The first body appeared two miles outside Ashfall's borders.
Zarak crouched beside the remains, professional interest overriding the human instinct to look away. Male, mid-thirties, merchant by the quality of his boots. What was left of them, anyway. The killing blow had come from behind—massive claws punching through the ribcage to pull out the heart. Classic werewolf kill, except for one detail.
The blood was wrong.
Fresh corpses bled red. Day-old corpses congealed to rust. This one, dead at least three days by the decay, wept silver liquid that hissed where it touched the ground. Zarak dipped a finger in the substance and immediately jerked back as cold fire raced up his arm.
"Witch blood," he muttered, shaking off the sensation. But the man had been human—no trace of the ethereal beauty that marked those with fae ancestry. Someone had transformed his blood after death. Changed it into something that burned with cold starlight.
He found the symbol ten feet from the body, carved into an oak tree old enough to remember the world before factions. The same three-part design the merchant had shown him, but larger. More detailed. The shadow sigil at the bottom seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat.
Zarak touched his scarred face, feeling the divine fire respond to whatever power lingered here. Three years carrying a dead god's curse had taught him to recognize the fingerprints of supernatural power. This felt older than the factions. Older than the gods themselves.
The second body waited another mile down the road. Female, elderly, traveling clothes marked with the wheat-sheaf emblem of Millhaven village. Her blood ran black as midnight, moving in patterns that defied gravity. It formed letters in the old tongue before dissolving:
The key walks willing to the lock.
Zarak memorized the words and moved on. The Northroad stretched ahead, a gray ribbon through dying forest. Once, these woods had thrived under the protection of the Greenlord faction—witches who drew power from living things. Now the trees stood skeletal and wrong, their branches reaching toward a sky that no longer answered prayers.
By the time he found the third body, the sun had begun its descent toward the horizon. This corpse was different. Younger, armed, wearing the boiled leather of a caravan guard. The blood that pooled beneath him burned with actual flame, creating a circle of ash that nothing would ever grow in again.
The killing wound was precise—a single thrust between the third and fourth ribs, angled up to pierce the heart. Not claws this time. A blade, wielded by someone who knew exactly where to strike. The symbol above the body had been drawn in the air itself, hanging like a wound in reality.
"Professional work," a voice said behind him.
Zarak spun, hand going to his sword. He'd heard nothing—no footsteps, no breathing, no whisper of cloth against cloth. That level of stealth meant either master assassin or something worse.
The woman standing on the road was definitely something worse.
She wore the deep crimson of a Bloodspire vampire, but none of their typical arrogance. Her pale skin bore scars that no vampire's regeneration should have left. Her eyes, when they met his, held a weariness that spoke of centuries rather than decades.
"Selene Nightwhisper," she said, making no aggressive moves. "Knight-Errant of the Crimson Court. And before you draw that silver blade, know that I'm not here for you, Burned Man."
"Vampires don't investigate human deaths." Zarak kept his hand on his sword but didn't draw. Yet. "Unless they're cleaning up their own messes."
"These aren't our kills." Selene moved closer to the burning corpse, studying it with professional interest. "We drain blood, we don't transform it. This is something else. Something that has my lords concerned enough to send their best tracker."
"And you just happened to find me here."
"I followed the trail of bodies. You followed rumors of a blind princess." She smiled, showing just a hint of fang. "We're both hunting the same mystery, it seems. Perhaps we should compare notes before more corpses appear."
Zarak considered his options. Vampires lied like they breathed—constantly and without thought. But Selene was right about one thing: these kills didn't match any faction's signature. And a Knight-Errant's word carried weight, even among monsters.
"Talk," he said finally. "But keep your distance. My fire doesn't distinguish between friend and foe."
"Noted." Selene pulled out a leather journal, its pages covered in neat script. "Seventeen attacks in fifteen days. All along the Northroad, moving steadily north. Each victim's blood transformed into a different substance—silver, shadow, flame, ice, lightning. No pattern to the transformations that we can determine."
"You said seventeen. I've only heard of seven caravans hit."
"The others were... quieter deaths. Lone travelers, small groups. The caravan attacks only started after—" She paused, choosing her words carefully. "After certain individuals began taking interest."
"The blind princess."
Selene nodded slowly. "Princess Lyralei of House Morningstar. Last confirmed sighting was the capital during Godsfall. Presumed dead with the rest of the royal family until she appeared in Bloodspire territory two weeks ago, seeking passage north."
"Your people just let her go?"
"Three Knight-Commanders tried to stop her." Selene's expression darkened. "She spoke seven words in the old tongue. They burst into flame—not normal fire, but the silver light that used to pour from temple windows. By the time the flames died, she was gone."
