“WHAT YOU HAVE done… I did not believe it was possible.”

Father Iainov stood beside me, his gray face turned toward the Forest of the Children. We stood on the balcony of the steeple under the false black sky. I could hear the distant, leather sound of the lightless things that swirled their, and had some dim idea of what they were. I chose not to think of them, and to focus instead on the sounds of laughter below us from the belly of the chapel. It was a strange sound, almost hostile in this wasteland of fear and isolation: joy.

Children laughing, singing songs. Adults clapping and laughing. Love.

“They will never get back what they have lost,” Iainov said. His hooked nose was a rudder against the dark cavern wall, many leagues away. The crimson flow of magma from the closer walls illuminated the hard edges of his face like gloaming twilight. “But here they will have some semblance of it. We will keep them safe, Cinderborn. And my people, in return… it will give them reason to carry on. To await their hour.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked. “That they’ll be reborn?”

Father Iainov’s hands gripped the splintering wooden handrail. “I do. I must.”

I sighed. A heavy weight pressed upon me, and I knew of no one but the preacher I could share that weight with. “My gods are dead,” I said. “Beor, Alain. Slain. Stricken down.”

The old man hung his head. “I know not those names. But I hear the truth of it. Even gods must fall, Cinderborn.” I grunted unhappily, but had no words for it. “All souls, great and small, must fall in time. They settle here among the roots of the Great Tree, and nourish all.”

It seemed impossible. I could see no roots, no Great Tree. Yet, what did I truly know? I was little more than those children below, clapping and dancing to unfamiliar tunes. I had awakened in a pit, breaths away from oblivion—and since then I had known only war. Pain. Blood.

The radiance in my Cindermark was little diminished from our trek back through the grim Forest of the Children. I had shed blood to keep Anaeel moving, to keep the her stone curse at bay, but it had required little. I could feel the captured strength of the Ghoul-King Romulor coursing through my veins. It made the intertwining pedals of the Cindermark shine brightly through the tunic Iainov had given me to replace the one I’d torn apart to make clothes.

Two swords leaned against the rail beside me. One, a greatsword of pitted, orange-stained iron. Its dog’s-head pommel glowered in the hellish light of those laval flows. The other, an ugly black thing, long and thin, and seemingly made of stone.

“Eater,” Iainov said, following my gaze. “The sword of Romulor. It is a horror, and a wonder. How did you manage to take it from him?”

I thought about how to answer that. It was a memory of blood, of rage. “In life…” I began, feeling through the words slowly. “I was a killer. I fought men and beasts. And giants. Romulor was a giant.” Iainov nodded, as if he could see the fragmented, grotesque memories I had awakened with the Ghoul-King’s silver tear. But those memories had not returned until after I’d slain the ghoul. I shook my head, trying to make sense of it. “I think my bones remembered. For all his size and strength, I was a smaller target. And Bloodfang…”

My eyes went to the dog’s-head pommel, but did not linger. They slid aside, as if the chunk of wrought iron were greased.

“You bear a feanden,” Iainov said. “The Velkyrim spoke of it. A caged beast.” I nodded. “Can you hear it?”

“Always,” I thought. Beyond words. I could feel it pacing in the ur-iron cage of the blade. Awake now. Eager for blood. Even more than my own heart, its mind was turned into the Forest of the Children, turned toward that crumbled ruin where Harald waited. Toward the next bloodletting.

“It was different,” I said. “More than a wolf. It was a nightmare. It nearly killed him before I could stop it—and then it turned on me, too. Feral. Monstrous.” Speaking, I realized that I did not know if I could summon the creature again. Not after seeing what lurked within the shadow wolf I’d come to trust.

The old priest listened without interrupting. When I was done, he said, “This is the first time it has differed?”

“No,” I said slowly, thinking of the Baron at the Church of Elarm. Long ago, it felt. Lifetimes ago. “The demon I took this blade from… Bloodfang was a mangy dog. A cur.”

“Gods have many aspects,” mused the priest. “A cur to one. A noble hunter to another. And you had drank of tainted blood in corrupted sacrament. Perhaps what you saw was a tainted wolf.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I nodded, but did not want to discuss the matter further. It unsettled my stomach, strained my courage. The fury, the mindless, hateful violence in those glowering yellow eyes had been enough to nearly numb my mind.

Something large swept overhead, ushering a hot breeze that hissed over the dark treetops of the Forest of the Children and up the side of the chapel’s slouching steeple in a stiff draft. I closed my eyes against the grit in the air, and felt in that darkness a grim pull, as eager and unrelenting as a bloody tide. It was not something I could say aloud, but it was a memory, a distant, isolated shard, of a life I had once known. A world I marched through to the thunder of war drums, walking from one gray, sword-stricken hill to the next. I let captured breath go, cursing the gods that even in death, my sword-hand was restless.

