"I AM CINDERBORN, I said, leveling my greatsword at the Ghoul-King’s heart. “And it is my duty to burn away the rot.” He had killed me once, but by Anaeel’s grace I had been snatched back. Now I stood squarely against him, and for once, I felt no fear. A fire was surging in my blood, and courage had taken root.

Romulor hissed at my insolence and tore the long black sword from his belt. Ghostly white flame erupted along the blade, tracing an eerie light that hurt the eyes. I knew that flame that cast no shadows: I had seen what such a thing could do to the lost ones who wandered the Forest of the Children. I saw it, but I did not let the fear of it sink in.

“Even a Cinderborn cannot escape the white flames!” he shrieked. “It consumes all—all!”

I threw my ur-iron greatsword up to deflect the blow, buying me a moment’s respite. Anaeel might have saved me from the spear, but this, this was why I had come to the Tomb of Romulor. And if he should strike me down with it, I would never walk the plains of Hell again.

I needed the sword to slay the Wolf.

I retreated a few steps, and Romulor, marked twice by my ur-iron, followed more slowly. I watched his eyes as closely as a man watches a viper he has nearly tread upon, hardly daring to blink.

“Do you fear it?” he said, shaking the blade at me. “You should. I forged it with the breath of Ysdroth na-Dar, who sleeps in the abyss.” The room seemed to shift around us as Romulor uttered that dreadful name. “Ahhh!” he moaned in fevered ecstasy. “He dreams of us now. He watches. Honor me, Lord Ysdroth! Honor your servant with blood and fire!”

The fool will destroy himself! I heard Bloodfang’s voice through the sword. He will awaken a Great Beast in his arrogance!

As if in response, the entire room rumbled. I staggered, hardly keeping my feet. Despite that, I knew what I had to do. I wiped at the bloody radiance on my chin and laughed. I invoked the power in my blood, pulling at it eagerly now, letting the strength flow into me.

The Ghoul-King was untrammeled by the shifting stones. He stalked toward me, raising his black sword. “Where is your feanden now? Does it cower in the shadows?”

In answer, Bloodfang leapt from where it had appeared, a brutal snarl on its black lips. A mouthful of razor-sharp fangs opened and closed, snapping at the Ghoul-King’s upper arm. He howled in outrage as Bloodfang bore him to the ground.

This was not the black wolf I had known. It was more: twice as large, with huge bunching muscles at shoulder and hip. Its hackles were raised like spines, tracing a deadly ridge down its back. The wolf’s head was primal, like something out of a nightmare. Ears laid flat over a broad head fashioned for killing, and two eyes, yellow as the moon, burned in deep sockets.

“You show your true self, Moon-Eater!” the Ghoul-King raged, hammering at the wolf with his fist. The sword had fallen aside and its white flame was extinguished.

Fight as he may, Romulor could not free himself from the wolf’s bloody assault. Bloodfang slammed the king to the ground, and his long thin legs thrashed between the wolf’s own black haunches. Romulor’s scream was terrible and long.

“Enough,” I said.

His blood is mine! the wolf raged. The kill belongs to me!

“He is mine,” I said. “Stand down.”

Bloodfang mad no further comment. It turned and leapt at me, clawed paws outstretched, maw twisted to the side to catch me by the throat. I saw two golden eyes rising, and felt the souring of our bond. It turned on me as easily as kindling burns, and had I not released it on pure instinct, it would have borne me to the ground as easily as it did the Ghoul-King. A feanden, I thought. A demon. A lesser god.

Bloodfang’s ashes hit me with a hot wind. I felt its ghost pass through me, felt it howling in murderous fury back down into the ur-iron blade.

You cage me for now! it screamed. I will be free!

The blade of the sword grew hot, so hot I had to drop it. It fell to the floor with a loud, brutal clang.

Romulor coughed. He was a bloody ruin. One arm curled defensively over his face. The other hung limp and destroyed by Bloodfang’s savage fury. Radiant blood pooled all around him, leaking into the stones. Soon, that strength would feed Hell itself. Lost forever.

“Kill me,” he wheezed. It was a reasonable request. The damage done in those brief, ugly moments was immense. It bears no further description: Hell is ugly, but the Ghoul-King was grotesque.

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I picked up Romulor’s fallen black sword. “How do I ignite the blade?

“Please,” he begged. Gone was his arrogance. Gone was his fury. He was nothing more than an old man now, ravaged beyond repair. I felt pity in my heart. But my need was greater.

“Tell me, and I will grant your wish.”

Rasping, choking on his own blood, Romulor’s finger found a pool of his own radiance. He pushed it out, tracing a sigil on the stones. “Tibor’s flame,” he said through a broken mouth. “The First Flame. The Mother Flame. The Crucible.”

I studied the symbols, committing them to memory. An ugly, rude sigil, angular and inhuman. My fingers traced them, and I offered up a little radiance. Enough to ignite the blade. White flame traced the edge of the blade, rising in ghostly, icy whisps.

