The Assassin's Skill - Act I: The Dark One

The Assassin's Skill is a novel where the Nameless Assassin's skills are tested to the limit. Below is the first act in its entirety. Please do give it a read, but only after you've read the previous books—spoilers abound!

ASSASSINS OPERATE FROM THE SHADOWS for a reason. Most of the time, it’s a matter of practicality. Other times, it’s simply the most efficient way to complete a contract. But sometimes, a slit throat in the dark or a jab in the kidney in passing isn’t enough. Sometimes, circumstances necessitate—demand, even—a public display. Like when someone sends assassins to kill the leader of the city’s thieves’ guild and his top lieutenants. Some might call that a bold move. Others, a stupid one, given the repercussions should the assassins fail. Regardless, such a move demanded a response, and since this was my specialty, Heavyhammer sent me to Ridlin’s Den to deliver it.

“Make sure you send a message,” Thjorn had told me.

“Killing sends a message all its own,” I said. “Something else you’d like me to add?”

I thought I'd run my last errand for Heavyhammer a long time ago. But the assassins had come after me, too. I didn’t take attempts on my life as personally as Thjorn, but having someone ambush me in a dark alley still didn’t sit well, especially after I learned who had facilitated the hit.

Thjorn grunted. “Show Ridlin the error of his ways. Nothing fancy.”

I frowned. “But you want a show?”

“Do what you do best,” Thjorn said with a shrug. “I don’t care who gets in your way. In fact, the more, the better. Think of it as your moment to shine.”

So, outfitted in my full assassin’s attire, I strode from the shadows and across the snow-blanketed street toward Ridlin’s Den. My usual mask and hood concealed my face. A studded leather vest, bracers, and leg guards served for protection. Long knives were ready at my side, and I had my Steel Island sword slung over one shoulder. Winter had a firm grip on the city, its icy embrace infiltrating every avenue, alley, and square until only the truly foolish or dedicated ventured outside. No one, save the pair of burly doormen, witnessed my approach. Bundled in thick jackets with felt hats pulled low, narrowed gazes soon widened, and gloved hands, already balled into fists, shot from pockets ready to defend or attack.

I couldn’t help but smirk under my mask, because I saw more than recognition in their widened stares. I saw fear, which was a tough pill for men such as these to swallow. That fear put them on the back foot, weakened their resolve, and, as the pill’s bitter sting thoroughly settled into their bellies, fired an anger in them that demanded action. But striking in fear—or anger—makes one vulnerable, taking their chances against me from minuscule to nothing at all as I closed on them. With teeth clenched, the bruiser on the left, whose cauliflower ears told a tale all their own, took a wild swing at my head. Ducking beneath it, I came up fast, hitting him with an uppercut that rocked his head back. The other jabbed once, twice, but missed both times as I swung around and smashed my elbow into his face, cracking his nose like a walnut. Next, my fist connected with Cauliflower Ears again, this time bludgeoning his face like a battering ram before my other doubled him over with a punch to the gut. Spinning around, Broken Nose stepped forward and tried to return the favor with a left cross that I blocked and countered so fast that more blood flowed before he even knew I’d hit him again. Grabbing his jacket, I used him for leverage as I kicked Cauliflower Ears, sending him to the cobbles where he choked and gasped for air. Still holding onto the other one, I brought his face down onto my knee, stunning him, before I tossed him onto the pile.

At the door, a spyhole slid shut with a sharp scrape right before a bar slammed home hard enough to make the sturdy iron door shudder. From inside the Den, the faint staccato of drums and a singer’s deep baritone reached my ears. Giving the door a quick rap with my knuckles, I removed the small explosive device meant for this purpose from my belt pouch and placed it on the door.

“Magnetism!” Raed had told me. “Once it’s secure, turn the dial and, unless you want to become a smear on a wall, run like hell!”

I didn’t run, but I did hurry, covering my ears and counting down the seconds until the explosive device’s roar shattered the night’s stillness. Smoke and remnants of flame scoured the door that was split in half and torn from its hinges. Beyond, I spotted blood and bodies through the smoke littering the floor. The pair of doormen had staggered away, but not in time. Now, they lay sprawled across the road, unmoving.

I entered, stepped over the corpses, and took in the Den’s chaos with a glance. If the place wasn’t lively before my arrival, it certainly was now.

The explosion had knocked everyone nearby to the floor and upended a host of low-stakes gaming tables, their dealers scrambling on hands and knees to gather scattered coins while patrons at the tables did much the same. An unfortunate waiter lay groaning on his side, shards of glass from the drinks on his tray embedded in his bloodied face. Others, knocked prone, struggled to their knees or stood on shaky legs. They staggered away with shocked, bewildered expressions. Beyond this initial scene, the chaos diminished, with the next half-circle of tables upright but with cards and coins strewn across the floor, and patrons and employees alike gazing at me with stunned expressions. Past them, the scene at the bar seemed unaffected, though most had swiveled around to see what all the commotion was about. The distant arena, where a fight was in progress, continued as if nothing had happened. Thrumming with palpable energy, a crowd of eager onlookers pressed against the wrought-iron barriers, their voices a cacophony of cheers and jeers, as a fighter clad in tattered leather faced off against a towering brute swinging a heavy axe. Above it all, the rhythm of drums pulsed through the air, each beat resonating with a primal energy that echoed from the Den’s walls. Intertwined with the drumming, a woman's haunting voice rose and fell like a distant storm, her melodies weaving tales of forgotten heroes and bitter rivalries. Her ethereal notes carried a quality of defiance that I didn’t doubt inspired the host of Ridlin’s bully boys running straight for me with murder in their eyes.

Now it got interesting.

Moving the fingers of one hand, I initiated the charging sequence of my force glove and, counting down the seconds, waited for the first of Ridlin’s men to arrive. My timing proved flawless. With eyes wide and mouth twisted into a snarl, the bouncer raised his club and leaped into direct contact with my outstretched palm. A quick flash, and my opponent’s rage transformed into shock as the glove’s repulsive force hurled him away. He slammed into the others behind him, toppling them like pins in a carnival game.

Since I wasn’t here for Ridlin’s low-level bruisers, I left them to untangle themselves while I strode across the gambling floor like I owned the place. Patrons, dealers, and others, in no mood for trouble, gave me a wide berth. I knew the lay of the place well enough to head directly for the stairs leading to the next floor. One of Ridlin’s henchmen met me halfway, rushing me with a wicked-looking spiked mace gripped in an iron fist. I kept on, my pace even and tempered, reacting only when my assailant let out a roar and swung for my head. Sidestepping his clumsy attack, I drew a long knife and, in the same motion, slashed him deep. The shock of my blade scraping his ribs unbalanced him, so I needn’t do anything else except watch as he tumbled down the steps. His motion slowed the bully boys from earlier, who had regrouped and now charged up the stairs behind me. Again, I wasn’t here for them, so with a flick of a wrist, I tossed a handful of caltrops their way, scattering the tiny spikes across the width of their path. One of Ridlin’s henchmen had enough sense—and dexterity—to stop before he put his foot down on one of the triple-pronged spikes, but the man next to him was neither as lucky nor as deft. Realizing the danger too late, he stepped directly onto one, the upturned spike piercing the sole of his shoe and sinking deep into his foot. As one does when stepping on something sharp, he cried out, lifting his wounded foot. The bruiser behind him, charging fast, slammed into him. They went down together, crying out when caltrops pierced their hands and arms. With others getting tangled with each other and trying to avoid a similar fate, I paid them no more heed.

More henchmen awaited me on the second floor. Behind them, I spotted Ridlin. Hard to miss his greasy, dirty blonde hair plastered to his forehead, the plethora of gold chains around his neck, or the look in his eyes—a wild look, like a cornered animal, that only grew wilder as he watched me come into view. This area of the Den had one way in and one way out, and that was behind me. Ice Fire or Devil’s Tongue-stricken patrons, without a care in the world, lay strewn across loungers and settees. An expansive balcony provided Ridlin and his closest associates with an unobstructed view of the arena, where the clash of weaponry beat in time with the echo of the drums. Along the balcony, gentlemen and ladies occupied high-top chairs that afforded them the best views of the arena. Before I arrived, I imagined them cheering on the bloody battle with the gusto of those who had never engaged in a life-or-death fight. But now that the battle had come to them, they’d gone silent, their expressions muted, fearful even. I knew the moment an avenue of escape opened, they’d trample each other on their way to the exit.

“You made a mistake coming here!” Ridlin shouted, his high-pitched wail full of drug-induced slurs about as threatening as the half dozen bravados separating us.

The time for words would have been before Ridlin had conspired with the Warders to have me, Heavyhammer, Liz, and some others killed, so I said nothing in return. The bruisers arrayed against me seemed in no hurry to engage. Instead, they tightened grips on weapons—swords and spiked clubs, mostly—and clenched their jaws as they braced themselves for what was about to come. My long knives suited this sort of fight, but so did my sword. Since I was here to make a statement, I drew the blade now, letting them take full measure of the length of black steel. The way it caught the light from alchemical lanterns made it almost seem as if the blade itself was on fire, burning with the same volcanic flames from which it had been forged. The nearest of Ridlin’s men licked his lips, his eyes transfixed by my weapon’s otherworldly sheen. With others doing the same, there seemed no better time to strike.

The stare of the nearest, transfixed, widened in surprise when his mind caught up and he realized he was about to die. By then, it was too late for him to do anything other than spout blood as my sword sliced a gouge through his leather armor and nearly cut him in half. The next fell grasping his throat, blood leaking from between his clenched fingers. I ducked beneath the swing of a short sword, the steel cutting the air overhead, and came up point-first, my blade stabbing my opponent under the ribs. A sigh escaped his lips, and his knees buckled as I withdrew my weapon. Spinning, I ducked under a clumsy swing, then dove and somersaulted away when two bruisers rushed me with clubs raised. I regained my feet in an instant, whipping my sword about to clear the space around me. The remaining four surrounded me, and others who had finally picked their way through the maze of caltrops boiled up from the staircase, swelling their numbers and promising that we were about to have a right proper fight.

As Ridlin’s men came screaming into the room, the guests who wanted no part of this fight did the opposite, rushing down the stairs to safety. Ridlin eyed the same escape route, but with the ranks on his side swelling, his concern melted away, replaced by a wicked grin I remembered from my days fighting in his arena. He cackled, his fist smashing into his open palm.

“Time to die, you piece of shat!”

Then the press of bruisers closing in blocked him from sight.

Sometimes, overwhelming numbers are a genuine concern. On the battlefield, in close combat, or in an open room with no obvious chokepoints, such as now. However, overwhelming numbers also become a disadvantage when a lack of coordination, discipline, and skill comes into play. Ridlin’s men knew how to break up fights, expel drunks, and knock heads about when someone got too frisky with the ladies. I’d venture they were also pretty good at beating someone to a bloody pulp when the circumstances are right. But how would they fare against someone who retaliated with the intent to kill? I knew only one way to learn the answer to that question.

Never one to wait for a fight to come to me, I leaped into their midst, drawing one of my long knives to have a go at them double-bladed. Cutting and slashing, I ducked and weaved my way between men who reeked of fear. These were not the zealots of the Jakaree, ready to lay down their lives for their cause without a second thought. Simple men, really, looking for simple work and a simple wage. That didn’t mean I spared them. One took a knife to the gut. Another, a slash of my sword across his chest. A third, after I parried his thrust, the hilt of my knife to his face, until I left a trail of blood and corpses behind. When I’d made a complete circuit through their ranks, I turned, ready to keep up the fight, only to see that the damage I’d wrought was enough. Half of Ridlin’s men were down, clutching at wounds or already dead. In no hurry to keep up the fight, the other half eyed me warily.

Ridlin saw the mood shift and, realizing his time was up, bolted.

I had my knife sheathed and a throwing star hurtling toward him in less time than it took for him to take two steps. The star embedded itself in his thigh, and down he went, howling as he stumbled, tripped, and fell face-first onto the floor. His bruisers, who hadn’t moved a muscle except to fidget with their weapons, cast longing glances at the exit. No doubt, they weighed the cost of fleeing and losing future work prospects against staying, which most certainly meant forfeiting their lives. I didn’t think it seemed a hard decision to make, and evidently, they all agreed. As one, they fled.

I thought that was that until the sound of heavy footsteps boomed from the stairs, growing closer with every footfall and echoing from the walls like the drumming from earlier. Only now did I realize those drums had stopped, along with the jeering coming from the arena’s spectators. All eyes turned to the stairs, waiting for whoever—or whatever—to show themselves. Ridlin, who must have understood what those heavy footfalls meant, let out another cackle through his grimace of pain.

“Now you’ll get what’s coming to you, you bastard!”

When I saw who came up the stairs, I thought that this time he might be right.

A warrior the size of a giant waded into the room. Clad in battered crimson armor with a long-hafted, double-edged axe casually slung over a shoulder, he wore a great helmet with the visor lowered that concealed his identity. Not that it mattered. Whether a giant, a gaugath, or some other creature, this new opponent wasn’t going to run like the others. Nor would he fall so easily.

Ridlin’s remaining men retreated to either side, clearing a path. The slit in the giant’s helmet fixed on me. Hefting his axe in an easy two-handed grip, he strode forward, kicking bodies from his path and causing others to scurry out of the way or get trampled. The thump of his footfalls and the clanking of his armor became my focus. I didn’t back away, but neither did I move any closer. I stayed still, letting him come to me, waiting, waiting, and then, at the precise moment he raised his axe to deliver his killing stroke, I rushed him, not stopping until I’d run past him. Wary but confused, the giant turned slowly. He thought he had nothing to fear from me. In hand-to-hand combat, certainly not. Even my Steel Island sword might not possess a sharp enough edge to penetrate his heavy armor. But I hadn’t lived this long by relying only on fists and sharp edges. Sometimes, a job requires something more.

A gesture at the giant’s breastplate elicited a puzzled turn of his head, so I held a fist to my chest. His great helmet tilted downward, taking in his breastplate and the negative energy grenade I’d placed there. Recognizing the danger, he tried to swat it away. But this explosive, like the one I’d used on the door, was magnetic. Swatting did nothing, and the giant’s gauntlets were too cumbersome to get a proper grip on the relatively small device, which remained firmly in place, tiny lights counting down three, two, one.

“Second generation,” Gwendolyn had told me with a mischievous smile. “Inverted field dispersion, magnified central point of activation, and faster initiation. It’s an improvement all around!”

While I didn’t share Gwen’s enthusiasm for the technical minutiae, I couldn’t argue with the results.

The armored giant emitted a wail of frustration as the grenade crackled to life. The negative energy started at a point and didn’t so much as expand but drew everything around it inward, the inverted field Gwendolyn had mentioned pulling the giant into the Shadow Realm in a single, unilateral implosion. In less than a second, he was gone.

Ridlin’s men stood in stunned disbelief. One by one, their eyes shifted from the place where their champion had stood to me. Then, one by one, they ran away.

“Come back here, you cowards! Come back or I’ll . . .”

Ridlin’s cry faded to silence as I approached. Still lying on the floor, he had his back pressed against a lounger. Blood leaked from his leg where my throwing star remained embedded. He looked up at me with the desperate eyes of someone who knew he was about to die and who couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try, though.

“Whatever Heavyhammer is paying you, I’ll double it! Triple it, even!”

Without saying a word, I settled into a crouch before him.

Desperate eyes became crazed, peering in every direction for some way out of this. Barring that, perhaps he searched for a weapon. No, not a weapon, I realized, as his attention fixed on a vial of Ice Fire discarded on the couch. A clawed hand grasped for it, and he almost might have had it if I hadn’t gotten to it first. I held the vial up to the light, studying the swirls within. Then, I tossed it over my shoulder. The vial hit the floor, shattering into pieces.

Ridlin sank, whimpering. “They wanted desperate men.”

The Warders, I presumed. Desperate men, meaning men with nothing to lose, who wouldn’t blanch at the idea of targeting the city’s Lord of Thieves.

