The mist clung thick around Vaelen as he moved through the forgotten outskirts of the Mourning Vale. The world here felt… thinner. As though the air itself strained against some ancient tension, like a bowstring drawn too tight. Every step he took pressed against unseen threads of power, taut and quivering, threatening to snap.
He welcomed it.
The Threnody of Broken Stars pulsed softly against his palm, the book's skin-like cover slick with dew. Its pages no longer moved, but Vaelen could feel the dormant awareness inside, like a beast slumbering with one eye half-open. He didn't speak to it. It wasn't a companion. It was a weapon.
And one did not converse with weapons.
Ahead, the Salt Hollow revealed itself in broken, moonlit fragments. White, cracked earth stretched in jagged patterns where salt deposits crusted the ground like old bone. Sparse, dead trees jutted from the earth, branches clawing at a sky smeared with purple storm clouds.
Vaelen crouched low near a crooked outcropping of stone, his sharp eyes catching movement.
Six figures.
Armed. Hooded. Their pale robes marked them as kin of the Choir — but the symbols stitched across their garments spoke of a lower caste. Hunters. Disposable hounds, sent to sniff the blood trail of something beyond them.
And trailing behind them… a seventh.
Taller. Heavier. The robe hung differently — stretched by mass beneath. The others deferred to this one, their formation instinctively breaking to let him pass. Vaelen's gaze narrowed, his mind cataloging every detail.
A leader. Possibly a blood-bound enforcer.
His lips curled into a cold smirk. Predictable.
The leader spoke, voice thick as curdled wine.
"The trail's fresh. He came this way. You lot spread out. If the boy's touched the gate, he won't be the same. Eyes sharp. Death quick."
The lesser men obeyed.
Vaelen slid back into the shadow of the stones, his mind moving with the icy precision of a man far older than his years. He counted their steps, the way their weight shifted. The mistakes they would inevitably make.
Fools blinded by dogma.
They followed orders, not instinct.
If they find me… good.
He was not yet ready to face the Choir's higher echelons — but these? These were ripe for the harvest.
Knowledge lay in their flesh.
Questions they didn't know they carried. Names. Places. Secrets.
Vaelen's thoughts shifted.
Wait.
A flicker in the air — wrong. A haze of sickly blue light bled from the leader's chest, visible only for a heartbeat.
A mark. Faint, but unmistakable.
Wrought-Blooded.
Not full ascendant. Not yet. But altered. Strengthened.
A risk.
Vaelen's mind spun through the calculus of slaughter, weighing variables. His advantage lay in the unknown. In the mist. In their complacency.
He touched the dagger at his side.
It would do.
For the others.
For the Wrought-Blooded… perhaps not.
But he did not need to kill him. Not now.
He only needed to make the first move.
The Threnody shivered in his hand, the ancient tongue of the gate whispering a single word across his thoughts.
"Feed."
Vaelen smiled.
He moved.
A ghost in the mist. Silent. Precise. The first cultist never saw the blade part his throat. A crimson arc against pale salt. The second felt the dagger's point before his scream breached his lips.
Two down. Four.
The others turned too late. Panic in their eyes.
"He's here!"
But Vaelen was already in the third man's shadow, driving the dagger into his side, the crack of ribs sharp against the hush of mist. He moved like liquid shadow, every step calculated, every strike deliberate.
The Wrought-Blooded roared, a pulse of sickly power bursting from his body, warping the mist. The salt cracked beneath him, flesh bulging unnaturally.
"You little wretch. You think to challenge me?"
Vaelen's pale gaze locked onto him.
No fear. No hesitation. Only cold calculation.
"I think nothing," Vaelen replied, voice soft as falling ash. "You are a tool. And tools break."
The Threnody's pages flared. Words shifted. A sigil ignited.
The world tilted.
A surge of ancient force burst from Vaelen's palm, not raw power, but precision. It struck the Wrought-Blooded's chest mark dead on — not enough to kill, but enough to disrupt the weave of flesh-binding runes anchoring his strength.
