Chapter 2 - Earlier That Morning

  Earlier that morning.

  A large crowd had gathered at the city’s square to bid the knights farewell.

  “Do you see them?” said Wean, a ginger boy with a large scar across his face.

  “Barely,” answered Elrin.

  The two boys had to climb onto a nearby stall to get a glimpse of what was happening.

  A statue towered over every building in sight. His Majesty, Johanne the Graceful of Jotun. Long hair cascaded down his shoulders. A gem gleamed at his forehead like a third eye, staring at the mountain where the king's castle sat enthroned.

  “I see Eadward!” shouted Elrin enthusiastically.

  Right next to the statue was Elrin’s brother, Eadward. A thick fur cloak draped his shoulders. Black hair fell to his collar. He wasn’t larger than his companions, but authority radiated from him like heat. He sat straight in the saddle, hands steady on the reins. But his eyes—ringed with dark circles—were distant, fixed on something far beyond the square, beyond the mountain itself. He didn’t look like a man riding to glory. He looked like a man already gone.

  Something is wrong.

  A murmur rippled through the gathered crowd. Wildree, the Lord Chancellor, the King’s right-hand man, rode into the square. His curled mustache framed a face locked in perpetual smugness. He stared down at the crowd.

  Gasps followed as another figure emerged beside him, the Red Priestess. She wore red from head to heel, veil fluttering as she moved. Her presence silenced the square. Behind her, another figure in black robes, pale arms visible and marked with dark lines.

  “A Deathbringer!” cried one of the bystanders.

  Wean leaned close. “What’s going on there?”

  Elrin didn’t answer, but instead jumped off the stall and plunged into the crowd. Insults flew. Kicks landed. He didn’t care—he had to reach his brother. He shoved through the press of bodies until he burst into the square just as the knights moved into formation.

  “Eadward!”

  His brother’s head turned. Their eyes met. For a heartbeat, Eadward’s face was raw, sad, defeated, broken. Then he stretched a smile, that smile Elrin had seen his whole life. Only this time, it was a lie.

  Another trumpet blared in the morning air.

  Eadward straightened, then led the formation.

  Elrin stood still, watching as his brother left him in the square without a second glance and rode the mountain, towards the cave. “Wean,” muttered Elrin. “I’m going in.”

  "What!?" Then Wean saw Elrin's face, the set jaw, the determined eyes. He wasn't joking. "You can't go in there!” his voice cracked with fear. “At best you'd go mad, lose your mind completely. You're not prepared!"

  “But that’s my brother!” said Elrin.

  “Your brother has been trained for this, what are you going to do? You’re not even a Bloodkind!”

  Elrin yanked his arm from Wean’s grip. “Thank you for the reminder.” The words came out sharp, hurt. “I’m going in. If you want to be useful, go to the castle and warn the King. Tell him Wildree brought a Red Priestess and a Deathbringer with the expedition.”

  Wean swallowed, then turned and stared at the castle perched on the mountain.

  Elrin ran for the cave without looking back.

  Deep beneath the mountain, torchlight ringed the stone.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Elrin stood in the circle.

  A deep rumbling filled the void, ancient laughter that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. At first, the eye seemed distant as the moon, but in the space between heartbeats it descended, growing hundreds of feet across. The pupil was of pure, infinite blackness.

  It stared down at them, unblinking and eternal.

  “You mortals,” the voice grated through the darkness. Each word shook the stone beneath their feet. “Ever preaching your noble ideals, your fragile morals. Yet you return to savagery the moment it suits you.” The pupil shifted, fixing on each of them in turn with slow, patient hunger. “How fascinating.”

  The demon’s presence pressed into Elrin like a weight. Blood ran from his nose and ears. He glanced at Wildree. A thin red line traced the Lord Chancellor’s ear, and his face had gone pale beneath the torchlight.

  “Mardukai’s awake!” Wildree shouted, his composure cracking. “Finish it, Deathbringer!”

  The Deathbringer seized Elrin by the tunic and drove his knee into the boy’s side—not to kill—to paralyze. Pain exploded through the boy’s body, tearing the breath from his lungs. The Deathbringer dragged him to the edge of the light, where the darkness waited and pressed the blade’s tip to Elrin’s temple.