“But they didn’t tell me anything about the job. I didn’t know they wanted Heavyhammer dead.” Crazed, desperate eyes filled with hope for one instant. “You can tell him that for me, can’t you? Tell him I didn’t know. Otherwise, I never would have helped them.”

My silent stare had the desired effect, telling him that no, I wasn’t delivering any more messages, while draining the last measure of hope from him bit by bit until, finally, none remained. With no reason to prolong this any further, I finished him quickly, ripping my throwing star from his leg and slashing its razor edge across his throat. He gasped, hands rising to stop the crimson tide, but it was too late. In moments, Ridlin was dead.

I left the Den the same way I’d entered, ignoring the stares of the remaining few patrons nursing drinks or hoping for one more roll of the dice. A few of Ridlin’s men loitered outside. The moment I started down the street, they ran inside, either to check on their boss or to steal everything he owned. No one followed me from the Shambles, so once I was well away, I lowered my mask and settled into a leisurely stroll. Although the hard part was done, I still had other business to attend to this evening.

First, the alliance I had fostered between the thieves’ guild, the Progressive Society, and the Jakaree—an unlikely alliance if ever there was one—had a meeting scheduled for this evening. Together, representatives from each of those groups had been scouring the city for ways to slow or even halt the Warders’ inexorable march toward destroying our fair city, and I wanted to know where they stood. So far, the reports I had received were not good. Ever the optimist, I wondered if tonight’s activity might have yielded better results. Once I arrived outside the meeting location, the cacophony of raised voices from within told me all I needed to know about their progress.

All the players were present. Atticus Drake, as dapper as ever in a dark jacket and burgundy cravat, his ruby-tipped cane held in a loose grasp. Gwendolyn Goddard, who somehow made even a laboratory smock look attractive. Elizabeth West, clad in sleek leather as usual, and always the center of my attention. A cadre of Society scientists, including the dwarven brother and sister duo of Raed and Qess, along with Professor Remy Crane and his smart-as-a-whip daughter, Ruby. Last were the Jakaree representatives, who naturally lurked in the laboratory’s only shadowed corner. I spied three of the bald, tattooed priests, though I only recognized Ao-utet.

“Another trinket?” Elizabeth asked, shaking her head. “You do realize that every time we go out there, we’re risking our lives, right?”

“It’s not another trinket,” Gwendolyn said, withdrawing a small metallic device from an open chest. “This is a radial circumelectroid.”

Atticus weighed in. “Which, by itself, is the very definition of a trinket.”

“Ah,” Gwen said, “but combined with the other bits and pieces Elizabeth and the others have retrieved and the technology the professors and I are working on, we will soon have—”

“More nonsense,” Ao-utet growled from his corner. “Onius agreed to this alliance because you said you could deliver the Warder’s weapon. You said you knew where to find it. Yet, each time, we find places where exactors guard nothing important or places the Warders abandoned long ago. I begin to think you cannot fulfill your end of our deal and that you will never deliver the Dragon as promised.”

The Dragon, a mythical weapon that the Warders planned to use to stop the Jakaree from bringing their dark god—aptly named the Dark One—into our world. As someone with direct ties to the Warder organization through her role as a special consultant, Gwendolyn provided our alliance with information about supposed locations where the Warders were putting the finishing touches on their infernal machine. At one time, the belief was that the Warders intended to summon an actual dragon to do their bidding. But we’d seen enough evidence—forged dragon scales, alchemical dragon’s blood, and a magical if not mechanical dragon heart—that we had abandoned those mythical notions in favor of a more practical explanation. Regardless of how it manifested, though, the Warders were building a weapon powerful enough to destroy the Dark One and Alchester in the process. Outside the Jakaree priests, no one wanted to see any dark god, Dark One or otherwise, returned to the world of the living. Even fewer wished the entire city destroyed.

Gwendolyn huffed. “As I’ve told you umpteen times now, this is a process of elimination. Since usurping control of the League of Merchants, Leonidas Storm has spread the Warders’ influence throughout all quarters of the guild’s operation. If I send you directly to their weapon, then it won’t take them long to figure out they have a mole. They’ll take even less time figuring out it’s me. However, by targeting their operation in a seemingly random fashion, suspicion remains at a minimum. In time, I will lead you right to our main objective. Long before we reach the day of the Unifying Convergence, I can guarantee you that.”

“A process of elimination?” Liz shook her head. “So, you still don’t know the Dragon’s location?”

“More to the point,” Atticus said, glaring, “once you discover it—if you haven’t already—do you actually intend to share that information with us? Or will you keep it to yourself to exploit beyond the boundaries of our alliance?”

Gwendolyn sighed. But whether genuine or an act, even I wasn’t sure. Gwendolyn was as cunning as she was intelligent, and while recent tumultuous events had led her to join our cause, her dedication remained suspect.

“You still don’t trust me, Atticus?” she asked. “Even after all I’ve done?”

“Do I really need to answer that? My suspicions—”

“Are entirely unfounded,” Gwendolyn shot back, her anger rising. “I joined this alliance willingly and have made contributions that even you, Atticus, cannot refute. Do you think it’s easy sifting through the information I get from the Warders? Half of it is nothing more than honeypots—decoys and falsehoods meant to ensnare any suspected spies they wish to weed out from their network of associates and consultants. I have to evaluate the information they provide, along with what I gather on my own, and then decide whether it’s valid. I have no reason to withhold information about anything, least of all the Warders’ weapon.” Gwendolyn’s stare fell on me. “Tell him.”

“Tell him what?” I asked, not sure what she wanted me to say.

Fortunately, Liz had no such confusion and answered on my behalf.

“She’s right, Atticus. As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think we’d have come this far without her help.” She directed her gaze toward Ao-utet. “While it’s true we haven’t found the Dragon, that’s likely a good thing. We may only get one chance to destroy it, and we’re not ready. Not yet.”

“Exactly!” Gwen said. “But we’re close. Very close. Isn’t that right, Raed?”

Though all eyes turned to the dwarven engineer, he remained oblivious. A darkened shield covered his face, and an alchemical torch blazed as he soldered two assemblies together. Qess had to elbow him in the side to gain his attention. Turning off his torch, he raised his face shield and scanned the group with a sweeping, befuddled gaze.

“Eh? What was that?”

Qess let out an exasperated sigh. “Never mind, Raed.” She slid from her stool and answered for him. “We’re on schedule, Ms. Goddard. I see no reason we won’t have the Dragonslayer ready for action when you say the word.”

“Dragonslayer?” I asked, raising a brow.

Qess beamed at me. “It was Professor Crane’s idea.”

Which one, I wondered, until Ruby nearly fell out of her chair with excitement. “It’s fitting, don’t you think?”

“Very,” I said, scanning the worktables. “Can I see it?”

Raed jammed a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s in the other room. We’re asking that all non-essential personnel stay the hell away from it. For your own safety and everyone else’s.”

“It’s that dangerous?” I asked.

“Dangerous and volatile,” Atticus chimed in. “Since we’ve limited knowledge of the Dragon’s capabilities, we’ve made assumptions about how to counter its energy yield, intensity, and so on.” Atticus smacked a fist into his open palm. “As long as the Dragon’s capabilities remain a mystery, we’re operating in the dark. We need more information.”

“We’re working on it,” Liz said, crossing her arms. “Thjorn has his network of spies trying to locate the weapon’s design plans, but, like all things related to the Warders, it isn’t easy. If someone gives me something to steal, I’ll steal it. But until then . . .”

“Of course,” Atticus said, rubbing his forehead. “I meant no slight, Elizabeth. I know we are all contributing our best, considering our circumstances.” His gaze crept over and settled on me. “Most of us, anyway.”

One could hardly miss his tone of dissatisfaction, though I was unaccustomed to having it directed at me. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that we all agreed to contribute our individual skills to this endeavor. Unless yours somehow lies in being absent, I think we all need to adhere to the original pact and do our part.”

“I completely agree,” I said, unfazed. “Does that mean you’ve reconsidered my suggestion to ignore the weapon and target the people behind it instead?”

My rationale was simple. We knew little about the Dragon, and as the days ticked by, our efforts to learn more increasingly came up short. Instead of wasting our resources on what seemed a futile effort, why not focus on what—or who—we knew? Namely, the new Grand Administrator of the King’s Merchant League, Leonidas Storm, or the one pulling the strings from the shadows, the Warder Primus, Claire Carter. My skills lie in assassination. I was more than willing to do my part, but no one—not even Thjorn—was willing to bless my proposal.

Atticus frowned. “Nothing has changed. The prospect of eliminating either person remains too sensitive, and the chances of making a difference, too low. Even if we remove Leonidas or some other key person in their organization, we have no guarantee that someone else won’t simply take their place. Meanwhile, we risk raising the ire of the authorities. One does not simply waylay the Merchant League’s chief administrator without facing repercussions. I think we can all agree that we do not need the King’s Magistrate looking too closely at our operation. Besides, while we are acting in the best interests of our city, we are not the authorities. Our purview has boundaries.”

Even now, Atticus refused to use the word murder. Rather, it was all about removing or waylaying. Eliminate came close, at least. I understood Atticus’s perspective. He was a businessman and a scientist. His way was to outspend, outfox, or outsmart the competition, not assassinate them. At least we agreed on his last point. Involving the authorities—whether the city watch or members of the King’s inspectors—invited too many questions that no one wanted to answer. I was an assassin, Liz a thief, and Gwendolyn had her fingers in many pots, some illegal, and that was only for starters. We all wanted to stop the Warders, but not at the expense of our livelihoods or our freedom. That included involving Inspector Wright, who, despite proving a valuable ally at times, remained unaware of our little alliance of convenience.

Since I saw no reason to argue over Atticus’s point, I flashed him a smile and said, “If that changes, I’m at your service.”

Atticus chewed his lip, less than satisfied with my answer but also realizing the futility of continuing the conversation. “Well, then. I’m off to another engagement. I assume someone will keep me apprised of any new developments?”

“Of course,” Gwendolyn said.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Atticus,” Elizabeth said. “I have an engagement of my own. You’ll save me the trouble of having to flag down a carriage.”

Atticus didn’t mind at all. On her way out, Liz stopped in front of me.

“How did everything go tonight?” she asked in a voice that only I could hear.

“Message delivered,” I said.

She frowned, not happy, but she knew the assassins had come for her and her own. There could be no other response other than the one I delivered. She stared a little longer until, finally, she nodded.

“I’m heading to Guild House to update Thjorn,” she said. “Catch up later?”

She named a place, and then she was gone.

While the scientists and engineers returned to their work, Ao-utet and his pair of henchmen emerged from their corner. The pair headed straight for the exit, but Ao-utet lingered, his pointed glare fixed on Gwendolyn.

“I will tell Onius of our progress,” he said. “Do not expect my words to satisfy him.”

Gwen crossed her arms and met his glare with one of her own. Ao-utet acknowledged me with a nod before he followed the others outside into the night.

Gwendolyn waited until they were good and gone before she spun around to face me. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep stringing them along. They’re already suspicious, and I think their high priest may already know I’m not telling them everything.”

The scientists’ attention had returned to their projects, so we spoke in relative privacy.

“I’m sure Onius suspects,” I said. “This alliance was always one of convenience.”

Gwendolyn sighed. “It’s about to get very inconvenient. The date of the Unifying Convergence is getting closer and closer.”

“But it isn’t here yet,” I said. “We still have time to figure out this mess we’ve found ourselves in.”

“I warned you about inviting the priests to take part in this venture, didn’t I? They built one of my Goddard Devices, in case you forgot.”

How could I, when I was the one who volunteered to give them the plans in exchange for their help?

Gwen went on. “With my device powering their horizon dichotomizer, there will be no stopping them.”

I shrugged. “We all accepted the risk. For now, we need them, and they need us. Like I said, it’s all about convenience. What’s that saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Besides, you don’t actually know where the Warders are building their weapon yet, do you?”

Gwendolyn chewed her lip. “Not precisely. But I’ve narrowed down the possibilities. When we’re ready, it won’t be hard to find.” Gwendolyn tapped her fingers on a worktable. “Our stalling may not matter for much longer anyway. Partigan says he’s close to completing the Jakaree’s detection device. Once they have that, the priests won’t need us any longer. They’ll go after the Warder’s weapon, with or without us.”

Likely without us, I figured.

In the background, the sound of hammering on metal and the noise from Raed’s alchemical torch echoed throughout the laboratory.

“I don’t like this,” Gwen stated.

I waited for her to explain.

“This situation is too delicate. We need to stop the Warders from destroying the city, which means neutralizing their weapon. But if we do that, there’s nothing to stop the Jakaree from freeing their dark god.”

I crossed my arms. This wasn’t the first time I’d considered the dilemma posed by the Warders and Jakaree. “The Dark One’s freedom means the rest of us face eternal darkness, whatever that means.”

Gwendolyn pursed her lips. “Nothing good, I imagine. I feel like we’re attempting one hell of a balancing act, and the best we can do is not fall.”

“But the status quo gets us nowhere, either. The Warders and the Jakaree have been engaged in a centuries-long conflict. If we don’t come to some resolution, there’s no guarantee it won’t continue.”

“Maybe it becomes someone else’s problem then.”

“Or maybe we find ourselves right back in this position a year or ten years from now. Better to end the threat here and now.”

This wasn’t about heroics or taking on a noble cause. It was about eliminating a threat and ensuring the continued operation of my business. Also, it had to do with protecting my sister, Olivia, and her husband, Mason. Not to mention Liz and even Thjorn, to whom I owed a debt of gratitude I could never repay. Taking half measures so the problem became someone else’s further down the road was appealing, but not satisfactory.

“Fine,” Gwendolyn said, exasperated. The chief scientist had nerves of steel when she had all the answers. But toss in an element of chaos or a riddle that defied her logic, and she often became flustered, like now. “But how? How do we end it and still survive?”

The answer to that question remained elusive.

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling. What I should have said was that I didn’t know yet. I had some ideas. Some distasteful. Others, logistically challenging. Still others, speculative and requiring further research. I needed more time to kick things around in my head, so I kept to my initial statement and added, “I’m sure you and the others will figure something out.”

“Pfft,” she said. “I suppose we’ll have to. You’re no help.”

“Now you’re beginning to sound like Atticus.”

“Please don’t insult me.”

I had a third appointment this evening, so I bid Gwendolyn and the other scientists good night. Outside, the moon cast an eerie light on the snow. Briefly, I considered returning home to change clothes, but the person I was meeting knew my profession, no less so because he had once hired me to eliminate someone. So I hastened my pace, my boots sinking into the drifts of less-frequented byways, until I arrived at a religious abode that looked dark and sleepy behind its ivy-covered walls.

“You’re late,” a familiar voice said from the other side of a postern gate.

“I thought I was early. Regardless, I’m here now.”

The gate creaked open to reveal Father Kem, with his graying stubble and a blanket draped around his shoulders, as he hopped from one foot to the other. “Let’s get inside. I’m freezing.”

I followed Father Kem across the compound past sleepy communal tenements, a church with drifts of snow piled around its edges, and finally to the rear door of a small building marked by its worn stone walls and sturdy iron-bound door. Father Kem raised a long, toothed key and was about to insert it into the lock when he stopped and gestured across the compound. I saw them too. Cloaked priests bearing swords and holy symbols, by all appearances returning from a clandestine trip into the city. Kem remained motionless until they melted from view.

“A hunting party,” he whispered, placing the key in the lock.

“Hunting what?” I asked, my voice equally low.

“Ashunde Roe.”

Father Kem pushed the door open, and we stepped into a surprisingly warm room that was mostly barren but for some ornamental tapestries hanging on the walls and a spiral stair in one corner leading down.

“He’s still alive?” I asked, immediately realizing the fallacy of my question. “Still dead, I mean.” But that made little sense either. Fortunately, Kem knew what I meant.

