As I wandered through the ruins of a human village, I searched for survivors, although I couldn’t move as stealthily as I should. The last few hours had left me numb, drifting in a fog. Only my orders kept me on my feet, and I had to carry them out. I had-

I'd had to!

Muffled sobbing drifted from behind a pile of rubble, and with my heart in my throat, I eased toward it, raising my sword. Crumbled stone gave way to a woman, crouching over the body of a child with her shoulders shaking.

I should creep up on her and slit her throat, finishing the work that my unit had started here, but I couldn’t. I lowered my sword until its tip scraped through the dirt, and the woman spun to her feet with her face twisting.

“Unlike what the priests have told us, Alouin never vanished into the ether,” she calmly said. “His spirit may have left us, but his body didn’t. It is, in fact, in our insignificant city.”

That… wasn’t right. This woman had screamed and cursed me to a lifetime of torment. Why-?

A pounding sound filled the air around me, and at it, the woman walked toward me, lifting my blade until its point rested against her chest.

“You know the stories of Alouin, Eri. How he healed near instantaneously from his wounds. How he couldn’t die,” she said. “I want to find Alouin’s body. I want you to study it, and if we can, I want to transfer these abilities to Rafe. Will you help me?”

I didn’t understand. Why would this woman say these things? Why were those words so familiar?

The pounding of the world, of my heart, grew more insistent. Baring her teeth, the woman thrust herself forward, driving my blade through her chest, and an anticipatory silence fell. In it, the woman grinned at me while her voice echoed in my ears.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Don’t follow through on something else you’ll regret.”

Gasping, I bolted upright while slapping my hand to my chest. I skittered my eyes over a darkened bedroom, landing them on where Lirilith was lying beside me.

I didn’t know how she was still asleep. She usually woke up when I had bad dreams, much like I did for her, but she did so most especially for the nightmares about the massacre.

Reaching out, I brushed her hair out of her face and almost jabbed a finger in her eye when raucous noise burst in the air around me. Someone was knocking downstairs.

While I forced my lungs to start working again, I remembered the promise that I’d made yesterday. Slinking out of bed, I donned my clothes, wincing at every slam of my friend’s knuckles on wood. As I hurried downstairs, I cursed under my breath, and when I yanked the door open, I ignored his raised fist.

“If you’ve woken Lirilith up, I will poison you, Arivor,” I hissed. “I don’t care how high up the social ladder you are.”

Pouting, Arivor said, “You’d kill me?”

“Any poison that I gave you wouldn’t kill you, and you know it. I’m too good with them,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What do you want?”

Twisting back and forth, Arivor scuffed his foot on the ground.

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought I’d steal the priests’ most prized possession and possibly get mangled in the process,” he said. “Want to come?”

He gave me the brightest smile that I’d seen from him in months, but all I could hear was the voice from my nightmare.

“Don’t do something you’ll regret.”

Shaking it off, I returned Arivor’s grin.

“You know I do,” I said.

“Excellent!” Arivor said.

Clapping his hands, he stepped off of my home’s stoop.

“How should we do this?” he asked. “We could enter through the front doors or through the temple’s side entrances. What do you think?”

When I caught up, I flatly stared at my friend.

“Why are you asking me?” I said. “I’ve never been to that ghastly building.”

My relative ignorance only made Arivor laugh.

“Oh, this’ll be fun,” he said.

I certainly hoped so. I hoped I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my life, but a tiny voice inside whispered that I was.