Silence was not an emptiness. It was a heavy substance, cold like the marble of a tomb. Kirson did not dream. He did not exist. Until, suddenly, he was.
It wasn't a waking, but an ignition. As if a master switch in the cosmos had been thrown, and his consciousness, a cold, bare lightbulb, had lit up in the darkness.
The first thing was the absence.
He tried to open his eyes. They did not respond. Because there were no eyes to open. There were no eyelids, no eyelashes, no faint itch of dust on the cornea. An animal, primitive panic rose in what had once been his chest. He moved an arm. A limb of solid shadow, made of a substance that was neither flesh nor bone, obeyed with a whisper of torn cloth in the stillness. It bumped against a smooth, gelid surface.
Where am I?
The question, formulated with the mental voice he recognized as his own, crashed against a wall of memories that did not belong to him. A torrent of images, sensations, and foreign knowledge burst into his mind like an invading army.
Kaelen.
The name emerged from the flood, carved in black stone. He was Kaelen. One of the Seven. General of the Demon King. The Whispering Shadow. The One With No Face.
No. I am Kirson. Colonel Kirson. Strategist of the... of the...
His own identity, that of the man, clung to a slippery precipice. Kaelen's memories were vast as a nocturnal ocean. Centuries. Hundreds of years of existence, of intrigues in nightmarish courts, of massacres on battlefields under green moons. He knew the races: the iron-hearted elves, the rune-forging dwarves, the beasts that spoke in the darkness of the forests. He knew the hierarchy of the Demon Realm, the twisted loyalty and hatred that bound the Seven. He knew the taste of the fear of others, a delicacy for his host.
And he knew the power. A latent energy in this new body, waiting like a coiled serpent.
With an effort of will that drained an energy he didn't know he possessed, he sat up. His "body" slid over the slab of polished obsidian that had been his bed. Before him, on the chamber wall, was a mirror of the same substance, a portal to absolute blackness.
He approached.
The reflection did not show the image of a middle-aged man, his face marked by stress and his hair beginning to gray. It did not return anything human.
It was a tall silhouette, wrapped in a cloak of darkness that moved like living smoke. Where a face should have been, there was only a perfect void, a blackness so deep it seemed to swallow the faint light from the purple gems illuminating the walls. It had no eyes, but it could see. It had no mouth, but it knew it could speak.
He raised a hand. The shadow limb elongated, and at its tip, five long, sharp claws of violet energy flashed for an instant before retracting.
This is a weapon, Kirson's mind thought, imposing its cold logic over the horror. A high-level weapon for infiltration and psychological warfare. Mission: assess the situation.
His training took command. The panic was compressed, packaged, and stored in a remote corner of his consciousness. He looked around. The chamber was vast, circular, with no other furniture than the slab. It was a place of rest, a sarcophagus for a being that did not die, only... waited.
And then he knew, with the certainty granted by Kaelen's memories. He had been activated. He had awoken. Too early.
The Demon King still slept his centuries-long sleep. The other six generals lay in their own chambers, inert. The entire castle, a living structure of black stone and pulses of malevolent energy, breathed in a deep lethargy.
He was alone. Completely alone in the heart of the absolute enemy territory. And he was, now, one of its key pieces.
A minute noise, the rustle of vestments against stone, came from the corridor beyond the chamber's great door. Something was approaching. Something that had felt his awakening.
Kirson, the mind of the strategist, went on maximum alert. Kaelen, the body of the general, straightened to his full height, the shadow cloak stirring around him without any wind to move it. There was no time for more. There was no time to mourn his lost humanity.
It was the moment of truth. The first move on the most dangerous board a man could imagine.
Concentrating on his host's memories, on the way Kaelen moved, spoke, and projected his aura of glacial authority, Kirson turned toward the door. From the void where his face was, two points of crimson light ignited, cold like the stars of death.
The door began to open.
(End of Chapter 1)