The big man staggered, face contorting in pain.
Vaelen was already moving.
Not to finish him.
Not yet.
Patience.
He melted back into the mist, leaving the wounded enforcer cursing, the survivors too broken to pursue.
Tonight was for testing.
For sending a message.
And far above, in a tower where the Choir's augurs gathered, the scrying mirrors cracked.
The heir was moving.
And the world's long, cold night had only begun.
The Salt Hollow stretched out before him — a vast, dead plain where the earth cracked in pallid, brittle sheets and the wind tasted of old bones. Broken salt pillars jutted from the ground like jagged fangs, remnants of some ancient, dead sea. Mist clung low over the ground, curling around Vaelen's ankles as he moved.
He moved with quiet deliberation, the Threnody of Broken Stars held close beneath the folds of his ragged cloak. Each step brought a muted crunch beneath his bare feet, salt crystals cracking like brittle glass.
His mind turned, cold and calculating.
They sent hunters. Poorly disciplined, too heavy in step. Boots worn at the heel — not veteran stalkers. Hounds of the Choir, but not their best. A probe. They suspect, but do not yet fear.
The edges of his mouth twitched into something like a smile.
Ahead, the terrain dipped into a narrow ravine, walls of sheer salt-streaked stone pressing in. And there — shadows. Movement. A flicker of steel.
Vaelen crouched behind a fallen pillar, eyes narrowing.
Three men. No insignia, but the posture betrayed their training. One with a hooked polearm, another with twin hatchets strapped across his chest, and the last — older, gaunt, eyes sunken deep into a weathered face. A caster, by the look of the bone-twined fetishes at his belt.
One caster. Two blades. Predictable.
A voice drifted from the ravine, carried by the wind.
"Fan out. The Seer wants his head on a spike before dawn."
Vaelen felt no surge of fear. Only the cold thrum of opportunity.
Fools.
He drew a line in the salt with his finger — a crude sigil from the Threnody's teachings. The lines shimmered faintly as mist gathered.
The twin-axe man moved closest.
Vaelen rose like a phantom, his dagger — now cleaned and honed — flashing in the low light. He stepped into the man's blind spot, a ghost of motion, and struck.
The blade punched through the base of the man's skull, angled up. A wet crunch. The body jerked, breath hissing past slack lips.
Before the corpse fell, Vaelen was already moving.
The polearm-wielder turned, mouth opening to shout. Vaelen threw the bloodied dagger. It spun end over end, striking the man's throat. The impact wasn't fatal — but it bought a breath.
A breath was enough.
Vaelen surged forward, seized the haft of the polearm, and wrenched it aside as the man coughed blood. A brutal elbow crushed the man's nose, and Vaelen drove the haft's end into his gut, folding him. The polearm tip followed — rammed clean through the chest with a crack of bone.
Two down.
The caster spoke, a harsh word in the old tongue. Shadows gathered, and a chain of seething smoke lashed toward Vaelen, crackling with violet sparks.
Too slow.
Vaelen sidestepped, the smoke grazing his cloak, leaving scorched threads. His hand brushed the Threnody's cover. Symbols shifted. A name without meaning to mortal tongues slid from his lips.
"Vaer'khun."
A pulse rippled outward — not light, not sound, but pressure.
The caster's spell guttered.
His eyes widened, blood pouring from ears and nostrils as his own power recoiled. Vaelen closed the distance in three strides. No flourish. No wasted motion.
A jagged stone, fist-sized, gripped tight.
One brutal blow crushed the side of the man's skull. Another followed. And another.
The corpse slumped, twitching.
Silence.
Vaelen exhaled once, steady, already gathering the scattered bone charms and satchels.
Nothing of worth. No sigils, no relics. Barely worth the effort.
But the message was sent.
He gazed west, deeper into the Hollow.
They would come again. Stronger next time. Let them. Each one a lesson. Each one a stepping stone.
Vaelen wiped the blood from his hand, his pale eyes cold as dead stars.
And then he moved on.
[To be continued…]