The last thing Elias Cross remembered from his former life was the shriek of the train brakes.
No, not shriek—scream—as if metal tore itself apart. The world slowed down in its unreal manner when your body senses it's going to die. People on the platform turned, mouths agape. Elias didn't even see the man who shoved him—only the brief flash of a black glove, the scent of ozone, and then… words. Hovering in the air, faint golden light.
The Reader dies here.
He didn't know what it read. He had no time to ask. The train's horn wailed, and the world was impact, darkness, and nothing.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn't lying in a hospital bed. He wasn't anywhere he should be.
The air stank of scorched metal and blood. A shattered sky stretched overhead, rent with strange green light, as if lightning was trapped in glass. The ground under his palms was damp—sticky damp. His gasp came as his fingers brushed against something soft, limp. A corpse.
Elias crabbed back, his heart racing so hard it hurt. He was on a battlefield. Bodies in armor littered the mud, swords jutting like tombstones. Fires flickered in the distance with an unearthly blue fire. He could hear someone screaming somewhere—far away, but too close.
His mind screamed dream. But his senses did not. The cold in his lungs, the dampness of wet clothes stuck to him, the coppery taste in the air—it was all too real.
I shouldn't be here. The realization dug itself in before he had even a chance to comprehend it.
A change occurred in the edge of his awareness. A figure reclined a short distance away, leaning against a broken spear shaft. His armor was battered, his face white under the grime. One leg bent at an angle no bone should.
Elias hesitated. Then he moved. "Hey! Are you—?"
The man's eyes flicked open. He coughed, blood painting his lips. "You… you're not dressed like a soldier."
"No, I—" Elias glanced down. His hoodie and jeans were spattered with mud and blood, but intact. The familiarity was an anchor in the chaos. "I think there's been a mistake, I'm not—"
The man grabbed his wrist with surprising strength. "Doesn't matter. Listen to me. East road. Don't stay on it. The—" He choked again, wheezing. "The carrion beasts follow the scent."
"What carrion—?"
The man's eyes rolled back, and the strength went out of him. Elias stared, horror twisting in his gut. This was not a dream. Not unless his subconscious had grown extremely creative with death.
And then it did it again. The air rippled in front of him, and glowing letters appeared, hanging there as if somebody was typing reality itself.
A shadow stirs in the fog. A hunter approaches.
Elias blinked. His brain provided hologram? projection? hallucination?
But the words were there, three-dimensional, hovering in the smoky air before they vanished.
And then he heard it—the low, rasping growl out of the fog that was creeping along the battlefield.
His survival instincts took charge before reason. He pulled his eyes away from the dead knight, searching around. An overturned cart. A row of overturned shields. A shallow ditch half-filled with water and bodies.
The growl grew in intensity. An enormous shape loomed—too big to be a wolf, too low to be a bear. The fog clung unnaturally to it, and when it walked, the ground seemed to flinch.
Elias didn't wait to take a closer look. He ran.
The battlefield was a maze of ruined siege engines, broken banners, twisted corpses. Every step sank into mud. His sneakers were soon soaked through, squelching with each stride. The mist thickened, swallowing the edges of his sight. He felt movement every few seconds—a glimpse of something too fast, too deliberate, pursuing him.
His head was chaos. Train. Glowing letters. Dead man. Monster in the fog.
Somewhere in the middle of it was a rational explanation. Doubtless. He just needed to live long enough to find it.
A clang resounded suddenly. He spun—and nearly staggered over a rusty sword stuck in the mud. It wasn't just rusted—there were black veins running through the metal, as if it was decaying inside out. The knight's warning echoed in his mind: Don't stay on the east road.
He had no concept of which way was east. But the growl had come from the left, so he turned right.
And that's when he noticed it. The fog rolled back in, and for one moment the creature was fully visible. Its body was a mess of exposed bone and sinew, fur thin and wet. Its head was elongated, eyes smoldering like burning coins. Each breath misted in the cold air. As it came closer, its claws fell into the mud like blades.
It wasn't coming at him. It was stalking him.
"Okay," Elias breathed, for shouting at himself was preferable to screaming. "Large zombie wolf creature. Certainly not a dream."
The creature stiffened.
Elias ran.
He didn't recall deciding the way—only that his legs took him towards the dim shape of stone walls in the distance. Perhaps a fort. Perhaps ruins. Either way, it was high ground.
The glowing letters appeared again, sudden and distinct:
The Reader enters the gates. The gates stand open already.
He gasped for breath. He didn't have to think about what Reader was. He lurched through a breach in the wall, the stones slick under his hands. A courtyard, half-collapsed, lay within, weeds choking the cobblestones.
The gates were open—or what was left of them, shattered on their hinges. No one there. No guards. No one. Silence. Too much silence.
The Script reappeared, line by line.
The hunter is not alone.
The air shifted. He spun just as a second creature leapt from the wreckage to his right. Panic in its rawest form ensued. Elias dove sideways. Claws sliced the air where his throat used to be. He plummeted down, rolling over broken stone and rusty armor. The first monster came charging through the gate, growling.
He had no weapon, no training, and no plan aside from don't die. He picked up the nearest thing to him—a shattered spearshaft—and plunged it in the direction of the beast.
It slowed him little, but it made the beast jerk long enough that he was able to scramble to his feet.
"Stay back!" he yelled, because yelling appeared to be something that someone who was in this place ought to do.
The animals did not listen to him. They shifted, one growling low, the other snapping its jaws. The gleam of their eyes was the only light within the fog.
Elias's heart was racing. His arms ached from clutching the makeshift spear. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he remembered that the Script had not come out again. No foretelling. No warning. Just him, the monsters, and the bitter realization that if they attacked together, he was dead.
The first one rushed him.
And that's when the second Script fragment appeared.
A sword falls from the wall. Blood will follow.
Elias did not think. He dove for the closest patch of wall—and heard it. The cold ring of metal falling free. A rusting sword fell from the rotting stones above, point-first into the mud beside him.
He grabbed it. It was cumbersome, the half-rotten leather handle slick in his grip, but it was a sword.
It struck again, and he swung wildly.
Metal hit meat with a sickening crunch. The creature leapt back, yelping, its side torn open. Black ichor evaporated where it splashed on the stones. The smell was foul, burning his nose.
The second beast moved forward at once. He altered the swing to a wild cut, striking it across the muzzle. It howled, jerking back.
For a moment, they stopped—and then they disappeared into the fog once more, vanishing as suddenly as they had appeared.
Elias rested against the wall, gasping for air. His hands shook so hard he nearly dropped the sword. His head was still racing. Monsters. Prophecies. A battlefield of the dead.
And one word, burned into his mind.
Reader.