The Northroad ended at Thornwall, the last human settlement before the territories divided. Once, it had been a fortress town, protecting the kingdom's northern border. Now it squatted like a canker at the crossroads, where desperate people paid triple prices for the illusion of safety.
Zarak and Selene arrived to find the gates barred and the walls lined with archers.
"Turn back!" The watch captain's voice cracked with fear. "Thornwall's closed to travelers. Mayor's orders."
"Since when does Thornwall turn away coin?" Zarak called back, noting the fresh blood on the captain's armor. "Or are you too rich to need hunter's gold?"
Whispers ran along the wall. The Burned Man's reputation had spread far in three years—killer of monsters, breaker of oaths, bearer of dead god's fire. Some called him hero. Most called him cursed. All agreed he was dangerous.
"You're Zarak the Burned?" The captain leaned forward, hope warring with suspicion. "Can you prove it?"
Instead of answering, Zarak raised his hand. Divine fire erupted from his palm, not the orange of mortal flame but the silver-white that had once poured from temple windows. The archers recoiled, some making warding signs that no longer held power.
"Open the gates," he said quietly. "Or I'll open them myself."
The gates creaked open just wide enough to admit two people. Inside, Thornwall showed all the signs of a town under siege. Windows shuttered, streets empty except for patrols, and the kind of silence that came from people holding their breath.
The captain met them at the gate, a grizzled veteran whose scars told stories of survival against odds. His eyes lingered on Selene's crimson garb with the kind of hatred reserved for old enemies.
"A vampire walks freely in Thornwall?" His hand moved to his sword.
"She's with me." Zarak stepped between them. "Problem with that?"
The captain clearly had many problems with it, but pragmatism won. "The mayor's in the town hall. She'll want to see you immediately. Both of you, apparently."
They followed him through streets that reeked of fear-sweat and burnt herbs. Every doorway held ward-signs—salt circles, iron filings, silver coins nailed to thresholds. Useless against real threats, but desperation made believers of everyone.
The town hall had been a temple once, back when gods answered prayers. Now it served as seat of government, courthouse, and last refuge when monsters came calling. Mayor Elara Brightwood waited in what had been the high priest's chambers, surrounded by maps and reports.
She was younger than Zarak expected, maybe thirty, with the kind of sharp intelligence that kept humans alive in faction territories. Her left arm ended at the elbow—a clean amputation that spoke of werewolf jaws and quick thinking.
"The Burned Man and a Bloodspire Knight." She didn't rise from her desk. "Either I'm blessed or utterly fucked. Which is it?"
"Depends," Zarak said. "Why are your gates barred?"
"Because something killed seventeen people last night. Seventeen, in their own homes, behind locked doors and blessed thresholds." Elara pushed a report across the desk. "No wounds. No blood. Just dead, with that damned symbol burned into their foreheads."
Zarak studied the report while Selene prowled the room like a caged predator. The deaths had occurred between midnight and dawn, scattered throughout the town with no pattern he could see. Young and old, rich and poor, human and—
"You had a witch living here." He looked up sharply. "Maria Thornweaver."
"Had is the operative word. She was among the dead." Elara's expression hardened. "Before you ask, she was sanctioned. Paid her taxes, kept the peace, even helped with healing when we could afford her prices. Fat lot of good it did her."
A witch dying to supernatural attack wasn't unusual. But dying without signs of violence, in a warded home, with protections that should have held against anything short of a faction lord? That was impossible.
"I need to see the bodies."
"Already burned." Elara gestured helplessly. "The symbol on their foreheads started spreading after death. Eating into the flesh like acid. We had to burn them before it reached the bones."
"Convenient," Selene murmured. "No evidence left to examine."
"Evidence of what?" Elara's remaining hand clenched into a fist. "We know what did this. The same thing that's been hunting the Northroad. The blind girl who claims to be Princess Lyralei."
Zarak felt his curse flare. "She was here?"
"Arrived yesterday at sunset. Walked right up to the gates like she could see them clear as day. Guards tried to turn her away—we don't take in faction fugitives. But she spoke to them, and..." Elara shuddered. "They opened the gates. Just like that. Didn't even remember doing it until she was already inside."
"Where did she go?"
"The old temple grounds. Said she needed to pray at the Godsgrave." Elara laughed bitterly. "Pray to what? The gods are dead. Everyone knows that."
But Zarak was already moving, Selene close behind. The Godsgrave—every town had one, the spot where divine power had died during the Godsfall. Most people avoided them. The spiritual equivalent of mass graves, they radiated the kind of emptiness that made souls ache.