“He somehow survived the Holy Knife of Undead Sanctification.”

Kem stamped snow from his boots while I shut the door behind us.

“After our fight with Ashunde and his henchman, Hesul, I reported everything to my superiors, who felt it wise we maintain vigilance in case his living spirit descended and our bishop finally became a vashu.” Kem lit an alchemical lantern. “One of our patrols spotted Ashunde—or what remains of him—a week ago raiding a mausoleum in Aikon Cemetery. He slew three of my brothers before he escaped. We’ve been scouring the cemeteries and catacombs for him ever since.”

Holding the lantern before him, Kem led us down the spiraling stairs until we stopped at another locked door. The priest inserted a key into the lock but paused before opening the door to level a pointed stare at me.

“I did as you asked,” he said. “I found the painting. But please be careful. Some of our most valuable treasures lie beyond this door. Touch nothing. Do you understand?”

Once I nodded my agreement, Kem got on with it, opening the door with a resounding creak. The room beyond was cool and dry, yet cloaked in such darkness that I discerned nothing beyond the soft halo of the priest’s lantern. But Father Kem soon had wall sconces lit, revealing a spacious underground library. Wooden shelves lined the walls, forming neat rows throughout the room. An organized array of scrolls, parchments, and bound volumes filled each. The materials showed their age—yellowed pages, faded ink, and worn leather bindings—but appeared well-preserved in this controlled environment. While Father Kem lit other sconces about the room, I strolled about, careful not to touch anything but curious about the contents of the varied array of scrolls and such. Their subjects spanned various topics, including historical records, religious texts, mythological accounts, and scholarly commentaries. The organization suggested a methodical curator, with subject areas delineated by small carved markers at the end of each shelf. I found the place’s quiet stillness, which was interrupted only by the occasional soft creak of wooden floorboards as I strolled about, a pleasant contrast to the ongoing chaos happening outside.

“Come look at this,” Kem said, waving me over to a small desk and an open book with tattered, yellow pages. “Is this the painting you saw in the temple?”

I recalled the scene with such clarity that a casual glance confirmed it.

“The exact one.”

Like the illustration inside the Warder temple, this one depicted a host of knights battling a cadre of dark priests. Between them, and seemingly aligned with the priests, was a dragon with scales as black as night.

“As you said, the priests in this illustration are not the Jakaree.”

I crossed my arms. “Who were they then?”

Kem wore white gloves. With delicate care, he turned a page. The script was ancient and unreadable, at least to me.

“They called themselves the Brotherhood of Shadows,” Kem said, tracing a line of text with a finger. “Their order, like so many others, vanished after the Fall of the Old Gods. This book is a compendium of knowledge about them and other ancient sects of Darkness. It states that members of the Brotherhood, while priests, were also assassins.”

“Assassins?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yes, assassins who melded spiritual practices with martial traditions. The Brotherhood was a secret organization that owed its allegiance to Kalthar, the God of Assassins. As you might imagine, they operated in secrecy, earning a reputation for deadly efficiency. Some said that seeing an assassin priest of the Brotherhood was akin to seeing the fanged visage of the Lord of Death himself, meaning that such a person had little time left in this world. The shadow priests, as the text calls them, believed their god guided their actions and that such guidance helped foster a balance between Luminance and Darkness.”

I nodded at that. Though most didn’t see it that way, the concerns of balance were ever at the forefront of my profession. An act or deed often required a counter. An evening of the score. A balancing of the scales. A beginning and an end. As my former master liked to say, assassins were the fulcrum between the client and the mark.

“Where does the dragon fit in?” I asked. “And why were they fighting the Warders?”

“An alliance against a common foe? Today, we look back at the battles between good and evil as legendary confrontations. However, in those times, with the gods themselves embroiled in an endless war, such alliances were often a matter of survival or a means to gain the upper hand. I’m afraid I can’t say for sure why a dragon aligned itself with a cadre of assassin priests. I doubt it was for any good reason, though.”

Good was a relative term, I found, but I said nothing to dislodge Father Kem from his high road. Instead, I asked, “What about the Warders, then? The ones in the illustration are clearly knights. We even saw a statue of one inside the temple.”

Father Kem gently lifted the book’s cover and closed it. “The Holy Knights of Warding, as they called themselves in ancient times. The statue may have represented a god or a revered hero of theirs. Once, they served as protectors against the oncoming tide of Darkness.”

“Yet now, it seems they’ve become part of the Darkness itself.”

“But they still fight an unholy foe,” Kem said almost absentmindedly, his attention fixed on the book cover’s intricate pattern.

“Sometimes, there’s no good. Only evil.”

Kem’s gaze lifted. “The lesser of the two, then?”

“Or neither.”

Confused, Kem said, “But someone has to win.”

“Yes, but that someone need not be the Warders or the Jakaree.”

He worked it through in his mind. “You plan to stop them both.”

“I don’t see any other alternative where we come out of this alive and keep our city intact. Do you?”

I had caught the good father up on most everything I knew when I asked him to research the temple’s fresco, so he understood the stakes and the penalty for failure.

Kem began removing his white gloves. “How do you plan to accomplish that?”

“I’m still working out the details. Let me ask you something. Does it strike you as odd that the Warders, who once fought against a dragon, plan to use one—or something like one—to stop the Dark One?”

“Allegiances change,” Kem said, shrugging. “Besides, from what you’ve told me, their draconian manifestation is more machine than actual dragon. It seems they intend to recreate the powers of a dragon more so than conjure one wholesale to use against the Jakaree’s supposed god.”

“Supposed? You think he’s something else?”

“I think there are a great many powers beyond our comprehension and that not all are gods. People—even the Jakaree—want to believe a higher power still exists. Sometimes this longing can lead to misinterpretations. But to answer your question, yes, it strikes me as unusual that the Warders plan to use a dragon or the likeness of one against the Dark One. But legends say a dragon’s power rivaled that of the gods. If the Dark One is that powerful, they would need a dragon’s strength to defeat him. You still know nothing about their weapon?”

“Very little beyond conjecture. The Progressive Society’s chief scientist thinks they plan to unleash a source of superluminal energy. In effect, a very bright light that has a lot of destructive properties too.”

Kem nodded knowingly. “As always, it is a matter of balance, is it not? Good to balance evil, Light to balance Darkness.”

“Or shadow.” I gestured at the book, closed now. “You found no references to a Dark One?”

“None. Perhaps if you provide me with something else to work with, I can approach my research from a different angle. However, I have found no references to a being, god or otherwise, by that name. We know some immortals fell prey to eternal imprisonment during the Third War of the Gods. When the Old Gods fell, many of their jailers, along with knowledge of their prisoners, disappeared with them. To my knowledge, no one has ever found one of these lost and imprisoned immortals.”

“Until now, it seems,” I said. “Onius and another, a high priestess, claim the Dark One speaks to them. I heard him once myself.”

“You did? You made no mention of that earlier.”

“Must have slipped my mind.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Something about the futility of trying to stop him.”

Kem pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did he say exactly? If you can recall the words.”

I searched my memory. “You cannot stop what is coming. That’s what he said. His voice—I heard him inside my head, if that makes any sense—was deafening. He seemed very angry about the whole thing.”

“About you trying to stop him or something else?” Kem asked.

I considered the question. “I’m not sure. About trying to stop him from escaping?”

But Father Kem knew no more than I did.

“Thanks for the help, Father,” I told him on the way out.

“Of course,” he said. “If there’s anything else, you know where to find me.”

Father Kem walked me back to the gate, where we said our goodnights. Seconds later, I was on my way once more, prowling snow-blanketed streets under the cover of darkness until I crossed into the sleepy borough of Dover Heights. I navigated a now-familiar route for three blocks before ducking into an alley and emerging at a deserted intersection in front of a dark, lonely shop.

The Dusty Shelf stood silent in the late hour. Moonlight caught on the frosted windowpanes, casting a silvery glow across the weathered sign that creaked in the winter breeze. The name, carved in an elegant script and touched with faded gold leaf, hung above a door of dark oak, its brass fittings tarnished with age. Through the frost-etched windows, shadowy shapes of bookshelves loomed like sleeping giants, their contents—countless tomes and scrolls—waiting for daylight to reveal their secrets once more. A single lantern hung unlit inside, its glass clouded with dust. The building’s walls leaned outward, with corners that had softened over decades of witnessing the comings and goings of scholars, hobbyists, and curious minds. Snow had gathered in the crevices of the stonework, along the window sills, and, most telling, at the foot of the door. No one, least of all the shop’s owner, Claire Carter, had visited the shop in some time.

I came here during the day and always at night to see if she’d returned. No other avenues of investigation had revealed Ms. Carter’s location, so this was all I had left. Leonidas Storm had become the face of the Warder organization, but I knew he wasn’t the one in charge. That honor fell to the sweet and homely woman who had slain half a dozen Jakaree priests using a power I still didn’t understand. Was she a sorceress, a technologist, or something else entirely? The woman was more than an enigma. Ruthless but merciful. Strong but intellectual. Impulsive but possessed of more patience than anyone I’d ever known because she had waited a lifetime for the Unifying Convergence, when the safeguards imprisoning the Dark One were at their weakest. That was why I knew she was still in Alchester. She wasn’t going anywhere until the job—her lifelong mission—was complete.

I waited a short while longer, wondering if she was watching from the shadows. If she did, I knew no other way to let her know I only wanted to talk other than to stand in the open. If she even received the message, she didn’t understand it, I figured. So, ready to leave, I stopped when I spotted Claire stepping from the shadows. I waited for others to appear beside her, but no one did. She headed straight toward me, stopping well within weapons range. To my surprise, no one emerged from the dark to join her.

“Leaving so soon?” she asked, a whimsical smile playing out across her lips.

“Now that you’re here, I’ll stick around. You’re a hard woman to find.”

Claire shrugged shoulders covered by a heavy wool coat. She had her hands jammed into her pockets, her silver hair tied in a short ponytail, and a fine concealing layer on her cheeks, no doubt meant to hide the slight wrinkles lining her skin. “I’ve been at this for a long time. But I’ve always believed in rewarding persistence. Also, I wonder if you know the true nature of those you’ve allied yourself with.”

“The Jakaree? Oh, I know all about them. It’s the Warders that remain a puzzle. Once, knights bound by chivalry. But now, willing to sacrifice an entire city to fulfill this mad quest of yours.”

“There’s nothing mad about wanting to stop a dark god from returning to our world. As for the greater tolerance for collateral damage, we learned from our mistakes. The Holy Knights of Warding were once an idealistic order, bound by rules, as you say. Such ideals resulted in the imprisonment rather than the annihilation of beings like the Dark One. Such leniency is why we find ourselves in our current predicament. If our ancestors had done what was necessary those many hundreds of years ago, who knows what sort of world we might find ourselves in now? The Jakaree might never have existed, and you and I might never have met.”

“I shudder even to consider such a thing,” I said. I noticed for the first time that someone had smashed a hole through the glass of the front door. “Someone rob you?”

“Someone did.”

“The Jakaree?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Whoever it was, they stole a trove of ancient tomes. Their subjects are not ones I usually assign to the death priests. It wouldn’t bother me so much if the books weren’t extremely valuable. No matter. I’ll get them back, one way or another.”

I returned to the subject at hand.

“So the Warders are cleaning up the mistakes of the past? That’s your holy mission?”

“I wouldn’t call it holy,” Claire said. “But it is our purpose.”

“Then why wait? Onius said the reason you want to destroy the city is to disrupt the Unifying Convergence. He said that without Alchester and Khoras beneath it, none of the other elements matter. If you destroy the city, the Dark One will never escape.” I paused, wondering if she might answer. But I knew by her lifted brow and thin smile that she already had, and that her silence meant she was waiting for me to catch up. “It was never about stopping the Jakaree from freeing their god, was it? In fact, you want them to succeed. That’s why you’ve done nothing to impede their progress and why you won’t make a move until they release the Dark One.”

Claire withdrew her hands from her jacket pockets and gently clapped. “Bravo.”

“Can I assume your weapon is complete?” I asked.

“It is,” Claire said. “But don’t bother asking anything more about it. No amount of persistence will convince me to divulge its secrets.”

“So why come out of the shadows? You’ve filled in some holes for me, and I appreciate that. But you wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t need something from me.”

“I need nothing from you,” she said. “Other than to ask you to stay out of our business. Murder isn’t exclusive to Alchester. Find some other city to ply your trade.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But given the cost of moving and starting over, I think I’ll stay put.”

Claire sniffed. “Suit yourself. But don’t blame me when things don’t work out in your favor. I’ve been planning this for a very long time. There is virtually nothing I haven’t taken into consideration. The Jakaree will free the Dark One, and we’ll be there to end him once and for all. A five-hundred-year mistake made right, finally. Then, when all this is done and our mission is complete, the Warders will seek refuge in distant places where no one will ever find us.”

“So, you sail off into the sunset and leave a smoking ruin behind?” I paused. “You said you thought of everything. But I doubt that in all the years of planning, you ever considered someone like me opposing you. My presence alone is a wild card, isn’t it? Maybe you never expected anyone to learn so much about your plan. Or maybe you didn’t consider that the Jakaree might find allies in the city. Or . . .” I let my hand creep toward one of the long knives at my belt. “Or you never anticipated this meeting, where you’re a knife blade away from having all your carefully laid plans slashed apart.”

Claire’s lips curled into a sly smile, like she knew something I didn’t.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our last meeting already,” she said, rolling up her sleeves to expose her forearms. “You know I’m far from defenseless.” A fine layer of hair covered thin, freckled arms that were otherwise unremarkable except for a series of metal filaments visible beneath her pale skin. The filaments disappeared somewhere beneath the sleeves of her jacket and ended at her hands. Their layout on each forearm was congruent with the other and etched in such a bizarre pattern that there seemed an artistic quality to them. Artistry aside, the filaments’ design was also one of deadly function. As if to demonstrate their lethality, or perhaps as a reminder, fingers of lightning danced across her arms.

“And we thought at first the Warders wanted nothing to do with technology,” I said. “You’ve got it implanted in your body.”

“As with all things, these bio-electrical implants serve a purpose, not least of which is deterring unwanted advances by ones such as you.”

I let my hand drop to my side. “Fair enough. Warning received.”

She lowered her sleeves. “And ignored?”

I shrugged. “Like I said, allowing you to lay waste to my city is bad for business. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Humph,” Claire said, jamming her hands back into her pockets. “Then the next time we meet, don’t expect such cordiality.” Without another word, she spun about and trudged through the snow until she disappeared into the shadows.

I stared after her for a moment, then I got moving again. As much as I wanted my night to end, I still had one more stop to make, and I reckoned by the moon’s position that I was already late. Dover Heights to Chester Borough wasn’t far, so it only took a short while for me to reach my sister’s house. Rather than ascending the short stairs to the front door, I crept around back, hoping that darkened windows meant Olivia was fast asleep. As instructed, I stopped at the slanted basement door and, wiping away accumulated snow, tapped on it lightly four times. Quiet footsteps coming from inside approached, someone undid a latch, and the door, weighed down as it was, lurched open to reveal the frowning face of my brother-in-law, Mason Gould. He was a good enough-looking fellow, with dark wavy hair, solid if not sharp features, and wire-rimmed spectacles that contributed to his intellectual bearing. An engineer by trade, appearing intellectual was part of the job, I supposed. He finished off his appearance with a smock laden with small engineering tools in breast pockets over a collared work shirt and trousers.

“You’re late,” he whispered.

“So I've been told.. I’m here now. Do you have it?”

His frown deepened. “Not even a hello or a how are you?”

“Some other time. Well, do you?”

He sighed. “Yes. But come inside. It’s dreadfully cold out here, and I’ll need to give you some special instructions.”

I hesitated. “Olivia’s asleep?”

“Soundly. I work late often, so she’s grown accustomed to my absence.”

