CHAPTER 1
The Palace of Ouroboros sat atop the jagged peaks of Mount Aethelgard like a crown of white bone. It was a sprawling labyrinth of ivory marble and silver spires, its walls etched with the shifting, golden geometry of the Aegis Shroud. To the world, it was a fortress. To Elena, it was the only world she had ever known.
"Just five minutes, Caspian," Elena whispered, her voice barely a thread against the mountain breeze. For twenty four years, her world had been a series of beautiful, locked doors.
Caspian, a high ranking Warden of the Ouroboros Circle, stood a few paces behind her. He looked imposing in his silver plated armor, his enchanted spear glowing with a faint blue light that signaled his status as a protector of the Divine Blood. But his hands were trembling. He knew that by bringing her out here, past the primary sanctum, he had thinned the Shroud. He had poked a hole in the veil that hid her from the monsters in the dark.
"They told me the air out here would stop my heart, Caspian," Elena whispered, her fingers white knuckled as she gripped the cold marble railing of the Moon Glow Balcony.
For twenty-four years, the High Priest had told her she was born with a "hollow soul"a rare condition that made the natural world toxic to her. She had been raised in rooms filled with purified air and artificial light, convinced that the Ouroboros Circle were her doctors, not her jailers.
"The air is fine, Elena," Caspian rasped, his eyes scanning the obsidian tree line far below. He looked at her pale, beautiful, and completely oblivious to the infinite power thrumming in her veins. "The High Priest... he exaggerates the danger to keep you safe."
"But why am I so important, Caspian? Why must a hundred Wardens guard a girl who can barely walk through a garden without fainting?"
Caspian opened his mouth to answer, to tell her the truth about the harvest and the prophecy, but the words died in his throat. He had thinned the Shroud to bring her here. He had poked a hole in the veil.
"Just look at the stars," he said instead, his voice trembling. "That's all the 'why' you need tonight."
Elena looked up. The sky was a bruised velvet, swirling with constellations that seemed to pulse with a frantic, silver urgency. "They look like they're screaming," she murmured.
She didn't see the shadow. No one ever did.
Sloane didn't drop from the sky; he emerged from the darkness of a nearby pillar like a stain of ink spreading across silk. He moved with a predatory, silent grace, his charcoal suit absorbing the moonlight.
Caspian didn't even have time to raise his spear.
In one fluid motion, Sloane was behind him. A flash of silver an ancient dagger forged from the ice of a dead star parted the air. Caspian's head hit the balcony floor with a dull thud before his armored body even realized he was dead.
Elena froze. The man who had been her only friend was now a headless heap, his blood staining the pristine white marble. She looked up into the eyes of his killer.
Sloane was hauntingly handsome, with features carved from gray granite.
"Twenty-four years," Sloane's voice was a low, melodic growl. "You've caused my brothers a lot of trouble, Little Savior. It's time to close the book."
"Savior?" Elena's voice was a terrified whimper. She backed away, tripping over the hem of her silk dress. "I don't... I'm just sick. I'm nobody. Please..."
"Sick?" Sloane let out a short, bitter laugh. "You're a plague to my kind. And tonight, I'm the cure."
He raised the dagger, lunging for her throat.
CRACK...
The sky didn't break, but Sloane's reality did.
A roar of celestial thunder, silent to Elena but deafening to Sloane, shook the very foundations of his soul. A golden brand was burning through his skin, glowing with a light so intense it rivaled the stars above. Inside the light, digital numbers began to tick with a cold, rhythmic cruelty
"What... what is this?" Sloane gasped, clutching his arm as if trying to hold his soul inside his body.
23:58:59.. 23:58: 58
His celestial essence the very thing that kept him immortal was pouring out of his body like golden smoke as the timer go down per seconds. He was dying. The Greater gods, the ones who had clipped his wings and cast him down into the dirt, had finally sprung their trap.
Elena was backing away, her hands pressed to her mouth to stifle a scream. She looked at the dark god kneeling on the ground, the golden timer reflecting in her tear filled eyes
Elena, driven by an instinct she didn't understand the "Life Battery" within her soul reacting to the sudden void in his stepped forward. She didn't want to help the murderer, but her very essence was pulling her toward him. She reached out, her trembling fingers brushing the golden brand on his wrist.
The pain vanished instantly.
Sloane gasped, a lungful of air rushing back into his chest as if he'd been pulled from the bottom of the ocean. He looked at the timer.
23:58:12.
It had stopped. The numbers hung in the air, a frozen sentence of death. As long as her skin touched his, the void was filled. The moment she let go, his execution would resume.
Suddenly, a piercing, discordant wail erupted from the spires above. The Ouroboros sirens. The death of a high-ranking Warden had tripped the palace's alarms.
"The Wardens," Sloane hissed, forcing himself to stand. He grabbed Elena's wrist. "If they find you out here, they'll drain you. If my brothers find you, they'll finish what I started."
"Drain me? What are you talking about?" Elena sobbed, trying to pull away. "I need my medicine! I need the High Priest!"
"The High Priest is a butcher, and you are the meat," Sloane snarled, pulling her toward the edge of the balcony.
"You are my life support now. And unfortunately for both of us, that makes me your only hope."
He did not wait for her to agree He struck her once a precise, light blow to the temple. As she slumped into his arms, her Infinite Pulse hummed against his chest. He looked at her the girl who thought she was a patient, unaware she was a Goddess. He had come to end the prophecy unfortunately for him he has become it desperate slave.
With a final, dark look at the headless body of the man who had tried to show her the stars, Sloane leaped from the balcony, vanishing into the black abyss of the mountain below.