They found her in the temple garden, sitting among roses that shouldn't exist.
The garden had been ash and stone for three years, burned clean when the gods withdrew their blessing. But around the blind princess, impossible blooms opened to the starless sky. White roses with thorns of silver, their petals glowing with soft light that had no source.
Princess Lyralei looked exactly as the reports described—sixteen, maybe seventeen, with the fine bones of old nobility. Her traveling clothes were torn and stained, her feet bare and bleeding. A strip of white cloth covered her eyes, but she turned toward them with unerring accuracy.
"Zarak the Oathbreaker," she said, her voice carrying harmonics that made reality shiver. "You're late."
"People keep saying that." He stopped at the garden's edge, noting how his divine fire recoiled from whatever power she radiated. "They also say you're killing people."
"Not killing. Changing." She stood gracefully, one hand trailing over rose petals that chimed like bells. "The blood transforms because it remembers what it was meant to be. Before the factions. Before the theft."
"Before the gods?"
"The gods were the first thieves." Her smile was sad and terrible. "They stole fire from the void and called it creation. Stole shadow and called it night. Stole blood and breath and bone and built a world from the pieces. But they never asked permission from what came before."
Selene hissed, backing away. "You're talking about the Shadowborn. The first darkness."
"I'm talking about balance." Lyralei stepped forward, and roses bloomed beneath her feet. "For a thousand years, the gods held the Shadowborn beyond the Veil. Fed them prayers and sacrifices to keep them sleeping. But when the gods died..."
"The payments stopped," Zarak finished. "And now they're waking up."
"Now they're collecting what they're owed." She reached out, fingers stopping inches from his scarred face. "You understand, don't you? You who broke an oath to save the innocent. You who were burned by divine justice for choosing love over law."
Memories crashed through him—his sister's scream, his mother's blood, the choice between duty to the gods and saving his family. He'd chosen family. The gods had chosen to burn him for it. And then they'd died anyway, leaving him scarred and cursed and alone.
"Don't." His voice came out raw. "Don't pretend you know me."
"But I do know you, Zarak Morningstar. Crown Prince of Solaria. Bearer of the Sunblade. Champion of the Dawnfather." Each title hit like a physical blow. "I know who you were before the burning. Just as I know who I was before the blinding."
She pulled away the cloth covering her eyes.
Where eyes should be, stars dwelt. Not empty sockets, not scars, but actual stars—points of light that held the cold fire of distant suns. Looking into them was like staring into the void between worlds.
"The gods' last gift," she said softly. "Or their last curse. I see everything now. Every path, every possibility, every shadow of what might be. And in all futures but one, the world ends in three days."
"What's the one?"
"The one where you help me reach the Convergence Point. Where the three territories meet and the Veil is thinnest. Where we can either seal the Shadowborn forever or..." She paused, star-eyes dimming. "Or make a new bargain."
"What kind of bargain?"
"The kind that requires sacrifice. The kind that breaks oaths and burns bridges and leaves nothing the same." She recovered her eyes, though the cloth did nothing to dim their impossible light. "The kind only an Oathbreaker can make."
Zarak felt Selene tense beside him. The vampire had been silent too long, processing information with the patience of immortals. When she spoke, her voice carried centuries of calculation.
"You're not just talking about stopping the Shadowborn. You're talking about replacing the gods."
Lyralei's laugh was like breaking glass. "Replace them? No. The age of gods is over. The age of factions is ending. What comes next depends on whether we reach the Convergence before the new moon."
"And if we don't?"
"Then the seventeen who died last night are just the beginning. The Shadowborn will reclaim every drop of power the gods stole. Every life, every soul, every spark of creation will return to the void." She turned those terrible star-eyes toward the town. "Starting with Thornwall."
As if her words were prophecy, screams erupted from the direction of the town square. Not one or two, but dozens—a chorus of terror that spoke of nightmares made flesh.
Zarak was running before the echoes died, divine fire blazing around him. Selene matched his pace, a crimson shadow flowing through empty streets. Behind them, Lyralei walked with measured steps, roses blooming and dying in her wake.
They found chaos in the square. The fountain that had been the town's pride ran black with transformed blood. Bodies littered the cobblestones, but these weren't dead—they writhed and changed, their flesh running like wax as something tried to remake them from the inside out.
At the center of the carnage stood a figure that might once have been human. Now it was a wound in the world, a place where shadow had taken root in flesh and bloomed into something worse. When it spoke, reality rippled.