I followed him inside, gingerly stamping snow from my boots as I descended the stairs. Far from the dark, drafty space I expected, warm light from abundant lanterns and the red-hot glow of a cast-iron stove enveloped me. The air carried the scent of a complex mixture of hot metal, wood shavings, lamp oil, and the faint, acrid tang of alchemical compounds. The workshop hummed with the ticking of multiple clockwork mechanisms, the soft hiss of the stove, and the almost imperceptible whir of gears turning in various contraptions scattered across the room. Shelves lined the walls, their surfaces cluttered with an organized chaos of tools and materials. Brass components caught the light from lamps hanging from the ceiling beams, creating small constellations of golden reflections. Delicate instruments—calipers, miniature saws, and precision hammers—lay arranged in careful order beside partially assembled devices whose purposes I could only guess at. Blueprints and diagrams covered every available vertical surface, with detailed drawings and scribbled notes revealing glimpses into Mason’s methodical mind. In one corner, a shelf held rows of glass jars containing springs, cogs, and other small parts, each labeled in a neat hand. The engineer's daily movements had worn the wooden floor smooth in paths between workstations.

Mason followed one of those paths now, leading me to the device I had asked him to work on. As I expected, it looked like a simple enough contraption, with twin coils extending from a solid metal base and a grip to facilitate easy handling. Mason had affixed light diodes above the handle, right at eye level if one held the instrument straight out.

“That’s it?” I asked.

Mason picked up the device by the grip. “This is it. It’s simple enough in design. The attunement proved tricky since you said you needed it to detect light sources, but only those of a specific intensity.”

“How’s it work?”

Mason flipped a switch near the grip, adjusted a dial, then pointed the device toward a dark corner of the room. Slowly, he swept his arm across the space. As the direction of the device approached the nearest light, the diodes on the instrument lit up. His arm kept moving, so that once he had gone past the light, the diodes dimmed and darkened. At the next light, the demonstration was the same, with the diodes lighting up, then fading into dormancy once more.

“As you can see,” Mason said, “you’ll need to navigate by pointing the light detector toward a source of light. Since it’s nominally attuned to intense sources, I adjusted the sensitivity with this dial. Keep in mind that if there’s more than a single source, using the detector might get tricky.”

“I’m reasonably confident there’s only the one.”

Mason handed the device to me. I repeated his demonstration with the same results.

“What’s the range?” I asked.

Undoing his smock, Mason hung it on a wall hook by the stairs. “Not great,” he said almost apologetically over his shoulder. “If I had more time, I could increase it. Give me a few more days and I think I can—”

“Tonight’s the night, Mason,” I said. “I’m running out of time. We all are.”

Mason sighed. He finished hanging the smock, then sank onto a stool. “You’re sure this is the right approach? It seems unnecessarily provocative.”

“If you can’t tempt fate, what can you do with it?”

Mason frowned. “That sounds like something Olivia might say. I should wake her. She always provides keen insight into matters like these.”

“You two spend a lot of time in the Shadow Realm?” I said, grinning.

“Well, no, but you know what I mean.”

“Best let her sleep,” I said, not wanting to get into the reasons. For a long time, I assumed—or hoped—my sister thought I was dead or gone elsewhere, away from Alchester for good. I learned only recently from Mason that my deception had not so easily duped her. I shouldn’t feel surprised. Mason meant well by suggesting we bring her in on this. He probably hoped Olivia might talk me out of it. Between the two of us, she was always the more rational one. I almost wished we had already made contact so I could hear her thoughts. “Ridiculously stupid,” I already heard her saying. “A wonderful way to get yourself killed,” seemed something else she might tell me. But once she got past those and gave it some thought, I liked to think she’d agree that it was the only way. For some reason, her blessing would have made the risk more palatable. But now wasn’t the time to get reacquainted and deal with all the questions about why I disappeared from her life those years ago. Maybe once things returned to normal, we could sit down and have that conversation. Assuming I lived through the night.

I held the light detector up. “You mentioned something about special instructions? It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

Mason paused, sighing. “I’ve told you all you need to know.” He removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses with a cloth. “I actually hoped to talk you out of going, but I see you’re dead set on this.” He put his glasses back on. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, as much for his benefit as mine. “No one is going to end up dead, especially me. Besides, I’m only going there to talk.”

“What makes you think he’ll have anything to say to you?”

I hooked the detector onto my belt. “The Dark One doesn’t strike me as the shy type.”

After thanking Mason for his work—I’d offered to pay him, but he refused—I saw my way out the same way I’d come in. Outside remained cold and dark. No surprise there. Even so, it was a warm summer day compared to where I was heading.

The Shadow Realm was not an easy place to access. The Jakaree had used their horizon dichotomizer to open a temporary rift into it. I suppose that was how they intended to enter the realm again. Fortunately, I had discovered a more convenient way inside. The Warders had even cleared a path for me by blasting away the doors, traps, and other obstacles barring access to Finrad’s magnificent treasure room. I went to the tower now, finding it much the same as before.

The old wizard’s tower remained a dark, lonely place, but transformed by an icy coating that blanketed its weathered stone courtesy of winter’s first snowfall. The hundred-foot structure with its bare, sooty stone gleamed with an otherworldly presence where moonlight caught the ice. Snow had collected in the mortar lines, creating ghostly white veins that climbed the tower’s full height. The clearing that surrounded the structure, bare before, had disappeared beneath an unmarked, knee-deep blanket of white. The steps leading to the open doorway—open because Warder arcanists had ripped it from its hinges—were barely visible shapes beneath the snow. Massive icicles hung from the edges like crystal teeth, some longer than a man's height, creating an effect like a glittering crown that the tower’s master might have conjured in a bygone era. As before, no windows or balconies interrupted the tower's ascent. Fantastic snow sculptures shaped by the wind crowned the crenelated rooftop—a jagged white corona that caught the moon’s light, transforming Finrad's grim monument into something that, despite my knowing better, appeared almost beautiful.

Although my erstwhile allies from Khoras and I had decimated the first of the Warders to take root here, I knew they hadn’t abandoned the tower. This was their way into the Shadow Realm, just as it was mine. So, I approached cautiously, wondering how many sentries I needed to sneak past. No one guarded the stairs, and I had nothing to fear from higher vantage points since the tower had none. I supposed someone might observe my approach from the tower’s rooftop, but I doubted anyone had figured out how to access it. Stories said the tower’s interior dimensions defied external observation. Those stories at least were right. But other tales, like those that told of rooms filled with poisonous gas or deadly automatons patrolling the halls, remained uncorroborated. However, during past expeditions into the tower, I had the sense we had hardly scratched the surface of the place. Who knew what undiscovered wonders—or horrors—awaited the next round of treasure hunters and adventurers since we had literally left the front door wide open?

As I crept up the stone steps where I fought Leonidas Storm, I slid a knife free. I saw only darkness beyond the open doorway and heard nothing but the soft wind caressing the tower’s icy stone. I shook the snow from my boots to avoid leaving tracks and then entered. Inside, echoes of silence presaged my arrival. The frigid air in the circular chamber matched the temperature outside. As before, windows not seen from the outside lined the interior all the way around. Through them, I spied the moon’s light and the darkness of the surrounding woods. A dusting of snow crusted the ironworks.

The sound of booted feet warned me of an approaching Warder sentry. Preferring to avoid a confrontation, I crouched into the deepest shadows and watched as an exactor—a fancy word the Warders used to describe their soldiers—came into view. No longer hiding his origin, the sentry wore a white surcoat bearing the four runes of the Warder insignia over chain armor. Obviously bored, the sentry trudged straight outside without so much as a sweep of his attention in either direction. The second he was out of sight, I slipped down the stairs. Faint light sconces guided me until I reached the Room of Doors. Thankfully, all the doors remained barred or closed, so I passed through with relief. The platform that descended into the treasure room lay at the bottom of the shaft, which posed no problem since I’d scaled the wall here before. I did so now, landing in a soft crouch devoid of sound. Right away, I spotted a pair of guards standing where Lyra and Scaramon had battled over the Amulet of Eternal Gloom. A permanent byway remained from past endeavors, a lane unaffected by the surrounding mist that marked the separation between our world and that of the Shadow Realm. The two sentries wisely remained within that area of safety, since venturing outside it meant certain doom. The shapes of others trapped for all eternity provided proof enough of that. With the platform down, neither guard expected visitors, so they strolled about, shifting from one foot to another while engaging in talk about an upcoming match at Ridlin’s. Slipping past them was easier than stepping outside the carefully wrought lane and far easier than stepping into the ensorcelled mist. I felt the effect of Finrad’s spell right away. The slow, debilitating aura penetrated my being from all sides at once, but since the sensation bore some familiarity, I shook it off and got on with the business at hand. That business principally involved navigating—but also surviving—the Shadow Realm. With every step, the mad wizard’s fog lessened and the Shadow Realm’s darkness intensified until my passing curled and dissipated the last wisps of mist, and I stepped fully into the Realm.

The first time I entered this place, the numbing cold shocked me to my core. But subsequent immersions started an inurement process I didn’t quite understand. I didn’t think one simply became acclimated to the harsh environment, which was darker than the darkest night and colder than an ice locker. It got me thinking, wondering if some external influence was at play. Also, it got me wondering if that external influence was the Dark One, sending me a subtle overture for reasons I didn’t yet comprehend. As with so many things, there was only one way to find out.

I took out Mason’s luminosity detector but didn’t activate it. As my brother-in-law had stated, the device had a limited range, and I knew—somehow—that I wasn’t close enough yet. I couldn’t explain how I even knew which general direction to walk in. Maybe it didn’t matter, and one direction was as good as another. I saw nothing in the thick darkness. Neither did I hear, smell, or sense anything at all but for the cold that manifested as a coolness grazing my skin and nothing more.

My first steps since leaving the tower proved easier than I thought. But with every footfall thereafter taking me further from my world and deeper into the void, I felt a rising sense of wrongness in my gut, a warning from unseen quarters that my kind did not belong in this world of eternal darkness. My free hand strayed to my sword, the worn, leather-wrapped hilt providing a sensation of comfort that countered the uneasiness for a short while. I kept moving. Not fast, not slow, but at the same pace I might use on my way to a social gathering. I assured myself that I knew where I was going and what I was doing, not realizing that I’d broken into a cold sweat until a shiver danced up and down my spine. I tried to shake off the uneasiness, but to no avail. Continued reassurances that I knew what I was doing—that I always knew what I was doing—didn’t work, either. The feeling—like I’d become lost, but also that I’d made a fatal mistake by coming here—turned my limbs into flopping appendages. But I still kept on, taking one stumbling step after another, believing—hoping—I headed in the right direction.

I tried the detector, moving it in a wide arc.

Nothing.

So, I turned it off and shuffled onward, hunching forward and holding my head down as if I pushed through a dust storm. I glanced up every once in a while, activating the detector, but when the diodes remained unlit, I resumed my silent march. Finally, I stopped. Looking around at the impenetrable darkness, I knew that if the detector didn’t show me something soon, I was well and truly doomed. I looked back—or was it forward?—wondering if I could ever find my way out of here. Thoughts of the blood witch, Isadora, surfaced as I imagined her wandering the Shadow Realm like this, thanks to me. I didn’t regret trapping her here, but I felt a small amount of pity for her. I lifted the luminosity detector once more, my thumb poised to turn the device on. If it detected nothing again, then I’d keep going. What else could I do? But I also knew I was as doomed as Isadora, cursed to wander the Shadow Realm for all eternity.

Releasing a deep breath, I activated the detector. This time, the diodes lit up.

At first dim, I adjusted the direction and sensitivity, and soon the lights glowed brighter. When they reached their brightest, I knew I had discovered the direction of the Dark One’s prison.

Though the way ahead remained as dark as ever, I took lighter steps, anticipation urging me on. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so enthusiastic about facing the Jakaree’s god. But caution and any remaining reservations vanished when I spied the faintest of light. In this place, such a thing was as out of place as life itself. Like the proverbial moth to the flame, the luminosity proved irresistible, drawing me ever closer until I stopped because, finally, I had reached my destination.

The prison of the Dark One.

What appeared as a single source of illumination from afar separated into five distinct pillars of light closer up. I saw no walls or bars. Just the ring of pillars, each rising thirty or more feet and burning so bright it hurt to look at them. Holding up a hand to shield my eyes, I peered between them, trying to focus on the dark mass hovering at the center. No other possibility crossed my mind other than that the pillars confined the mass here, because even as its vapors shifted, expanding and contracting, the cloud’s center remained fixed at a spot equidistant from each of the symmetrically placed columns. Rays of light from them shone into the dark cloud like an infinite number of tiny barbs, but while the cloud shifted at their touch, the luminosity did not penetrate the darkness.

“Come closer,” a voice purred from inside the dark cloud.

The soothing, unexpected tone startled me, leaving me speechless for longer than I liked. I let out a breath, settling my nerves and releasing fists I hadn’t realized I’d made.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay here,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

“Why have you come, I wonder,” the speaker within the cloud said, ignoring my question.

“I’ve come for answers.”

“You arrive uninvited,” the voice kept on. “Presume to speak to me as if we are equals, showing neither deference, respect, nor even an acknowledgement of the old ways, yet you expect me to provide answers?”

I kept quiet, letting him have his say.

“You bring weapons with you, as if you mean to slay me.”

“I did not bring them to—”

“You even have with you a sword forged from the Black Volcano. In times of old, the affinity for shadow magic such weapons possessed made them formidable.”

Volcanoes dotted the Steel Islands, where Valdris the Steelbinder forged my sword, but I’d never heard of a volcano with that name. I knew even less about the rest.

“But your most grievous error?”

I crossed my arms, waiting for him to tell me.

“You have no way home. You’ve come through the endless darkness, found my prison, only to become a prisoner yourself because you will never retrace your steps and escape the Shadow Realm. Like me, your mistakes have doomed you to spend eternity here.”

Light from the pillars, never wavering, bathed the cloud of darkness in a continuous stream of luminosity. In response, the cloud billowed in and out, expanding and contracting with slow, subtle movements.

“If that’s true,” I said, “then we have plenty of time to get to know one another. But first, what should I call you? Dark One is awkward, and, let’s face it, since I’m not one of your worshippers, I have a hard time adding the right amount of deference. Do you have another name?”

“My name,” said the voice, not purring now but not violent like the last time the Dark One had spoken to me, “is no concern of yours. What do you want?”

“Like I said, answers.”

“One who seeks answers must first ask a question,” the Dark One said.

I had many. But one rose above all others.

“Once you are free of this place, what are your intentions?”

“Once I am free,” the Dark One said, needing no time to think of an answer, “I will find the ones who put me in this place and suffocate them slowly with such darkness that they will beg for mercy. But I will grant them none.”

“Those who imprisoned you did so a long time ago,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they’re all already dead.”

“Their ancestors, then,” the Dark One said.

“Then what? Onius and the Jakaree believe you will usher in a new reign of Darkness. That you’ll bring about eternal night.”

The Dark One huffed.

I hooked my thumbs into my belt. “You think otherwise?”

“I think you ask questions that, in the end, matter very little. Onius possesses something. An ancient artifact. His will alone will bring about the eternal darkness.”

“An ancient artifact?” I asked, surprised because this was the first I’d heard of any such thing.

“The Malefang Horn,” the Dark One spat.

“Never heard of it.”

The Dark One hissed, which I realized wasn’t a hiss at all, but mocking laughter. “You come here seeking answers to complicated questions, when you lack answers to even the simplest ones.”

“Enlighten me,” I said. Glancing at the nearest pillar, I added, “Sorry, poor choice of words.”

“The Malefang Horn is a relic of a forgotten age,” the Dark One said. “Crafted by a conclave of dark sorcerers, the horn’s power knows no bounds and suffers no limits.”

“It’s powerful enough to bring about the eternal darkness all on its own?” I asked, pulling at a thread that had suddenly appeared in my mind.

The Dark One hesitated, but finally said, “Yes.”

“Then why does Onius need you?”

