The darkness was unnatural.
It slithered, wriggled, and shifted in the mist, curling around the shattered stone of the courtyard like a living thing. The dead weighed heavily on the air, their unuttered cries clung to the walls. Khael Draven's blood-coated face was pale in the dim light, his chest rising and falling with every breath.
He didn't know how he was still alive.
He should've died a dozen times already; back on the balcony, in the void, here at the hand of those masked Sentinels. Something cold, something ancient, something cruel kept pulling him back.
Something that had been lurking beneath his skin for centuries.
The mist slithered away, and the last of the Sentinels hesitated; the man's sword trembled in his grip. The others were dead, their bodies cast aside like rags around Khael. Blood soaked the ground around his feet, and his wounds burned like fire.
Khael's eyes looked down and... didn't belong to a man who was supposed to be standing.
They belonged to something else.
"You ought to run," Khael rasped, his voice thick like gravel.
The Sentinel flinched, but he stood firm.
"I don't fear you," the man said, although his voice gave him away.
A cold grin twisted Khael's lips. "You will."
He lunged, feeling pants: pain lancing his side, but he ignored it. He lost track of everything around him, a cold pulse in his veins as his fist crunched into the man's throat. The sound of bone cracking crunched. The Sentinel was down, gurgling, staring blankly ahead, life draining from his eyes.
And then only silence.
The mist remained and swirled. It looked as though it, too, was afraid to settle.
Khael staggered, falling to one knee, breath coiling the air as harsh and ragged. He ached. Every part of him ached, and cold blood soaked into the dirt, but he was clear-headed after hours of haze.
He was not safe here.
And that looked anything like Maelor's last words, buried in his mind.
"Burn them all."
He stood, retrieving a sword from the ground, handle slick with blood, but familiar in his hand. He didn't pause to mourn. He didn't look for another face in the dead. He put one foot in front of the other, moving like a ghost through the ruined estate. Hound in the shattered corridors of his now obliterated home.
Draven's estate was unrecognizable. Burned tapestries. Floors blackened with soot and blood. Each step felt heavier than the last, like the walls themselves were grieving.
He arrived at the old passage behind the armory; a passage he used when he was a boy, before betrayal and blood were always there for him. The passage smelled like damp stone and dust, but it went to the edge of the forest, which curled like an ugly claw around the estate.
Beyond that lay the Blackened Veil.
And beyond that, the Cursed Sanctum.
If Maelor's words were true, whatever awaited him there wasn't salvation, but it was all he had.
He still slipped into the shadows of the trees, where the mist around him was getting thicker and made every step painful. His body was screaming for rest, but whatever fury was driving him demanded to move forward.
He heard night creatures stir behind him. Eyes glimmered through the branches, too many of them, too low to the ground. The forest had changed, too.
It wasn't long before a voice called from amidst the darkness.
"You bleed like a dying animal."
Khael spun with his sword at the ready.
A figure leaned against a tree in front of him, cloaked in tattered black rags, the face half-concealed beneath a hooded cowl. The voice was neither young nor old, smooth and mocking, and it was unsettling more than threatening.
"Who are you?" Khael growled.
The figure laughed and strode ahead. Moonlight glittered on something metal hanging from its neck - a jagged fragment of obsidian.
"A wanderer. A keeper of lost oaths. And someone very interested in you, Khael Draven."
Khael clenched the sword tightly.
"Less riddles."
The figure smiled, sharpened teeth too white against the night. "The girl sits in your father's throne. Your blood spills on your father's soil. Yet here you are, still alive when you should have turned to ash."
"What do you want?"
The figure's smile vanished, replaced with something chilly. "I want exactly what you want. Revenge. And perhaps... more."
He didn't lower the sword. "If you're with her..."
"I am with no one," interjected the figure. "The High Throne is rotting in every second of every hour. Your betrayers think this world belongs to them now. But the darkness beneath this world belongs to older things-things she and her lapdogs cannot control."
They stood in silence for a beat.
"Why are you following me?"
The figure's attention was diverted to the sword in Khael's grip. "Because you'll need help before you can enter the Veil. And you'll need to be alive to recover your legacy." Khael's heart raced. "You know about the Sanctum." "I don't know a lot, but I know enough. And I know the path you walk leads to ruin." Khael weighed that, his mind spinning. He didn't trust the stranger. But trust had died in that courtyard with his brothers. All he had left was hatred...and a promise. "Lead on," Khael said under his breath. The figure smiled. "Good." They moved through the forest, the shaft of mist crowding the woods, branches reaching at them like skeletal fingers. The stranger moved with grace, like a creature born to darkness. "What's your name?" Khael asked, after a long pause. The figure stopped. "Names have power. Call me what you like."
Khael simply snorted. "I'll call you Ghost, then."
"Fitting," Ghost replied thoughtfully.
They went for what felt like hours. The trees were getting thicker, the air was getting thicker, until the trees gave way to a clearing. The clearing was dominated by a wall of black mist, alive and surging, squirming in patterns that are not of this world. The ground below it was cracked and dead.
The Blackened Veil.
Beyond it...the Cursed Sanctum.
A chill ran down Khael's spine. The mist almost seemed to whisper to him, with voices faint enough not to be able to make out but filled with sadness and menace.
"No one crosses the Veil and comes back the same," Ghost said softly. "Some men don't come back at all."
Khael looked out at it with his jaw clenched tight.
"I'm not like most men."
Before Ghost was able to respond, a horn was sounded in the distance - a low, mournful note that made the very ground tremble underneath Khael's feet.
Khael turned.
From the treeline behind them, fires ignited. A score of soldiers came forth, glinting armor flashing as it broke the gloom of the night. And at their head, a towering figure clad in dark crimson armor, a cruel-looking blade rested over his shoulder.
Commander Rovan.
One of Eira's most loyal dogs.
"Well, well," Rovan hollered, easily spanning the clearing, "we thought you dead, Draven. Turns out, the rats are a bit harder to kill than we thought."
Ghost hissed a breath. "You have to move. Now."
Khael felt his muscles tense. He could feel the pull of the Veil. It grasped for him, calling him, knowing his blood.
"You're outnumbered, Draven," Rovan yelled. "But I would put that dagger down and kneel to me. If you kneel now, I can make it quick."
Khael spat in the dirt.
"You've never known me to kneel."
He turned to Ghost. "How do we cross?"
"You don't cross," Ghost said darkly. "You survive it."
And with that, Khael moved forward. One step toward the mist.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
And behind him, the soldiers exploded forward.