Page 324 of Blade of the Nightking

Rìan took another step. Another.

The creature lunged.

My gaze caught on a fallen Plague-Hunter only a few paces away, a bow still clutched in his lifeless hands. I threw myself toward him, wrenched the weapon free, and ripped an arrow from the quiver at his side.

I nocked the arrow, my shoulder screaming as I drew, the blood pounding in my ears until it drowned out the screams.

The battlements blurred.

For one terrible heartbeat, it wasn’t Rìan down there.

Papa…

My hands steadied. The fear vanished. There was no doubt now. No hesitation.

I drew a slow breath, let it out—and released.

The world snapped back into focus.

The arrow punched through the back of the Infected’s skull and burst from its face in a spray of blood just as its fingers closed around Rìan’s shoulder.

Scarlet spattered across his cheek as the creature crumpled at his feet.

I lowered the bow numbly just as Rìan lifted his head and found me on the ramparts.

For a moment, everything else receded—our broken bond, the undead racing toward Midland, the final Gate of Othyr.

Slowly, he raised one hand. My gaze dropped to his palm. To the place where black lines had twisted only moments before. They were gone. Not a single trace remained.

The bargain was complete.

His fingers curled over empty skin. Silver flooded his eyes, brilliant even at this distance, burning with magic finally restored.

Run, Eidra.

His power slipped through my mind, squeezing just hard enough to send pain splintering through my skull. Then it withdrew.

The first wave of Infected hit.

They spilled over the shattered wall in a frenzy of limbs, clawing across the broken stones as they rushed toward him. Rìan whirled, eyes blazing.

The creatures collapsed midstride. His magic swept through them, severing the Infection’s hold on the last spark of life within their minds. More poured through the breach, scrambling over the ruins, only to crumple before they reached him.

Rìan never broke stride. He climbed through the wall and passed beyond the boundary of Midland.

I watched in horror as the horde closed around him.

And still he walked.

The horde collapsed before him. Great swaths of Infected dropped like stones, hundreds falling at once. With every step, a path opened through the sea of dead, widening toward the treeline as the corpses piled along either side. Silver blazed from his eyes like a star amid the endless gray.

Then, all at once, they stopped.

Every Infected went still. Their shrieks cut off as one. The silence that followed was deafening.

Something emerged beneath the trees.

Tall and impossibly thin, it stepped into view on long, pale legs, black veins webbing beneath colorless skin. Its arms hung almost to its knees, ending in skeletal hands tipped with curved claws. Where a nose should have been were only two vertical slits, its mouth cut too wide across a face stretched taut over bone. A nightmare come to life.