No answer.

“If the horn is as powerful as you say, why does Onius need to free you from this prison? Why not leave you to rot?” I left that question unanswered. “Let me ask you something else. Did you know that the Warders—you might know them better as the Holy Knights of Warding, as they called themselves when their order imprisoned you here—want you to win your freedom? They want the Jakaree to succeed. Of course, they intend to destroy you the very next second, but that’s beside the point. I learned about that only this evening before I came here, but I had some time to think once I crossed over into the Shadow Realm. The trip was dreadfully long, by the way. I would say the scenery left something to be desired, except there wasn’t any scenery at all. A thoroughly unpleasant experience. But allow me to get back to my point.”

“Please do,” the Dark One said, sounding bored.

“If the Jakaree free you, and you’re the one who tips the world into eternal darkness, I wonder, what purpose does the horn serve?”

I waited for the Dark One to answer. When he met my question with silence, I pressed on.

“I saw a mural on a temple wall that told a story about a group of priests who ventured deep into the earth and returned with a horn. The Malefang Horn, perhaps?”

More silence, while the shifting mists of the cloud of darkness grew more erratic, swirling in new and different patterns.

“The horn was dark and twisted, if that helps place it. One of the final murals depicted a priest holding the horn high and a dragon fighting alongside the other priests. They fought the Warding Knights.”

“I know who they fought,” the Dark One rumbled, his voice growing deeper, more agitated.

“Oh? You know the battle? It must have been significant because the knights slew the dragon.”

The vaporous mass darkened, if that was possible, and billowed out in ever-increasing volume.

“Slayed it and cut its heart out.”

The dark cloud exploded, its gases expanding in all directions at once, even as light from the five pillars reacted in kind, flaring with such brilliance and heat that I felt compelled to turn and stagger away to a safe distance. When I sensed the light lessening and the darkness receding, I turned to discover that the cloud had returned to its previous size and the light had regained its normal intensity. But something had changed. The misty vapors scarcely moved, the contractions and expansions out of sync, and the mass grew smaller by infinitesimal measurements with each pulse. From deep within the cloud, the Dark One hissed—not laughter this time—the reverberations echoing about but growing more silent as each second passed. I remained quiet, watching and waiting, until the cloud finally returned to some semblance of equilibrium, and the creature that was the Dark One grew silent.

“Are you the mist or are you inside of it?” I asked. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter, does it? I see what’s happening. You’re in pain. Constant, intense pain. Is the light the cause?”

“Yes,” he growled, still angry.

“I had an unfortunate encounter with a shadow walker recently. Unfortunate for him, mostly. Intense light undid him. Is this something similar?”

“I am no shadow walker,” the Dark One said.

“What are you then?”

No answer.

“It doesn’t matter, really, though I have a suspicion—”

The mist at the cloud’s center thinned, as though drawn inward by some unseen force. In that void, two brilliant violet orbs appeared, glowing with an inner fire that cast an eerie purple light that cut through the blackness. Those eyes fixed upon me with ancient intelligence, predatory and calculating, studying me with a cold, unflinching scrutiny that seemed to peer directly into my soul. The mist withdrew further, revealing a pair of twisted horns—obsidian spiral structures that curved backward and then forward at unnatural angles, like gnarled branches that had grown bereft of sunlight in eternal darkness. The horns reflected none of the pillar’s illumination, seeming to devour it instead, their surface rippling with shadows even as they solidified into view before me. A snout materialized next—long and reptilian, covered in scales so fine they appeared at first like polished black glass. Unable to tear my gaze away, I saw that each scale was perfectly formed, interlocking with its neighbors in mesmerizing geometric patterns, their edges sharp and shimmering not with reflection but with subtle variations of darkness—midnight blues, deep purples, and blacks so profound they pulled at my vision. The mist parted further to reveal a mouth fixed in a permanent snarl, exposing rows of dagger-like teeth, each one a sliver of perfect darkness. The Dark One’s upper lip curled as it became fully visible, revealing more of those terrible fangs—some long enough to extend beyond the jaw's confines. A forked tongue, like liquid shadow, flickered between them, as if tasting my fear. For one terrible moment, as the creature’s nostrils flared, releasing tendrils of dark mist that rejoined the swirling cloud around it, I thought that the darkness had enveloped me, and that nothing prevented the Dark One from claiming me as his prize. But then the light from the pillars, acting in kind with his gesture, intensified, the rays blazing across the revealed form. Recoiling from their touch, the Dark One jerked away, and the black mist engulfed him once more.

“You’re a dragon,” I said, disbelief still stuck in my throat even though I was sure I’d known it already. I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the fear still clinging to me. It wasn’t every day you came face to face with such a magnificently deadly beast. “Do you have a name?”

“A dragon’s name is not something so freely given. But you may call me Shadowgrim.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Did you know the dragon from the mural?” I asked.

A single word slid from the mist. “Malefang.”

“Was he a friend?” Did dragons have friends, I wondered? “Family? Or something else?”

Shadowgrim chose to remain silent. I took that to mean that I shouldn’t waste his time with such trivialities, so I returned to my earlier question, asking again, “If Onius has the horn, why does he need you?”

“Because the horn grants him power over me,” Shadowgrim said.

“But you said . . . Oh, I see. The horn doesn’t grant Onius the power to bring about the eternal darkness, but his hold over you does. He needs you because you’re the one who will bring about the eternal dark. But that also means . . .” Now the situation made sense. “That also means you want no part of Onius’s plan, doesn’t it?”

I paused, not to wait for an answer but to give myself time to think. I had always assumed that Onius carried out the Dark One’s plan, and never that the Dark One—Shadowgrim—was as much a piece on the high priest’s game board as the rest of us. More than a simple pawn, though, the dragon represented the linchpin of the Jakaree’s entire strategy. Without him, their plan to bring their holy doctrine to the masses was no more effective than any of the dozens of cults that had arisen from the ashes of the Old Gods’ deaths, full of bluster but without any bite. But what if the Jakaree succeeded in freeing Shadowgrim, yet failed to force his participation in their cause? Such a thing had implications beyond the death priests, though those exact details remained unknown without the answer to one more question.

“Once free, if Onius cannot control you, what will you really do?”

“Leave this corner of the Shadow Realm forever and never return. The shadows of my home are vast, with many other places to roam. I will lose myself in the deepest parts and hope never to become entangled in the machinations of gods and men ever again. Like many others of my kind, the immortals of old enticed me with visions of riches, power, and the glory of striking down our fiercest enemy, the luminous dragons. The war of the gods became our own, and in doing so, blinded us to our folly. Many of my kind perished, slain by ones such as the Knights of Warding.”

“What about Alchester?” I asked. “And Khoras beneath it?”

“I care nothing for your city, old or new,” Shadowgrim said. “This cell has stolen everything from me, including the passion to punish my jailers. Once, I would have pursued them to the ends of Uhl. But now, I desire only freedom and for the world to leave me alone. Above all else, I desire an end to this eternal torment.”

The dragon spoke the words with such an eternity of pain and hopelessness that I didn’t doubt them. However, that didn’t mean I trusted him. He remained an ancient force of Darkness. The Dark One, or Shadowgrim, as he named himself, once aligned with the very Immortals of Darkness. I was no saint myself, but I limited my villainous acts to single, precise murders, with no greater goal than to serve the needs of a marketplace that, while abundant with opportunities, never crossed into the realm of genocide. While I didn’t relish what I was about to do, I came here to save my city, and that’s what I intended to do.

“I may have a solution,” I said.

The dark mist’s slow movement remained unwavering.

“Onius needs the horn, right? Without it, his plan unravels.”

“You propose stealing it from him?” Shadowgrim asked from inside his cloud of protection.

“Yes,” I said.

The vapors shifted. “You are small-minded. Without the horn, the high priest cannot exert control over me and therefore has no reason to free me.”

“I always thought myself quite clever, actually. But I see your point. So, I’ll take it from Onius after you’re released. I’ll admit the timing may prove challenging, but—”

“You must destroy the Malefang Horn. If you wish to strike a bargain with me to save your city from Onius’s reign of evil, that is the price.”

“A bargain?” I asked. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But that means you’re contributing something. So far, it seems I have to do all the work while you sit inside your cloud of gloom. Do you have something to offer?”

“I have information,” Shadowgrim said.

“I’m listening.”

“I have an ally amongst the Jakaree,” the shadow dragon said. “One who has heard my voice in whispers since she was a child. But she ran afoul of the Amulet of Eternal Gloom and has grown weak. You must help her regain her strength.”

He spoke of Lyra. Once powerful, her encounter with the amulet had stripped her of her strength and mental fortitude. When I last saw her, she didn’t have the vigor to even rise from her chair.

“How?” I asked.

“The Amulet of Eternal Gloom is a potent relic of Darkness possessing the unholy power of unlife.”

Unlife, which one might think meant death. But unlife was synonymous with undeath, meaning neither life nor death, but a state somewhere between.

“Eslar necromancers created the Amulet of Eternal Gloom long ago,” Shadowgrim continued. “They used the amulet to create an army of undead from the living. Only a master necromancer can command its full potential. The effect on my acolyte was at best a half measure. Otherwise, she would have joined the ranks of the unliving, and I would no longer have the ability to communicate with her.”

“She still hears you?” I asked.

“She hears but understands little. Such is the hold the amulet has over her. Only a special necromantic potion can free her of it. You must find a witch to mix the potion. Then a necromancer must bless it with his death magic.”

“Then Lyra needs to drink it,” I said. “Sounds simple enough.”

“You know of a witch willing to help?” the dragon asked from his shadows.

“Willing?” I shrugged. “She’ll at least listen to what I have to say.”

“And a necromancer?”

“I know of one,” I said, leaving it at that. “Assuming Lyra even has the wherewithal to drink the potion, getting it to her may prove challenging. Onius brought her back to their lair to appease his flock more than because he wanted her at his side once more. If he discovers what I’m doing, he might try to stop me.”

The mist billowed and shifted. “Then you must kill him.”

“If I have to, I will,” I said, though I knew that wasn’t enough to stop someone else from assuming his mantle of leadership and carrying out the Jakaree’s will. Hell, if the death priests didn’t free Shadowgrim, then I knew the Warders would. “I’ll need the list of ingredients and anything else related to creating the potion.”

Shadowgrim rattled off the names of half a dozen odd ingredients, making sure I committed them to memory by reciting them back to him. Then he went into the preparation and mixing details until he lost me, and I said, “Won’t a witch already know this part?”

A deep growl sounded from within the cloud of darkness. “Tell her it is a Potion of Dark Rejuvenation. If the name is unfamiliar to her, then the potion is likely beyond her ability, and you will need to find someone else.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Before I leave, I was wondering about something. My first introduction to the Shadow Realm was not pleasant. However, every time since, the cold and other sensations have lessened. Even now, I feel barely anything compared to that first time. Do I have you to thank for this?”

“Thanks are unnecessary,” Shadowgrim grumbled.

“Why help me? For all you knew, I was as bad as the Warders. Maybe I still am.” I considered one possible explanation. “You’re playing all sides, aren’t you? Leaving nothing to chance.”

“Ensuring my survival,” the shadow dragon said instead. “I can do nothing to free myself, so I am left with no choice but to rely on others. You mortals are fickle creatures and wholly unreliable. Perhaps where one fails, another will succeed. Or perhaps all will fail and I will remain trapped forever.”

“I’ve met the ones who want to free you. I don’t think you have too much to worry about on that front. Now, what’s the best way out of here? Never mind. I’ll figure it out.”

I started away from the prison. Ahead of me, I saw nothing but impenetrable shadow.

“Do you even know where you are going?” Shadowgrim’s voice echoed around me.

“For both our sakes, I hope so.”

I made the adjustments to Mason’s detector as he had instructed me, holding it out and hoping it homed in on the beacon I dropped inside Finrad’s treasure vault. It did, so that in less time than it took me to find Shadowgrim’s prison, I emerged from the Shadow Realm alive and with a plan I intended to carry out without delay.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

I used an old iron pipe I found while I strolled down a weed-choked path to bang on the lift’s metal frame. Hoping three times was enough, I tossed the pipe aside and stepped away from the hole the Warders had carved into the earth. I didn’t know for sure if the goblins of Grimlock used the lift or if it was as abandoned as the rest of the lost city, but it seemed a good place to search for Mathilda.

Despite the emerald light shining from algae plastered to the cavern’s ceiling and walls, shadows abounded throughout the square. Remembering the Sightless Ones, predatory skeva who dwelt even deeper but who ascended to forage and hunt, I kept a hand close to weapons and an eye on the deepest pockets of darkness. The statue of the knight, who had once stood proudly here, remained face down, toppled by the Warders’ excavation. Someone had removed most of the other debris, including shovels and picks, broken wheelbarrows, and the Warder corpses slain by skeva or goblins.

Five minutes became ten and then twenty before I picked up the discarded pipe and raised it to strike the lift assembly again. Right when I was about to do so, pulleys squeaked to life and chains rattled, and the mining lift came up. A single imp goblin disembarked. Wearing a dented breastplate with a skullcap helmet, he peered at me with his white eyes, raised a lip to show his fangs, and asked, “What d’ya want?”

“I need to speak with the witch. Can you send for her?”

The imp frowned, as much as a goblin could. “Do I look like a messenger boy? Fetch her yourself.”

I tossed him a silver denar, which he promptly tested by biting down on. Satisfied, he stepped into the lift. “Wait here.” Then he descended.

I waited another twenty minutes before the lift returned, this time carrying an entire ensemble of witchery, including Mathilda, her daughter Eliza, and, regrettably, Mathilda’s familiar, the crow she called You. The crow perched on Eliza’s shoulder, his copper-flecked eyes taking me in with what I imagined was a mocking stare. Mathilda stared too, not speaking. Eliza, who was Mathilda’s mirror image with her violet hair and nuanced features, stood next to her mother doing the same.

“I need your help,” I said.

Piercing green eyes narrowed, but still Mathilda remained quiet, her mouth pressed into a fine line and her jawline rigid. You opened his beak but emitted no noise.

I cleared my throat. Mathilda was a sort of friend, but that didn’t mean her presence—and that of her equally menacing daughter, who had almost choked me to death—didn’t make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. “It’s a complicated request. I need you to—”

“What did you do to my sister?” Mathilda asked.

“What did you do to my aunt?” Eliza chimed in, her high-pitched shout echoing from the chamber’s walls.

My gaze fell on Eliza, who crossed her arms and fixed me with a pouty stare, before my attention returned to her mother. “I trapped her in the Shadow Realm. She’s dead, or as close to dead as you can get.”

I wasn’t expecting an elaborate, flowery display of gratitude. Not from Mathilda. However, something as simple as a thank you would have more than satisfied me. Instead, Mathilda administered a heavy dose of scorn laced with frustration.

“Did it occur to you that Isadora was not yours to deal with?”

“Not yours to deal with!” Eliza echoed.

Mathilda wrung her hands at her sides. So too did her daughter.

“Isadora’s fate and ours are intertwined. Now, she is out of reach, and I dare not relax my vigilance. Your actions have done nothing but delay the inevitable confrontation between us.”

“Delayed the inevitable confrontation!”

You hopped from one witch’s shoulder to the other. “Delayed!” he squawked.

Though this was not the reception I expected, I pressed on despite the odds aligned against me. “You don’t know the Shadow Realm like I do. No one comes back from that place. Even if Isadora somehow survives the environment, she’ll never find her way out. She’s lost, and she’s never getting out.” I waited for some sort of confirmation. A word of agreement, a nod, or a gesture that told me Mathilda agreed. Instead, I received more silence, which eroded my confidence faster than I had expected. “She’s not, is she?”

“Coming back!” You screeched.

“Quiet, You,” Eliza said.

“If a way exists for Isadora to find a way out, she will find it,” Mathilda said. “You don’t know her like I do. The forces that drive her—her hatred of me and what I did to her and our coven. She will never stop coming after me and my daughter.”

