few dozen feet away, a knight laid on the ground, still moving.

  Relief hit Elrin so hard his knees nearly buckled as he recognized that unmistakable silhouette. The long dark hair clung to the knight’s neck in wet strands. The scarlet cloak lay crumpled beneath him, soaked through and heavy. One gauntleted hand pressed weakly against the stone, fingers twitching as if searching for purchase.

  “Eadward,” Elrin breathed, rushing forward, and dropping to his knees beside him.

  Up close, the truth revealed itself in fragments.

  The armor was riddled with fist-sized indentations, bent and warped. His brother’s chest rose, but unevenly, each breath shallow and forced. Blood crusted his lips, dark and cracking.

  “I’m here,” Elrin said. Then he saw the arm.

  It ended just below the elbow. Cleanly cut through the armor. The gauntlet lay several feet away, still clenching a sword as if refusing to accept it no longer belonged to him.

  Elrin’s hands hovered uselessly, afraid to touch. Eadward’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment, they were unfocused, but then, they found Elrin. Recognition dawned slowly.

  “What in the hells…” Eadward rasped, his voice barely carrying, “…are you doing here?”

  “It’s going to be fine, Eadward,” muttered Elrin, horror still all over his face. “I can carry you out of here, and we can talk to the King about this, he will punish whoever did this—”

  “And how,” said a calm, measured voice behind Elrin, “would a child know what the King has ordered?”

  The boy spun around.

  Wildree, the Lord Chancellor, stepped from the shadows, hands clasped behind him. Fat and immaculate, he wore a curling mustache and rings that flashed in the torchlight, gold and gemstone glinting softly. Polite interest settled over his face.

  The red priestess stood just behind Wildree, a figure of scarlet stillness. Her gaze drifted across the room until it found Elrin—

  The change was instant. She went rigid. Her eyes locked on his, and for one heartbeat the world narrowed to that single thread. She looked at him as though he was death itself.

  “Truly,” Wildree continued, voice smooth as polished stone, “this is no place for boys.”

  “You betrayed the crown!” shouted Elrin, at the top of his lungs.

  Wildree blinked once. “Betrayal implies deviation,” he said mildly. “This is adherence.” He gestured vaguely to the chamber, the blood, the circle of corpses. “The King is dying, the realm is fracturing and the old solutions have failed.” His gaze settled on Elrin, sharp now, appraising. “What you see here is necessity.”

  He leaned closer, lowering his voice—not to threaten, but to explain. “History does not remember who screamed,” he said. “Only who acted.”

  “You have me!” Eadward rasped. “Leave my brother out of this!”

  Wildree sighed, genuinely, almost regretfully. “I can’t leave him out of this. This is divine intervention, he was sent here by the gods.”

  The priestess grabbed his sleeve. “No! Do leave him out of this,” she hissed. “You must follow the vision—he changes it!”

  Wildree’s jaw tightened. “You see possibilities,” he said without looking at her. “I deal in outcomes.” He pulled his arm free. “Besides, that’s one more body to feed the blade. Our chances are more than positive.”

  “You promised the academy will be safe!” Eadward roared at Wildree.

  “I did promise Heligsol will be safe, but he’s not there, is he?” answered Wildree, with a quick motion of his fingers.

  Blood erupted from Eadward’s mouth. The Deathbringer had driven the carved red blade deep into his throat. The blade’s veins flashed a dark red, as it claimed Eadward’s life.

  “NOOO!” Elrin hurled himself at the Deathbringer and sank his teeth deep into the man’s left forearm, knowing with absolute certainty he’d be cut down immediately. But fury burned hotter than any instinct for survival.

  Wildree watched the boy’s pathetic assault and let out a nervous, tittering laugh. “You’re as foolish as your brother.”

  The bite had only irritated the Deathbringer. He raised his red-veined blade above Elrin's throat, poised for the kill.

  “Don’t kill him, you fool!” Wildree’s voice cracked with urgency—

  Absolute darkness swallowed the chamber whole.

  A massive eye opened in the ceiling.