Zarak felt his curse stir uneasily. Silver fire was god-fire, the divine light that had abandoned the world three years ago. Nothing mortal could channel it anymore. Nothing mortal should even remember how it felt.
"What seven words?"
"I don't know. The only witness was a thrall who went mad from hearing them. He clawed out his own eyes and throat before anyone could question him properly." Selene closed her journal. "But he drew something in his own blood before he died. The same symbol that marks these kill sites."
The sun touched the horizon, painting the dying forest in shades of blood and shadow. Soon it would be dark, and the Northroad became a different kind of dangerous after nightfall.
"We should move," Zarak said. "Find shelter before—"
The temperature plummeted between one heartbeat and the next. Frost spread across the ground in spiraling patterns, and both Zarak and Selene drew weapons on instinct. The vampire's blade was black glass that drank in what little light remained. Zarak's silver sword burst into flames that did nothing to warm the sudden cold.
From the forest on both sides of the road, shapes emerged. Not quite shadow, not quite flesh. They moved like wolves but stood like men, their bodies constantly shifting between states of being. Eyes like dying stars fixed on the two warriors.
"Shadowborn," Selene breathed, and for the first time, Zarak heard fear in a vampire's voice.
"Impossible. They're sealed beyond the Veil."
"Tell them that."
The creatures circled slowly, their forms becoming more solid with each passing moment. Zarak counted six—no, eight—no, the number kept changing as they moved in and out of phase with reality. Their presence made his divine fire scream in protest.
One of them spoke, its voice like grinding stone: "The Burned One and the Blood Knight. You seek the Key That Walks. This is not permitted."
"By whose authority?" Zarak demanded, pushing more power into his flames. The light drove the creatures back a step but no more.
"By the authority of those who wait in spaces between. The seals weaken. The compact breaks. The Key must reach the Lock before the moon dies, or all agreements become void."
Selene hissed—an inhuman sound of pure predator. "The Shadowborn honor no agreements. You're nothing but hunger given form."
"We honored the first agreement. We slept while you played with stolen power. Now the game ends." The lead creature fixed its star-death eyes on Zarak. "You carry dead fire, Oathbreaker. It will not save you when the shadows rise. Nothing will save any of you if the Key fails."
"Where is she?" Zarak stepped forward, ignoring the cold that bit through his flames. "Where is Princess Lyralei?"
"North, where the territories meet and the Veil grows thin. She walks the pattern that will either seal us forever or set us free." The creature's form began to dissolve. "Choose quickly, Burned One. The new moon comes, and with it, choices that cannot be unmade."
The Shadowborn faded like smoke, leaving only frost and the lingering taste of endings. Zarak and Selene stood back to back, weapons still drawn, waiting for an attack that didn't come.
Finally, Selene lowered her blade. "This is worse than I thought. If the Shadowborn are already manifesting..."
"The seals are breaking." Zarak sheathed his sword, though his flames continued to burn. "Someone's using the faction war to weaken the barriers between worlds."
"Or something." Selene studied him with those ancient eyes. "You know more than you're saying, Oathbreaker. That title—the Shadowborn knew you."
"Everything knows me." He started walking north, not caring if she followed. "I'm the idiot who tried to save the world and got burned for it. Makes me popular with prophecies and doom-seekers."
Selene fell into step beside him, moving with that eerie vampire grace. "Yet you're going after her. The princess."
"Someone has to."
"Why you?"
Zarak touched his scarred face, feeling the dead god's fire pulse beneath his skin. Three years of running. Three years of hunting monsters to forget the people he'd failed to save. Maybe it was time to stop running.
"Because I'm already damned," he said quietly. "Can't fall any further than I already have."
They walked in silence as darkness claimed the Northroad. Behind them, silver blood still burned on dead earth. Ahead, something ancient stirred in its sleep, waiting for a blind princess to choose between salvation and apocalypse.
Above them, stars began to disappear one by one, devoured by shadows that had waited since before the world was born.
The new moon was coming.
And with it, the end of everything.
Or perhaps, Zarak thought as his dead fire flickered in the darkness, just the end of one story and the beginning of another. Time would tell which.
If they had any time left at all.
The fourth body appeared just as the last star vanished from the sky. This one was still warm, blood transforming from red to something that hurt to perceive—a color that existed outside normal sight.
Written in that impossible blood, a message:
She comes to the place where three becomes one. Hurry, Oathbreaker. Even Keys can break.
Zarak ran, and for the first time in three years, he prayed to gods who no longer listened.
Sometimes, silence was answer enough.