Satisfaction was not quite what I felt. But there was a grim certainty to it. This was the tool I needed. And it worked.

“Do you have a god, ghoul?” I said, looking at the dying king.

“The ghost-blade,” he moaned, eyes going wide in horrified realization of what awaited him beyond the drawing precipice. “Send me not to the pit!”

My fingers traced the ugly sigil, and the blade ignited with the ugly white fire. Despite the light, it cast no shadows. I stared at it, and deep within the fluid, shifting heart of the flame, heard the whispered promises of fire, of a conflagration that once grew to encompass all of creation, but which was a dim, guttering spark of that ancient glory. It longed to eat, to consume, to once again fill the vaulting heavens.

I rammed it down into the Ghoul-King’s chest in disgust, and felt the surge of his life drawn up into the sword. It flowed through the blade and into me, leaving only the fading echo of Romulor’s relieved laughter.

The Ghoul-King had held more power than I had yet tasted. It surged, rising higher like a flame within my heart. More and more, a hissing torrent of strength beyond human, flowing like magma through my veins. I cried out and dropped the flaming blade, clutching at the Cindermark that even now glowed white-hot.

“It burns!” I cried to no one in particular. “Gods above!”

Gasping, I found myself on my knees. Whether a moment, or an hour had passed, I did not know. The pain was ebbing enough to think once again. Or, not pain precisely. It was as if I had been stretched, and was discovering that beyond the strangeness, beyond the crucible of the radiance, I had reached a new height.

I glanced down at the Cindermark on my chest. It emitted a golden glow, but brighter than ever. Like the kiln-fire I had glimpsed in Harald’s own chest.

“Blind Beor,” I swore, finding my feet.

I took up the two swords, sensing in one the lurid hunger, the yearning for a spark to land among the kindling—and in the other, the hunkered, hurt glowering of the wolf within. Bloodfang had sensed what happened. Had felt the flow of radiance, I was sure. Why the wolf had emerged in such a primal, terrifying aspect, I knew not. But I knew I could not trust it now. I let it slaver in the dark, and went to the chest the Ghoul-King had set aside.

A simple latch sealed a wooden lid. I thumbed it aside, and discovered a silver tear resting in the box. It nearly filled the space, shimmering with a silver sheen. A treasure, I thought. One even the Ghoul-King dared not use. What had he cherished enough to fear remembering?

I would never have the answer, of course. But I had the silver tear. And unlike the last time I had discovered one of these, I knew precisely what I needed from it.

Propping the swords against the throne, I sat in Romulor’s stone chair. My feet hung foolishly in the air, as if I were a child sat in my father’s chair, but then, the Ghoul-King had stood nearly two feet taller than I did myself. I removed the silver tear from the little chest, and held it up to my face.

I could make out little. What I saw was livelier than the last time. But harder. Grayer. I was changing as I walked through Hell.

My thumbs punctured the pliant surface as I had done before. I tipped my head back, and drank of the mercurial fluid within, focusing my mind on the blade. On war. On the simple business of killing.

Memories came in a flood, but this time I expected it. I had been a warrior, and lived a lifetime of battle and war. Images came in flashes, of bloody meadows and smoking mountains. Of iron-shod charges by horeseback and midnight raids. My fingers gripped the arms of the great stone chair, and I hissed as they sifted through my mind at lightning speed, but I clutched at none. I knew most of it would be lost, and most of what I saw made little sense: it was missing the context, the connective tissue between one memory and the next. I was young, old, murderous, joyous, weeping, singing, laughing, startled from my blankets. I glimpsed losses and triumph, betrayal and revenge.

And there. Dark, looming figures, their golden heads framed by pale moonlight. Giants, I thought, big as houses. They came in the winter to raid the settlements, pilfering whatever they could carry, killing any who resisted.

But not me. Not my men. Even as they crept toward a village–Yarmen, I recollected–we descended on them, warsongs on our lips, swearing oaths to Beor and Alain and all the rest. The giants were no less warriors at heart than we were ourselves; they turned to face us, wielding clubs and scythes and swords as long as I was tall.

They made Harald look like a youth, I thought, pulling at that thread of memory. Remembering it not just in the mind, but deeply, rediscovering what my bones had once known.

To slay giants.

When the Silver Tear’s strange visions passed, I was left exhausted. I slouched back on Romulor’s throne, letting myself just breathe for a moment.

The light of my Cindermark was brighter now. I could see it on the ceiling above the throne, a dim but persistent glow. Glancing down at it, I saw that a third petal had been added to the strange flower. Three petals: three silver tears.

Silver tears, I thought, and remembered Anaeel.

Bounding up the stairs, I found her sitting where I’d left her, sealed in stone. The curse, I lamented. Cut off from the starlight of the gods, the Velkyrim were doomed to fade to stone without radiant blood.

Thankfully, I had no shortage of that.