“That may be,” I said. “But if nothing else, I’ve given you a reprieve. Use that time to continue hiding or find some way to deal with her when—if—she returns. The choice is yours. But at least you have one now.”

My words must have finally made sense because Mathilda heaved her shoulders in a sigh. Eliza’s expression softened, too, though only after she looked to her mother.

“What about the empyrean chest?” I asked. “Have you opened it yet?”

Mathilda believed the chest contained an artifact she intended to use against her sister. However, with Isadora banished—temporarily or not—I hoped we might still find a use for the weapon.

“No,” Matilda said. “The task has proven difficult. The empyrean magic protecting the chest is stronger than I expected.” She brushed her violet hair, grown longer now, behind her ears. “What is it you need my help with?”

“I need you to mix a potion for me.”

Mathilda crossed her arms and frowned. Instead of doing the same, Eliza wandered off with You still perched on her shoulder.

“Do not go far, Eliza,” Mathilda said. “What sort of potion?”

“A Potion of Dark Rejuvenation.”

“Pfft,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Better to ask a necromancer for something like that.”

“You’ve heard of it? Good. I was told I needed a witch to mix the potion, then a necromancer to cast a spell over it.”

“Who told you this?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Her silence meant she wanted me to tell her anyway.

“I visited the Dark One. Turns out he isn’t some elder god of Darkness. He’s a shadow dragon named Shadowgrim.”

Mathilda’s mouth opened to say something, but she sank into her thoughts instead.

“Understandably, he wants out of his prison. He says he wants to find a quiet corner in the Shadow Realm away from the affairs of the world after he exacts revenge on those who imprisoned him. Or maybe he’s lying, and he’ll do much worse. Either way, do you remember the horn in the temple mural? It’s called the Malefang Horn. Onius not only has it, but he plans to use it to exert his will over Shadowgrim once he’s free. Shadowgrim said Lyra is sympathetic to his situation. She’ll help us against Onius and the other Jakaree, but she can’t do that in her weakened state.”

“A dragon,” Mathilda said in disbelief, her stare wandering.

“Given all the signs, you had to suspect,” I said.

Her gaze remained distant, her focus elsewhere.

“Mathilda, I know it’s a lot, but—”

“Do you not remember what I told you?” Her focus swung toward me. “The dark spirits showed me a vision of the city’s destruction. You are playing right into the creature’s hands. By helping the dragon, you’ll bring about the very devastation we are trying to avoid.”

I’d forgotten neither her visions nor the discoveries made by Atticus and Elizabeth.

“How do you know that some other course of action—like doing nothing—won’t result in the same thing?” I asked. “Maybe this is how we avoid all that and win the day. Unless the dark spirits have given you more detailed information, I don’t see why we shouldn’t work toward solving the problem in front of us. One way or another, Shadowgrim will regain his freedom. When that happens, either the Warders kill him and level the city in the process, or Onius uses the horn to subjugate him and plunge the world into eternal darkness. I don’t like either outcome, so I’m creating another.”

“You are crass, ignorant, and misguided, all at once.” But her features softened, and the tension clinging to her eased. “Yet you somehow speak with a modicum of wisdom. We cannot continue down the road paved for us by the Warders or the Jakaree. We must forge our own path.”

“Does that mean you’ll help me?”

She nodded. “I will make this potion.”

“Thank you. Out of curiosity, do you have a way to neutralize the powers of an undead necromancer? More specifically, a vashu.”

“A vashu is a powerful creature,” Mathilda said. “One of the unholiest of the undead. For that sort of being, you need a holy relic. Preferably something blessed by the gods. Have you one of those?”

I shook my head.

“Then, Eliza and I will accompany you. Even a vashu will think twice about crossing me.”

I followed Mathilda’s stare to her daughter, who had dropped to the ground, moving small stones across an imaginary board. You stood across from her, watching her every movement.

“Shouldn’t Eliza remain here?” I asked.

“With goblins? We are safe in Lord Rax’s domain, but not that safe. My daughter is safest with me. Always. Besides, it will do us some good to breathe fresh air and see the moon and stars. I will need an apothecary’s shop to mix your potion.”

“I know of one,” I said.

“Good,” Mathilda said.

Eliza slid a rock across the imaginary board. In response, You moved a different one. I had no idea what sort of game they played, but it kept her occupied and her attention away from me. Mathilda looked on, mesmerized, with the thinnest of smiles.

 “Let us give Eliza a few more moments of peace,” she said. “Then we will leave. Take the time to prepare yourself. Once we have the potion, our exchange with the vashu will not be pleasant.”

“You don’t think he’ll give us his blessing willingly?”

“The undead give up nothing willingly.”

Some places were best visited during the daylight hours or not at all. Such was the case with Isadora’s apothecary shop, which was located deep in the Shambles. We traversed lonely streets to get there and found the store even lonelier. The apothecary’s sign, its imagery a faded silver crescent moon and a bubbling cauldron, creaked overhead. Snow had piled along the storefront and spilled inside. When we had fled from the place, no one had bothered to shut the door behind us. The smell of lavender and rosemary, echoes of the shop’s prior owner before Isadora took the place as her own, welcomed us inside. I righted an overturned lantern still half filled with fuel, using it to light candles while Mathilda wandered the shop, inspecting countless glass jars weighing down rough-hewn shelves and row after row of small drawers labeled with the ingredients inside. Eliza wandered after her, moving more slowly as her small eyes took in the oppressive gloom left behind by her aunt’s diablerie. You hopped from her shoulder to the heavy wooden table at the room’s center, where he pecked at a smattering of spilled dried herbs. The bubbling, steaming potions from before had settled into silence, the burners long since depleted of fuel.

I kicked the snow away from the threshold and yanked the door shut. Then I went to the stove, added some kindling stacked nearby, and tried to light it with an alchemical lighter I found nearby. As luck would have it, the lighter’s fuel was nearly spent.

“Let me try,” Eliza said, strolling closer. She wore a heavy winter cloak over a homespun tunic and overshirt, but I still noticed her shivering.

“It’s almost empty,” I said, holding the lighter out to her anyway.

She waved it away. “Not like that.”

Eliza did nothing more than close her eyes and concentrate, but that was enough to set the kindling ablaze.

“Thank you,” I said, adding larger pieces of wood.

Eliza held her hands out to the growing fire. “You're welcome.”

“I can see why Isadora chose this place,” Mathilda said from across the room. “I think I will find everything I need here.”

“How long to mix the potion?”

“A few hours at least.”

“That long?”

“You cannot rush a Potion of Dark Rejuvenation.”

I’d have to take her word about that.

“While you’re working on the potion, there’s something else I need to do. I’ll return in a couple of hours.”

Neither witch paid me any attention, so I left the apothecary and headed for the tenement that had become my home back when the Black Guard’s attention had forced me from my usual haunts. I hadn’t come to visit my old place, so I stopped on the fifth floor in front of a door as faded and worn as all the others and knocked. No answer. I knocked again, listening for movement inside. Still nothing. I stepped away, ready to return to the apothecary early, when, on a hunch, I climbed up to the building’s rooftop instead. Immediately, I spotted the person I’d come to see. My presence startled her at first, but she soon recognized me and settled down.

“You got my message?” the girl asked. Sunken cheeks, deep blue eyes, a plain face, and her otherwise gray demeanor hadn’t changed. However, unlike the last time I saw her on this very rooftop, the girl wore more appropriate attire for the cold, including a wool-lined vest and a ragged but thick winter cloak. Her dark hair hung straight and loose.

“Several, actually.”

She lowered her head sheepishly. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure where you’d show up first, so I left messages at the Mulling Mule, the Lazy Minstrel, and a few other places.”

“What is it you want?” I asked, wondering at the urgency. It was the urgency that had brought me here. Not much else about the girl interested me, especially since she’d done nothing but dismiss me in the past.

She cleared her throat, still not meeting my gaze. “I want to hire you.”

I had expected many things, but not that.

“That right?” I crossed my arms. “Who’s the mark?”

“Oh,” she said, her head darting up. “I don’t want you to—I mean, I want you to find someone for me.”

“Find?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard her right. “As in locate?”

She nodded. “Ophelia said you’re good at it.”

Good at finding people so I can kill them, I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “Missing persons isn’t exactly what I do. Have you tried the city watch?”

“Yes,” she said. “But they have done nothing but sit on their arses.”

Cobble-stompers weren’t good at much, but they excelled at that.

“How do you know Ophelia?”

Ophelia, the proprietor of The Lazy Minstrel, wouldn’t have given out my name unless this was important.

“She’s a friend,” the girl said. “She watches out for me and some others.”

That sounded like Ophelia.

“Who’s missing?” I asked, mildly curious. “A brother? Sister? A boyfriend?”

She shook her head at the first and second but nodded at the last.

“Maybe he’s avoiding you.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” she said. “But Dex wouldn’t do that.”

“You two get into a fight?”

She shook her head no. “He just stopped coming around to all our usual places.”

“Maybe he’s dead.”

Her eyes met mine, unwavering, until she turned to stare across the city. Snow had claimed the crumbling rooftops and sagging eaves, transforming the district's decay into something almost beautiful. Thick drifts softened the harsh edges of dilapidated buildings, while icicles hung like crystal daggers from broken gutters. The worn cobblestones below had vanished beneath a foot of powder, though dark patches revealed where makeshift fires burned in barrels and doorways, their smoke rising in ghostly columns to mingle with the falling flakes. Dim light seeped from grimy windows and open tavern doors, casting amber pools across the white-shrouded alleyways where shadows—the desperate and the dangerous who called this place home—still moved despite the bitter cold. Even from this height, the Shambles retained its raw vitality. The distant glow of market stalls struggling against the snow, the occasional flicker of movement between buildings, and the persistent wisps of smoke that spoke of a community determined to survive whatever hardships the season might bring. I intended my words to sound harsh to throw cold water on any notion this girl had of finding Dex alive. People went missing in the Shambles all the time, and few ever turned up again.

“Have you checked the morgues?” I asked her.

Still looking away from me, her lips pressed into a thin line. She shook her head, telling me she hadn’t worked up the nerve to explore that possibility.

I sighed, wishing I hadn’t come up here. But here I was, and it didn’t hurt to ask around at least. “No promises. Even if he’s still alive, anything might have happened to him. Maybe an airship sergeant pressed him into service. Or slavers took him. Or maybe he left the city on his own. When someone is fortunate enough to get out of the Shambles, they don’t usually come back. But I can check with a few people to see what they know. How will I know Dex if I see him?”

She described his general appearance. “He has a tattoo of a crow’s feather on the left side of his neck.”

“The Iron Crow gang?” Scavengers mostly, but with a toughness that set them apart from the usual street gangs. It was a place to start.

“I can pay you half now if that’s all right,” she said. “I promise I’m good for the rest.”

I doubt she had a tenth of what I usually charged, but I didn’t think this job would take long. After I checked with the Iron Crows, I’d probably find that Dex was either doing his best to avoid her or that he was truly gone and never coming back. “Keep it. We can settle up later.”

Back on the street, I realized I hadn’t gotten her name. I shrugged. It wasn’t important. I’d check in with her in a few days with whatever information I had, refuse whatever pittance she offered to pay me, and that would be that. If nothing else, I was doing Ophelia a favor, and that always reaped dividends in the end.

I took my time returning to the apothecary, both because Mathilda hadn’t had enough time to mix the potion and because I didn’t want to spend any more time at Isadora’s old lair than necessary. Even the long way around wasn’t long enough, but since I had to get on with it eventually, I headed down the lane toward the shop. When I finally strolled up to the place, I found Eliza outside playing in the snow.

“Making a snowman?” I asked her.

“A snow-vashu,” she said without looking up. Her hood hung loose on her shoulders, and with her head down, her purplish hair spilled across her face. She’d only gotten as far as the base, which looked like neither a man nor a vashu yet.

“Interesting choice,” I said. “Your mother inside?”

“Where else would she be?”

“She finished?”

Eliza shrugged.

I moved past her, stopping at the door. “I never did thank you.”

She stopped fussing with the snow to peer up at me. “For what?”

“For not killing me,” I said. “You have your mother’s strength.” Lucky for me, her mother’s restraint, too.

Eliza returned to her labors. “Mom said you were a friend.”

No more explanation was needed.

I had my hand on the doorknob when Eliza stopped me with a question.

“Did you really kill Aunt Isadora?”

“Your mother doesn’t think so,” I said. “But I don’t think you have to worry about her anymore.”

Eliza shifted and packed more snow onto her snow-vashu. “I see her sometimes,” she said, still working. “Her green eyes. Her face. Twisted, like when she tried to sacrifice me.”

I could only imagine the nightmares the child experienced from that night in the slaughterhouse.

“She’s very angry,” Eliza said. “I think she wants to kill you more than she wants to kill my mother. When I see her, darkness surrounds her. But she has a crimson light guiding her now.”

She said it all so nonchalantly, as if visions of her homicidal aunt bothered her as little as the moon rising each night. I didn’t know what she meant by a crimson light, and I doubted she did, either. So I filed it away to ask Mathilda about later.

“Do you know why your aunt wants to kill you?”

“My mom says it’s because Aunt Isadora wants to hurt her, and she knows she can do that by hurting me. My mom did something bad to her sisters. I don’t know what. Aunt Isadora has been hunting us ever since.”

I didn’t think she told me anything I didn’t already know, but I didn’t want to push her any further, so I left Eliza to her snow-vashu and entered the apothecary. Inside, I found Mathilda immersed in a myriad of bubbling beakers and steaming pots. She gestured at the nearest.

“I made soup if you’re hungry,” she said.

I glanced over a pair of dirty wooden bowls and accompanying spoons.

“How’s the potion coming along?” I asked.

Peering into the pot, I saw that the soup was little more than water flavored with herbs. If this was how they ate, then no wonder Mathilda and her daughter were so thin.

Mathilda poured the contents of a bubbling beaker into another using tongs. She swirled the liquid around, then poured the combined mixture into a small gourd before stoppering it. “I’m finished. After we find the vashu to bless the potion, the Jakaree high priestess must swallow all of this.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “Lyra will choke down every last drop if that’s what it takes to undo the damage done to her. I’m more concerned about the vashu cooperating with us.”

“The vashu is an unholy creature of the Dark. There will be no cooperation. We will need to force the creature to do our bidding. But first, we must find it. All undead creatures hate the living and will seek to distance themselves as much as possible from positive life force energy. We must search the city’s cemeteries and temple catacombs. I suggest we start at Aikon Cemetery.”

“No,” I said.

Mathilda narrowed her gaze, waiting for me to explain.

“Father Kem’s clergy has already searched all the cemeteries and a significant number of the catacombs and found nothing. However, other locations in the city offer the same level of privacy from the living—abandoned places where someone seeking a quiet spot to study might go.”

Mathilda crossed her arms, her expression thoughtful.

“Ashunde spent a lifetime searching for the solution to mortality. He found an answer. Not the best one, by most people’s estimation, but an answer nonetheless. Someone willing to go to such an extreme isn’t going to stop. He has a thousand lifetimes ahead of him. More time than anyone would know what to do with. He’ll continue what he did in life. Seek new knowledge. Study the unknown. Come up with new solutions to new problems.”

“That could be very dangerous,” Mathilda said. “For us and everyone else living in Alchester.”

Slowly, I nodded. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was right. Ashunde was a threat, no matter how you looked at it. Still, we needed his help. Someone could come along later and deal with whatever nefarious fate he had in store for us. Right now, I just wanted the potion blessed.

Mathilda moved to the broken window to check on her daughter. “Do you know where to find the creature?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Though I have a pretty good idea where to look. Nothing says knowledge like a library, right? And nothing guarantees privacy like one that no one has used in a very long time.”