The priest picked up the black greatsword I’d taken from the Ghoul-King’s tomb. He examined it critically, holding it only in his fingertips, as if unwilling to touch any more of it than he must to get a closer look.

“Such a thing is an ugly, dismal sin,” said the priest. “Do you know what this is?”

“A tool to slay a wolf,” I answered.

An unhappy smile quicked the corner of his mouth. “And more. This is a blade forged of gluttony. Dark and shameless gluttony.” It had the texture of stone, though it was pitted and rotten. Here and there, long strips seemed cut out of the stone.

The priest ran a lone finger along one such splintered groove. “This is where the snake-faced demons got their daggers,” he said. “Shards of a greater evil.”

I looked closer. It seemed like the right size to me, based on the black blade I had seen the snake-face wield in the forest. It had eaten a lost one, consuming the child’s spirit in a flash. That twisted my gut. I thought of Ebin and the others, still singing and clapping in the chapel below. How many others had vanished? Been simply consumed to slake a demon’s vile thirst?

“Do you know why such things were forged?” Father Iainov said, raising his watery eyes to mine. I shook my eyes. “To slay Cinderborn. To combat your kind. A plague raised against the valiant dead that warred at the foot of the Great Tree. To employ such a thing…”

“Harald is a monster,” I said, thinking of the deadly giant. “I will do what I must.” For Param. For the children. For my gods, who had died themselves. My eye travelled to the godsblood stain on Bloodfang’s black blade.

The priest’s gray face fell. “There will be a cost. You must destroy it, when it is finished. Such things should be broken and forgotten. Thrown into the pit with the other despicable things.”

I nodded and took the sword from him. “I will not tarry longer. The Wolf awaits, and Param is his captive.”

“Come with me,” the priest said, leading me away from the balcony. The low groans of the boards along the high walkway were the only sound of our passage. I leaned over the railing enough to watch the little ones, marching in a circle, holding each others’ hands. The adults were clapping a tune, faster and faster. At a shout, they turned on a heel and began marching the other direction.

There was happiness, but also grief. Grief for children lost, and parents forgotten. The food and wine in hell tasted of naught but ashes. And the love was not so much different.

I clambered down after the priest and followed him toward the white stone altar. Anaeel knelt there, her time with the children past. Her head was bent in prayer. On the altar were two golden bowls, and two knives. The items we had returned from the Tomb of Romulor were faintly tarnished beside their twins.

“I asked one of the women to fashion this for you.” The priest fetched up a belt with a pad on the shoulder, and a simple sheathe. “It is not so easy to carry two swords. Especially not as long as yours.”

I took the thing and pulled it over my head. “Thank you,” I said. I sheathed bloodfang on my back. Doing so evoked some whisper of a memory I no longer had.

Father Iainov put his hand on my shoulder. “Gods go with you,” he said. “May they fire your heart, and guide your soul.”

“Aye,” said the Velkyrim, straightening suddenly. “But should it stray, Cinderborn, I will be there to catch it.”

I shook my head, taken aback. “No,” I said. “It is too dangerous for you to come along.”

“Boldly spoken, for a lonely, low Cinderborn,” said the angel, standing up. “But the Velkyrim go where they will. I have been in communion with the Third of my order. Zeniel bids me go with you.”

Father Iainov inclined his head, but I was not so willing to simply leave it at that. “What if Harald captures you?” I demanded. “He has many men at his command.”

“And if you die? He has already killed you once,” she said calmly. “Will you fall through the darkness again, arriving weaker each time?”

I ran my tongue along my lip, considering my words. The ugly black sword leaned heavily against my shoulder. Unlike Bloodfang, it was silent, though I did not doubt it was biding its time. Finally, I said, “Then you stay back. Harald is my problem.”

“Agreed,” the Velkyrim said. She picked up the bowl. “This is a Bowl of Belit. It is a vassal for blood. For radiance. But you already know that.” Anaeel held it out to me. “I ask that you give it to me, Cinderborn. Pass it into my care, as well as the letting knife. Where you go, I will go, and I will carry your strength with me.”

“It’s yours,” I said. I looked to the priest. “Arm your people. If I fail…”

“Have faith in the gods,” Iainov said. “Narrow is the road, but high does it climb.”

I shook my head. “We’ve fallen far enough, Father. It’s best we watch our own feet from here on out.”