  “Oh?” The vast eye focused sharply. “That is the Blood Immortal’s blade. You dare raise the Craostyr against me?”

  The tip of the blade pressed against Elrin’s temple. Slowly sinking through his skull. Elrin felt a violent vibration through his extremities. And the dead knights began to shift, blood pouring out of their wounds.

  The pain did not come all at once, it spread, a crawling vibration rippled through his skull, down his spine, into his limbs. His teeth clenched as something inside him shuddered awake. Around him, the bodies moved.

  Blood began to seep from the fallen knights, sliding across the stone.

  Drawn by an invisible pull, it crept towards Elrin’s feet.

  It wound together like veins searching for a heart.

  Up his boots, over his ankles, across his skin.

  Elrin gasped as it slipped through his pores, his mouth, his eyes. It filled his chest until he could no longer tell where his body ended and the dead began.

  Strength—not his—flooded him. Ten heartbeats thundered inside his ribs. His vision fractured as new memories slammed into him. Steel striking flesh. Battle cries. Orders barked. Fear swallowed. Resolve broken. Pain endured.

  In there, mingled in the sea of red, he felt it. Eadward’s blood. Then he saw it all, his brother’s sadness, his regret, the conspiracy, and…his end. Elrin convulsed as the weight of it crushed him, but his scream never reached the air. Then—

  The flow reversed. Everything inside him tore free. The blood ripped itself out of Elrin’s body, dragging warmth, breath, and will with it. It poured back through the wound at his temple as the Craostyr, the red-veined blade, drank.

  Veins bulged along its length, glowing scarlet, pulsing like something alive. The sound it made was wet and eager, a low thrumming that vibrated through bone.

  Elrin collapsed and hit the stone hard, lungs refusing to draw air, body empty, hollow. He crawled, his hands slipping, his vision dimming.

  Eadward….

  He reached his brother’s body and clutched at it weakly, pressing his forehead to blood-soaked armor that no longer held warmth.

  The Deathbringer stood straight, confidence in his eyes as the Craostyr blazed in his hands, heavier now.

  The demon’s eye shifted, fixing on the blade. “You could never acquire such a weapon alone,” said Mardukai, his voice laced with curiosity. “How peculiar….”

  “Your reign is over,” Wildree shouted from near the tunnel. “Face us!”

  Mardukai’s laughter shook the chamber. “You think I cannot smell your fear, Yelud?” Human. The way he said it made the word a sickness.

  Suddenly, the darkness bloomed with eyes. Thousands of them opening at once, then mouths. Jagged, vast, and hungry.

  Wildree stumbled backward. Even the Craostyr trembled.

  Hiss!

  A shadow tendril struck.

  The Deathbringer moved, dodging with impossible speed. Another strike followed. Then a third. He raised the blade just in time. The impact rang like a cathedral bell struck by a mountain. Elrin’s ears rang as red light exploded outward. The Deathbringer staggered, arms screaming as the blade vibrated violently in his grip.

  “A weapon too great for mortal hands,” Mardukai said calmly. “It will devour you long before it wounds me.”

  The Deathbringer’s jaw clenched—he lunged anyway.

  Four shadows struck at once.

  Something dark shifted in the Deathbringer's eyes, red seeping through the iris. He walked slowly, feet gliding across the ground without friction, yet he moved faster than the eye could track. Every tendril passed through him as if he were made of air.

  Elrin blinked, and the man was suddenly elsewhere.

  Dozens more lashed out. The Craostyr wielder deflected, each deflection fed the blade. Each heartbeat drained him. Blood seeped from his palms into the Craostyr’s screaming veins. Time was against him. Desperate, the Deathbringer plunged deeper into the darkness, searching blindly for the Demon King’s body.

  He found it—a faint flow, barely visible. Like the glint of an eye. The Deathbringer rushed, blade-tip aimed at that single point. He drew back and thrust with all his strength—

  “I’ve seen enough!”

  The voice shattered the chamber.

  Every shadow froze. Every eye turned.

  Blinding light poured in from the entrance, washing over blood, stone, and terror alike.

  A figure stood framed in brilliance. Tall and commanding.

  Johanne the Graceful, King of Jotun.