The winter wind cut through the abandoned streets like a blade, carrying with it the scent of snow and decay. Week-old drifts had hardened into crusty barriers that crunched beneath our boots, each step unnaturally loud in the tomb-like silence of the Falstaff district. I moved with practiced silence, my footsteps finding the patches of frozen earth between the deeper snow. Behind me, Mathilda matched my pace with surprising grace, her magical awareness guiding her steps as surely as my professional training guided mine. Between the two of us, young Eliza moved like a shadow, her slight frame allowing her to step in our footprints and leave barely a trace. We had agreed on minimal communication. Hand signals only, unless absolutely necessary, at least until we knew for sure that Ashunde wasn’t here. Mathilda warned me about his supernatural senses detecting even whispered words, though she was even more worried about our living energy giving us away.

Unlike the Emory estates with their clustering of small castle-keeps, the Falstaff lands sprawled in grand, deliberate isolation—a testament to the family's once-legendary arrogance. The principal estate loomed before us through the skeletal branches of neglected elms, its silhouette a jagged wound against the star-pricked sky. Where the Emorys had built for defense, the Falstaffs had constructed for show. The elaborate towers and ornate stonework spoke of wealth meant to intimidate rather than protect. It may have been why they lost the war against the Emory family.

Gargoyles perched along the roofline, their features softened by snow caps that made them appear to weep frozen tears. The estate's outer wall had partially collapsed decades ago, leaving gaps like missing teeth through which the winter wind moaned. Snow had drifted against the remaining sections, creating natural ramps that eased our approach. The main gate hung askew on rusted hinges, its iron bars twisted by some long-ago violence or simple neglect. Through that gate, the mansion's grounds stretched in undulating waves of white, broken only by the dark bones of what had once been an elaborate topiary garden. The hedge animals—lions, eagles, horses in honor of Kallendor's traditions—had grown wild and shapeless, their current forms suggesting more sinister creatures in the moonlight. A frozen fountain stood at the center of it all, its carved figures locked in an eternal dance beneath a shroud of ice.

I raised a hand for the others to stop, studying the terrain with a practiced eye. The direct path to the mansion’s main entrance left us exposed across fifty yards of open ground. I pointed toward the servants' quarters on the eastern wing, then traced a route that used the old stables and overgrown gardens for cover. Mathilda nodded once, understanding. As we began our advance, Eliza reached out to take her mother’s hand.

The mansion itself slumbered like a sleeping beast, its dozens of windows dark and empty. Several had lost their glass entirely, leaving black voids that seemed to watch our approach. Others reflected the pale moonlight in fractured patterns where spider-web cracks had spread across their surfaces. Snow had blown through the broken panes, dusting the interior floors visible through the ground-level openings. A shutter somewhere on the mansion's upper floors gave a rusty creak in the wind—the only sound besides our carefully controlled breathing and the distant whistle of air through broken stone. Whatever secrets the Falstaff estate held, they waited in that silence, as patient as the snow that had buried the family's legacy beneath winter's indifferent shroud. It seemed the perfect place for an undead necromancer to hide until he was ready to unleash his unholy wrath on the world.

Glimpsing movement through the mansion’s main doorway, I raised a hand once more, calling for the others to pause. A shadow within a shadow, but enough for me to recognize the shape of a figure.

“Someone’s coming out,” I hissed. We were too exposed, too out in the open for that someone to miss us, but I ducked low anyway. Mathilda and Eliza did the same, so the three of us crouched there in the open, frozen in place as much in hopes of remaining undetected as in horror at what we spotted coming from the house.

The thing shambled from the open doorway with the unnatural gait of something not quite human. At first glance, it might have been a man in armor—the tattered remnants of what had once been fine mail and leather hung from its frame like funeral shrouds. But as it stepped into the moonlight, the full horror—and recognition—of what stood before us became clear.

Hesulton Branwick—groundskeeper and necromancer’s henchman—was a desiccated, undead ruin of his former living self. Greasy strands of hair hung in limp curtains around a face that looked like dried leather stretched over bone. His eyes, which had gleamed with cruel ambition in life, were milky orbs that glowed with a faint, unnatural phosphorescence in the moonlight. Burn marks—jagged patterns of electrical scarring spider-webbed across every visible inch of flesh—told the story of his violent death in the hidden basement beneath the Emory estate. The lightning scars began at his temples and forked down his neck like twisted tree branches, disappearing beneath the collar of his tattered mail before emerging again across his hands and forearms. Where the magical electricity had struck most severely, the flesh had blackened and split, leaving deep crevices that revealed glimpses of yellowed bone beneath. A patchwork of armor hung from his shrunken frame in rotted tatters. A green patina stained the metal links, and the leather had cracked and peeled away in places, exposing more of the underlying electrical damage. His left gauntlet was missing, revealing a skeletal hand where tendons stood out like wire and fingers had fused into a grotesque claw. Even from afar, the stench emanating from him subjected us to a nauseating mix of burned flesh and a sickly sweet odor that hinted at advanced decay suspended by the supernatural. As he stepped nearer, I heard the soft scraping of desiccated skin against armor, and the faint clicking of bones that no longer fit properly in their joints. Evil had consumed Hesul when alive. Death had concentrated his malevolence, stripping away any pretense of humanity.

“Welcome, friends,” the thing that had been Hesul called out, his soft voice a parody of the gardener’s wicked disposition in life. “No need to hide. My master has been expecting you.”

I stood with one hand on the hilt of my sword. Next to me, Mathilda held hands made into claws before her, her signature purplish energy no doubt about to flare to life. Though I’d seen Eliza’s power firsthand, she remained in the background, pressed close to her mother.

The undead thing that wore Hesul’s face spread his arms wide in a grotesque mockery of welcome. “Please, there is no need for violence. Bishop Ashunde extends his warmest greetings and requests the honor of your presence.” His head tilted at an angle no living neck should achieve. “He has such wonderful things to show you. Such revelations to share.” The creature’s movements were wrong in every way—too fluid in some places, too rigid in others, as if death had rewired the fundamental mechanics of human motion. When he gestured toward the mansion’s yawning doorway, I caught sight of more electrical burns running down his arms like branching rivers of destruction. “Come,” he continued, his voice carrying the false warmth of a spider inviting flies into its web. “The bishop awaits you in his inner sanctum. He promises you will find the evening illuminating.” Without waiting to see if we accepted the offer, Hesul shambled his way inside the house.

I exchanged a glance with Mathilda.

“This isn’t what I expected,” I said. “But we came here to ask for help.”

“To force him to help us,” Mathilda corrected me.

“I’m not sure we’ll force Ashunde to do anything. Asking might be the only way. Regardless, we can’t do either unless we go inside.”

I started walking. The crunch of snow behind told me Mathilda and Eliza followed. We stopped at the threshold, contemplating our folly should this go badly. Then we stepped inside.

The musty embrace of decades-old decay greeted us. What had once been a grand foyer stood as a monument to fallen glory—marble floors cracked and stained, their intricate patterns obscured by layers of grime and fallen debris. A chandelier hung precariously overhead, half of its crystal teardrops missing. Dust coated the remainder, so thick that they no longer caught the light of the scant few candles that Hesul lit for our benefit. Portraits of long-dead Falstaffs stared down from the walls, their faces warped by moisture and time. Vandals or scavengers had slashed some, leaving gaping wounds across painted throats and eyes. Others had rotted in their frames, the canvas sagging like diseased skin. The smell of mildew and something far worse—something better left buried—permeated my every breath.

Snow had drifted through broken windows, creating small white dunes against the walls where winter had claimed the interior as surely as it had the grounds. Our footsteps echoed hollowly on the damaged marble, accompanied by the steady drip of melting ice from holes in the ceiling above. Fragments of the family’s former wealth lay scattered about. A tarnished silver candlestick here, a cracked mirror there, a child’s toy horse with one leg missing—all the detritus of a mighty house fallen into ruin.

“This way,” Hesul rasped, his voice carrying an echo that bounced from unseen corners.

He led us deeper into the mansion’s bowels, past a grand staircase, whose banister had partially collapsed, and through corridors lined with empty doorframes where doors had either rotted away or been torn from their hinges. Wallpaper hung in long strips, exposing the moldering plaster beneath. More Falstaff portraits watched our passage. The further we ventured into the mansion’s heart, the more oppressive the atmosphere became. The air grew thicker, heavy with the weight of accumulated shadows and unspoken secrets. Eliza pressed closer to her mother with each step until, at last, Hesul stopped before a pair of ornate double doors, their carved wood somehow having survived better than most of the mansion’s other features. The worn brass handles bore the Falstaff coat of arms—a rearing stallion with wings—now tarnished and barely recognizable.

“His lordship awaits within,” Hesul announced, pushing open the doors with a prolonged creak that seemed to echo through the entire mansion.

The library beyond had once been magnificent—a cathedral to knowledge and learning that spoke to the Falstaff family’s intellectual pretensions. Towering shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, their dark wood still bearing traces of the rich finish that had once made them gleam. But like everything else in this cursed place, time and neglect had worked their destruction. Books lay scattered across the floor like fallen soldiers, their pages yellowed and brittle, many reduced to pulp by moisture and rodents. The leather bindings had cracked and split, spilling their contents in sad heaps throughout the room. Entire sections of shelving had collapsed, burying centuries of accumulated wisdom. The windows along the far wall had lost most of their glass, allowing snow to drift across reading tables that might have once hosted scholarly debates and literary symposiums. The wind moaned through the broken panes with a sound like distant weeping, stirring the loose pages that carpeted the floor in a constant, rustling whisper. Yet despite the decay, hints of the library’s former glory remained. A globe stood in one corner, its surface scarred and faded but still recognizable. Ancient maps hung in tatters from the walls, their carefully drawn coastlines and political boundaries now meaningless in a world that had moved far beyond their creators’ understanding. A reading lectern, carved from a single piece of oak, still stood near the center of the room, though a dark substance that I preferred not to identify stained its surface. The smell here differed from that in the rest of the mansion. More than decay and mildew, it reeked of something else. The scent of old parchment and leather, yes, but underneath it all lurked the metallic tang of blood and the acrid stench of arcane experimentation. Whatever Ashunde had been doing in this sanctuary, it had nothing to do with the noble pursuit of knowledge that had once defined this space.

Hesul stepped aside with another of his unsettling bows, gesturing deeper into the library’s shadowed recesses. “Please proceed. My master is eager to make your acquaintance.”

“After you,” I said. “I didn’t trust you when you were alive, and I’m sure as hell not starting now.”

Hesul didn’t so much as smile as pull his desiccated lips back, exposing the broken teeth and blackened gums of a disgusting rictus. “As you wish.”

Ashunde’s henchman shambled forward into the library’s depths, his skeletal claw scraping against the fallen books as he navigated through the debris. We followed at a safe distance, our footsteps muffled by the carpet of rotting pages beneath our feet. Flickering candlelight cast long, twisted shadows against the ruined shelves, making the entire space feel alive with an eerie presence. As we moved deeper into the library’s heart, the temperature seemed to drop with each step. The room with its broken windows was already cold. But as our breath misted in the rapidly cooling air, I noticed frost on the scattered books around us. Light from candles wavered despite the absence of any wind, their light taking on a sickly, greenish hue that made the shadows writhe and pulse with their own dark life.

“Master,” Hesul called out, his voice echoing strangely in the vaulted space. “Your guests have arrived.”

The response came not as a voice, but as a weight pressing down on us from all directions, as if the air had become dense with malevolent intelligence. Shadows in the deepest recesses of the library coalesced, gathering like storm clouds in the darkest corner. The temperature plummeted further, and I heard the faint crackling of ice forming on the windows behind us.

Then he emerged.

At first, Bishop Ashunde appeared as little more than a suggestion in the darkness, a vague outline that might have been an illusion caused by the emerald candlelight. But as he stepped forward, his form solidified into something that violated every natural law I understood. He was tall, perhaps six and a half feet, but his proportions were wrong in subtle ways that challenged my mind. His frame shifted and wavered, as if he existed only partially in our world, constantly phasing between solid matter and something more ethereal. What had once been the face of a distinguished bishop had become a mockery of human features carved from ivory and shadow. His skin had taken on the translucent quality of fine parchment, stretched taut over bones that seemed too sharp, too angular to have ever been mortal. Veins of dark energy pulsed beneath that pale surface like black lightning, following erratic patterns that made little sense. His eyes were the worst. Twin voids lacking color that seemed to drink in the surrounding light, leaving nothing but hungry darkness in their wake. Bishop’s robes—not his since those had burned during his purging ceremony—clung to his form like funeral shrouds, the rich fabric faded to the color of old bone from contact with the vashu. Threads of silver and gold may have once accentuated the garment, but they had tarnished to a dull black that absorbed rather than reflected the light. A pendant hung around his neck. Not the holy symbol he had once worn as a leader of Father Kem’s clergy, but something older, more primal, carved from bone and inlaid with veins of some dark metal. As he moved, his occasional translucence revealed the library wall behind him as if he were no more substantial than morning mist. Then he solidified, his presence so overwhelmingly real that the surrounding air thickened. His hair, once a distinguished silver-gray, hung in lank strands that moved independently of any breeze, as if each strand were a living thing seeking its own path through the air. When he raised his hand in greeting, I saw through his fingers, the bones visible as dark shadows beneath the translucent flesh before they solidified again.

“Welcome,” Ashunde said, his voice the sound of a wailing breeze through empty tombs, of prayers spoken backward in forgotten tongues. The words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, echoing beyond the library into my skull. “I have been expecting you.”

As he spoke, the surrounding air rippled like water, and I realized that his transformation into a vashu had torn him free from the constraints of the physical world. He existed now in the spaces between life and death, matter and void, wielding a power beyond the comprehension of mortal minds. Eliza whimpered behind me, pressing her face against her mother’s cloak.

The bishop—no, the vashu that had once been Bishop Ashunde—smiled, a gesture that was like watching a corpse attempt to remember what joy had felt like. “Please,” he said, gesturing with a hand that wavered between solid and spectral, “make yourselves comfortable. We have much to discuss, do we not?”

As my eyes adjusted to the library’s eerie illumination, I noticed something that hadn’t been immediately apparent in the gloom: dozens of books scattered across a nearby reading table, their leather bindings far too pristine to have belonged to the Falstaff collection. These volumes bore the distinct markings of professional craftsmanship—the kind of rare tomes that commanded high prices in specialized shops throughout Alchester. Several lay open, revealing pages dense with arcane diagrams and text written in indecipherable languages. One book displayed detailed anatomical drawings of souls being extracted from bodies, complete with notations made in fresh ink that must be Ashunde’s careful script. Another showed elaborate circles surrounded by glyphs and calculations that hurt my head until I lifted my gaze from it. A third contained architectural plans, not for buildings, but for constructing bridges between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. Ashunde had marked his place in several volumes with scraps of parchment covered in his own notes. He had filled the margins of one page with observations about ‘anchoring points’ and ‘planar stability.’

Forcing my attention from the tomes, I asked, “Curious how we found you so easily?” I kept my voice steady, despite the supernatural cold emanating from his presence, but only with some effort.

Ashunde’s void-like eyes fixed on me with predatory interest. “Not really,” he replied, his otherworldly voice carrying the faintest hint of amusement.

I gestured toward the stolen books. “The owner of those wants them returned. She may come looking for them. Even your own clergy is hunting you.” I let that sink in. “They want to kill you. Or destroy you anyway. They think you’re an abomination.”

The vashu’s translucent features twisted into something that might have been contempt. “Small minds with no vision,” he said, his form flickering between solid and spectral as his emotions intensified. “The priests who were once my brothers cling to their petty mortal concerns while I have transcended the boundaries of existence itself. They fear what they cannot comprehend.”

“And what do you fear, I wonder?”

“I fear nothing,” Ashunde said with ghostly overtones.

“Really? Then why are you in hiding?” Before he could answer, I added, “I’ve half a mind to let them know where to find you.” I needed something from him, and he needed to understand the consequences of not playing along.