"The Key arrives. The Lock awaits. The bargain breaks unless the price is paid."
It reached out with too many arms, each one ending in fingers of living shadow. Where they touched, matter unraveled. Stone became dust. Air became void. Life became something else entirely.
Zarak met its charge with divine fire, but the flames passed through it like light through water. Selene's glass blade shattered on contact. Nothing mortal could touch it because it existed outside mortal understanding.
"You cannot fight us, Burned One," it said, almost gently. "We are what you were before the gods taught you to be small. We are the hunger between stars, the silence between heartbeats. We are—"
"Boring."
Lyralei stepped past them, star-eyes blazing. She spoke a single word in a language that predated speech, and the shadow-thing froze.
"You are servants," she continued, walking closer. "Fragments of the true Shadowborn, sent to test and terrorize. But you forgot something important."
"What?" The thing's voice held the first note of uncertainty.
"I can see in the dark."
She reached out and touched the shadow-thing's center. Light erupted—not divine fire, not mortal flame, but something older. The light that had existed before the gods separated it into colors. The light that shadows cast when no one was watching.
The thing screamed as it dissolved, taking its impossible geometries with it. The transformed blood in the fountain cleared. The writhing bodies stilled, returning to simple death.
But the effort cost her. Lyralei swayed, star-eyes dimming. Zarak caught her before she fell, surprised by how light she felt. Like holding a bird made of glass and starlight.
"That was stupid," he said.
"That was necessary." She leaned against him, and where they touched, his curse quieted. "They needed to see that the Shadowborn can be fought. That hope exists. Even if it's a lie."
"Is it? A lie?"
She tilted her head, studying him with those impossible eyes. "That depends on you, Oathbreaker. Will you take me to the Convergence? Will you help me save this world, even if it means breaking it first?"
Zarak looked around the square. Bodies cooling in their own blood. Survivors emerging from hiding, eyes full of desperate hope. Mayor Elara among them, her remaining hand clutched around an iron ward that had done nothing to protect her people.
Three years ago, he'd made a choice. Broke an oath to save his family. Failed anyway. Been burned by divine justice and left to wander as a reminder that even gods could be cruel.
Now another choice. Another chance to save innocents. Another opportunity to fail.
But what else was there? Hunt monsters until something finally killed him? Drink himself to death in forgotten taverns? At least this way, his ending might mean something.
"Fine," he said. "I'll take you to the Convergence. But we do this my way."
"And what way is that?"
He smiled, and it was all teeth and bitter memory. "We burn everything that gets in our path. No mercy for monsters. No deals with devils. We get you there, you do whatever needs doing, and then we see who's left standing when the smoke clears."
"Acceptable." She pulled away, standing on her own power again. "We leave at dawn. The new moon rises tomorrow night, and we need to reach the Convergence before it sets."
"That's a day's hard travel through three territories. Every faction will try to stop us."
"Yes." Her smile was sharp as winter. "They will try."
Selene stepped forward, glass blade reformed and hungry. "If you're marching to the Convergence, you'll need more than one burned hunter and a blind prophet. You'll need an army."
"I have an army." Lyralei gestured to the square full of survivors. "Everyone who's lost someone to the factions. Everyone who remembers when humans were more than cattle and entertainment. They'll follow because they have nothing left to lose."
She was right. Zarak could see it in their faces—the desperate hope of people who'd watched their world end piece by piece. They'd follow a blind girl into hell if she promised them vengeance on the way.
"Dawn then," he agreed. "Try not to kill anyone else before then."
"No promises." She walked away, leaving roses and starlight in her wake. "The night is young, and the shadows are hungry. Who knows what the darkness might bring?"
As if in answer, howls rose from beyond the walls. Not one pack but dozens, converging on Thornwall from every direction. The werewolves had found them.
Zarak sighed and checked his weapons. Silver bullets, blessed blade, divine fire that never went out. It would have to be enough.
"So much for getting rest before dawn," Selene observed.
"Rest is for the living." He headed for the walls, fire already dancing between his fingers. "We're just the walking damned, playing out the last moves of a game that started before we were born."
"Such optimism. No wonder you drink alone."
But she followed him anyway, because vampires understood damnation better than most. And in a world where gods were dead and shadows were rising, the damned had to stick together.
The first werewolf cleared the wall just as the last star vanished from the sky. It died on Zarak's burning blade, but a hundred more followed.
Dawn seemed very far away.