Ashunde made no response other than to glide closer, his movements unnaturally smooth since his feet didn’t quite touch the debris-strewn floor. When he spoke next, his voice carried an edge that made the temperature in the room plummet even further. “What makes you think you will ever leave here?”

Around us, the candles guttered and dimmed, their flames shrinking to mere pinpricks of sickly green light. Frost spread across the scattered books with audible crackling sounds, and our breath came out in thick white clouds. Behind Ashunde, I heard the distinctive click-clack of Hesul’s bones, the scraping of desiccated flesh against rotted leather, and, as he approached, the hollow sound of his bones.

Ashunde loomed over us, his form having solidified into something overwhelmingly present and malevolent. The air itself thickened around him, making each breath a struggle. The shadows cast by the dying candlelight stretched toward us like grasping fingers, and I realized too late that I might have overplayed my hand.

That’s when Mathilda stepped in.

Purple energy erupted around her hands like living flames, casting wild shadows that pushed against Ashunde’s encroaching darkness. The temperature in her immediate vicinity rose noticeably, steam rising from her clothes as her magical aura clashed with the supernatural cold. Her eyes blazed with power that rivaled the vashu’s own, and when she spoke, her voice carried the authority of someone who had faced the darkness and refused to bow to it.

“Do not mistake us for those same small-minded fools, creature,” she said, the purple energy around her hands intensifying until it cast everything in violet relief. “I understand your clergy tried to purge you from existence with holy fire. Face me, and you will truly know what it means to burn.”

For the first time since he appeared from the shadows, Ashunde hesitated. His void-like eyes studied Mathilda with something that might have been surprise, or perhaps grudging respect. Even Hesul’s approach faltered, the undead creature sensing that the balance of power had shifted. Ashunde’s form transitioned between states more rapidly, as if Mathilda’s challenge had disrupted his control over his existence. After a stretch that felt like an eternity, the vashu glided backward, putting distance between himself and the witch whose purple flames still danced around her fingers. With his withdrawal, the temperature in the room stabilized, returning to a bearable chill.

“Interesting,” he said finally, his voice carrying a note of calculation. “Perhaps we should indeed discuss matters more civilly. I believe you seek my help?”

I didn’t waste time asking how he knew that.

“We need a necromancer to bless a potion,” I said.

“What sort of potion?” he asked.

Mathilda held the gourd up for him to see. “A Potion of Dark Rejuvenation. A woman must drink it to restore her well-being.”

Ashunde’s head bobbed as he thought over what we’d told him. “A Potion of Dark Rejuvenation is a powerful elixir. Few things in this world require its potency. I wonder what caused this woman’s malady?”

Mathilda frowned. “That is no concern of yours.”

“Oh, but I think it is. Tell me.”

Neither of us said a word. Eliza poked her head out from behind her mother.

“Tell me, or I will not help you.”

I didn’t see the harm in telling him, so I said, “An amulet did it to her. The Amulet of Eternal Gloom.”

Mathilda hissed her disapproval at me.

Ashunde’s translucent face took on a sickly green color. In something living, such a color meant something was wrong. In the undead, it must mean something good because the vashu sounded delighted when he said, “Ah, I wondered. The amulet is a truly potent relic of Darkness. It is indeed a suitable price for you to pay.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You wish for me to help you,” Ashunde stated. “The price is the amulet. Or at least its location. My servant can retrieve it, so you needn’t bother yourself with that part.” Behind the vashu, Hesul’s bones click-clacked as he shifted from one foot to another. “It seems a fair trade, does it not?”

I had no stake in the amulet, and since Ashunde wanted nothing more than its location, it all seemed more than fair to me. But Mathilda had that pinched expression that told me she thought differently.

“A moment,” I said to the vashu.

Ashunde dipped his head. “Of course.”

I led Mathilda and her daughter to a corner of the library.

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “We give Ashunde the location of the amulet. He blesses the potion. It’s a fair trade, isn’t it? Unless you see some downside that I’m missing.”

Mathilda crossed her arms. “We won’t be able to go back.”

My confused expression prompted her to explain further.

“Eliza and I will not be able to return to Grimlock,” she said through tight lips. “Few know about the amulet. Lord Gral considers it a prized possession. He will know we betrayed him. We will lose our place of sanctuary.”

“But the only reason you’re there is because of Isadora, and Isadora is . . .” Gone, I wanted to say. But we’d already covered that, so I knew Mathilda thought differently. I caught Eliza staring at me with wide eyes. “All right,” I said. “We’ll find another way. Something else he wants. Otherwise, we can find another necromancer somewhere. Preferably one who is still alive at least.”

I waited for Mathilda to agree, but her gaze looked past me, her thoughts her own until she shook her head. “We will not find another necromancer. Not in time to stop the Dark One’s coming.”

“But what about your safe place? I won’t ask you to put Eliza’s safety at risk.”

“You needn’t ask. I understand what’s at stake. This may be our only chance. Besides, Eliza and I have been on the run before. Once we finish this business with the dragon, we will leave Alchester and never look back.”

I placed my hand on Mathilda’s arm, hoping the affront didn’t cause her to put another curse on me. “No running. Once this is done, I’ll find a safe place for the two of you. Agreed?”

Mathilda met my stare, then she nodded.

“All right, Ashunde,” I said, turning to address the vashu. “You’ve got a deal. We’ll tell you where to find the amulet, but only after you bless the potion.”

Ashunde genuflected, accepting the terms, so Mathilda stepped forward with the gourd. Eliza remained behind, staying close to me, I noticed, as her mother approached the reading table where Ashunde’s stolen tomes lay scattered. She cleared a space among the arcane volumes before setting down the gourd containing the Potion of Dark Rejuvenation.

Ashunde glided forward, his translucent form solidifying as he focused his attention on the potion. “Stand back,” he commanded, his voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. “What I am about to perform requires concentration, and any disruption could corrupt the blessing.”

We retreated several paces, watching as the vashu began his ritual. Ashunde raised his hands above the gourd, his fingers weaving complex patterns in the air that left trails of dark energy in their wake. The temperature around the table dropped even further, and frost formed on the clay surface of the vessel. He chanted in an indecipherable language, the words flowing like liquid from his mouth. The sound hurt to hear, each syllable scraping against my mind like fingernails on stone. The candles throughout the library sputtered in response to his incantations, their flames turning from sickly green to deep purple and finally to an unnatural black that somehow still provided light. As more words came, the gourd glowed with an inner radiance that matched the color of Ashunde’s chanting. Dark veins of energy spread across its surface, pulsing in rhythm with the vashu’s words. The air around the vessel shimmered and warped, as if the blessing bent reality itself. Ashunde’s form solidified during the ritual, all his otherworldly power focused on the task at hand. The pendant around his neck glowed with the same dark light that now also suffused the potion. With a final word that echoed through the library like a thunderclap, Ashunde completed his ritual. The gourd’s glow faded to a subtle pulse, and the vashu staggered backward, his form becoming translucent once more. The effort had clearly drained him, though he tried to hide his exhaustion behind a mask of supernatural arrogance.

“It is done,” he said, his voice carrying a somber note of satisfaction. “The potion carries the blessing of death itself. Death to counter death.”

“Why not life?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Because does not life counter death, you wonder,” Ashunde said. “In most cases, yes. But not in this one. The Amulet of Eternal Gloom worsens a person’s vitality. The powers of dark rejuvenation will counter this and restore the amulet’s victim to their former state. But only if the person has fully embraced Darkness. If someone of the Luminance drank from this gourd, they would die a most horrible death.”

“It all seems very complicated,” I said. I crossed my arms, thinking. “I have one more question about the amulet. If it worsens the vitality of someone alive, what does it do to the undead?”

But Ashunde only smiled and would not answer.

Mathilda retrieved the gourd, securing it within her robes.

“Now for your part of the bargain,” Ashunde said, his void-like eyes fixed on me.

I opened my mouth to tell him, but then hesitated.

Ashunde’s ghostly brow narrowed. “A deal is a deal.”

I frowned because he was right. He already had plans for the amulet, no doubt. But we could only solve one problem at a time, so I said, “The Amulet of Eternal Gloom is in Lord Rax’s realm, a place called Grimlock.”

“I know the place.”

“Lord Rax considers it a prized possession, so he probably keeps it under heavy guard. He won’t give it up easily.”

“Do not concern yourself with Lord Rax’s reluctance,” Ashunde said, his voice carrying a note of dark amusement. “The living cannot deny me.”

Mathilda and Eliza already headed for the door. I joined them.

“Hesul will ensure you find your way safely from the mansion,” Ashunde said, his attention moving to his stolen tomes. “After that, I trust you can manage on your own.”

The undead creature shambled forward, its grotesque rictus serving as both farewell and warning. We followed it through the ruined corridors of the Falstaff mansion, past the damaged portraits and debris-strewn floors, until we stood once again in the grand foyer with its cracked marble and dust-coated chandelier.

Hesul gestured toward the main entrance with his skeletal claw. “Safe travels,” he rasped, his voice carrying all the warmth of a winter grave.

We stepped out into the frosty night air, and I heard the mansion’s heavy door close behind us with a finality that suggested we were not welcome to return. The winter wind cut through our clothes as we made our way across the snow-covered grounds. After the supernatural chill of Ashunde’s presence, the natural cold felt almost refreshing.

“We will return to Grimlock,” Mathilda said once we were well away from the estate grounds. “We should have some time—maybe hours, maybe days—before the vashu acts against Lord Rax, but we must be gone before then.”

“When you do, come find me,” I said. “I meant what I said. I’ll find you someplace safe.”

“Someplace safe?” Mathilda asked, as if she didn’t know the meaning of the words. “As long as Isadora remains at large, there is no safety for us.” Eliza leaned closer to her mother. “But we will accept your help and thank you for it. This is yours.”

Mathilda held the gourd out to me. Then, she and her daughter disappeared into the night. I did likewise, moving in a different direction. Where they headed for Grimlock, my destination was the temple district, where the Jakaree made their lair. Unlike before, when I walked into the place in the open, this time I didn’t plan on being so cordial. I wasn’t sure Onius would welcome Lyra’s restoration. But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Not until it was too late, anyway.

The temple district’s outer perimeter remained as I remembered it from my previous visit—a maze of crumbling walls and debris-strewn streets where shadows provided ample cover. Like everywhere in the city, winter maintained a firm grip here. Snow muffled my footsteps as I traversed the temple district’s abandoned streets and approached the Jakaree stronghold. I spotted the first sentry posted near the collapsed wall of a minor temple. The priest stood motionless, his bald head and geometric tattoos clearly visible to my night-trained eyes. Patient as stone, he watched the main approach with the discipline Onius demanded from his followers. Moving through the shadows cast by the ruined temples, I circled wide around his position. Both ally and enemy, the snow dampened sound but left tracks. I kept to areas where the wind had blown the snow thin or where debris created natural paths that wouldn’t betray my passage. A second guard came into view as I rounded the remains of what had once been a substantial shrine. This one paced a short route between two collapsed pillars, his movement pattern regular and predictable. I waited, counting his steps and timing his turns until I understood his rhythm. When he reached the far end of his patrol and turned his back to me, I moved. Three quick strides brought me within striking distance. My hand clamped over his mouth as my knife found the gap between his ribs and angled upward toward his heart. He stiffened once, then went limp. I lowered him behind a fallen pillar, arranging his body to appear as though he had sat down to rest. Killing wasn’t my first choice, but the situation was too delicate, and the probability of subduing the guard without others noticing, too low. At least he died in service to his dark god, though perhaps not in the way he envisioned.

The entrance to the Jakaree lair—a hole in the ground with stone steps descending into darkness—lay ahead. No guards were visible at the opening itself, but I knew from experience that sentries prowled the underground passages. I approached the edge and peered down the stone stairway. Lantern light flickered from somewhere below, and I caught the sound of muted conversation drifting up from the depths.

Descending the steps required patience, each footfall taken with care to avoid the scrape of a boot on stone that might alert those below. The conversation—two priests discussing shift rotations and complaining about the cold—grew clearer as I descended. They stood at the bottom of the stairs in a small antechamber, their attention focused on their discussion rather than watching for intruders. I waited in the shadows at the bend in the stairway until one moved off down a corridor, leaving only a single guard. This priest, who faced away from me, warmed his hands over a small brazier. I descended the last few steps like a ghost, my knife sliding across his throat before he could cry out. I left his corpse in a shadowed corner, hoping no one noticed him until I was long gone.

The underground lair stretched before me, a network of corridors and rooms carved from the ancient catacombs. Lanterns strung along the walls provided enough light to navigate, while also creating pools of shadow that I used to avoid the occasional priest moving through the passages. The layout was more extensive than I had realized during my previous visit—sleeping chambers, storage areas, and common rooms branched off from the main corridors in a complex web. Moving deeper into the lair, I followed half-remembered directions toward the area where I had last seen Lyra. The sound of voices guided me toward the main gathering hall, where cooking fires burned and the bulk of the Jakaree community had already settled in for the evening. I skirted this area carefully, using side passages to avoid detection. Though I hoped to see Lyra in her chair by the fire, she was not there.

Beyond the common area, I found the sleeping quarters, where the temple builders had carved individual chambers into the stone and where families and ranking priests made their homes. I checked several rooms, peering around doorframes to catch a glimpse of the occupants within. Children slept in small beds while their parents rested nearby. Elderly priests sat in quiet meditation. I spotted no sign of my quarry until I chanced upon a space set apart from the others, closer to what had once been the temple’s inner sanctum. The room was larger than the family quarters, befitting someone of Lyra’s status, but sparsely furnished—a simple bed, a chair, a small table with a water basin. Lyra lay beneath several blankets, her aged features contorted in a fitful sleep.

Slipping inside, I closed the door behind me and moved to her bedside. The transformation the Amulet of Eternal Gloom had wrought upon her was even more pronounced than before. Where once she had been a woman of compelling beauty and terrible power, now she appeared frail and diminished, her white hair gone gray, her skin lined with premature age. Her breathing, while steady, came in ragged gasps.

“Lyra,” I whispered, placing a gentle hand on her arm.

Her eyes opened, focusing on me with some difficulty. When recognition dawned, she tried to sit up, but I placed a restraining hand on her shoulder and lowered my mask.

“You,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Why have you come?”

“The Whispering Shade sent me,” I said, using the name she had called Shadowgrim when she and I had first met. I withdrew the gourd from my pouch, holding it under the dim lantern light.

“What is it?” she asked, struggling to focus on the vessel.

“A Potion of Dark Rejuvenation. Mixed by a witch and blessed by a necromancer. The potion will restore what the amulet took from you.”

Her eyes widened, and I saw a spark of the intelligence that had once made her so formidable. “Such a thing . . . How did you . . . ?”

“It’s a long story that I’ll tell you another time,” I said. “Drink it. All of it.”

Supporting her head, I brought the gourd to her lips. Lyra drank without hesitation, trusting in the name I had invoked. The potion went down slowly, the effort of swallowing the bitter liquid costing her a great deal. When the gourd was empty, her head sank onto her pillow, exhaustion written across her features.

I didn’t know what to expect. Immediate restoration? For Lyra to toss her blankets aside and, imbued with her strength of old, to stand and begin issuing commands to her flock? Neither happened. Instead, she sank deeper into her bed, her eyes drooping until they finally closed. But her breathing, which had sounded forced before, settled into a peaceful rhythm as the potion’s effect took hold.

I waited a moment longer to make sure she was really on her way to recovering before making my way back through the lair’s corridors. The return journey proved easier than the approach. No one would discover the guards I had eliminated until the next shift change. Emerging from the underground complex, I retraced my steps through the temple district’s ruins. The chilly night air felt clean after the close atmosphere of the Jakaree lair, and with the moon blotted out, new snow started falling, covering the tracks of my passage.

When Lyra woke, she had a choice to make. Either serve Onius and his careful plans or follow the whispered guidance of the shadow dragon who had sent me to save her.

The game board was set.

Now we would see how the pieces moved.

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