Page 9 of Blade of the Nightking

The shriek cut straight through me.

My eyes snapped open, the pull of oblivion receding so fast it felt like it was draining out of me, spiraling away into nothing. As if even death itself fled from whatever waited in the dark beyond the trees.

Aedric sprang to his feet. His iron shortsword flashed as he drew it from his belt, raising it before him with both hands. His breath came in short, puffed bursts in the cold air. Steam rose from his skin, his body always so warm.

We both froze. Listening.

No.

No, it couldn’t be.

It had to be the wind, whistling through the bone-white trunks around us.

I held my breath.

Silence.

Aedric turned back to me slowly, staring at me with widening eyes, as if he were seeing a ghost. His blade lowered an inch.

“I thought you’d died.” His voice wavered, his face caught between terror and bewildered relief, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was still breathing.

“M-me too,” I stammered, incredulous.

The darkness had come for me fast, like ink spilling across my consciousness, drowning everything. But somewhere in the back of my mind something else had moved—a cool sweep, like a hand skimming the inside of my skull⁠—

A second scream ripped through the forest.

This one was unmistakable.

I snapped upright, my gaze locked on the direction of the sound.

“Aedric…” I whispered.

“It can’t be,” he said, shaking his head as if trying to clear it. “The Bone-Wrought can’t have…”

And then I saw them.

They moved through the underbrush like shadowed nightmares. Jerking limbs. Bodies bent at impossible angles. Too fast. Too wrong. My stomach lurched.

Four of them.

Aedric lifted one hand from the knife, sparks dancing over his fingertips—flame flared for a heartbeat before guttering out, snuffed like a candle in a storm. He stared at his empty palm in disbelief.

“Aedric!”

The first Infected burst from behind a tree.

It lunged at him in a frenzy of gnashing teeth and hooked claws. A ragged bite mark gaped where its ear had been torn away. Black veins pulsed across its face and down its neck, bulging with Tharnyx’s corruption. Its eyes were entirely black—bottomless, mindless, ravenous.

Aedric spun, slashing across its torso, sending the creature careening backward into the Infected behind it. They toppled like broken dolls.

And then the fight descended on him in a rush.

Aedric bared his teeth and roared. The blade in his hand flashed like lightning as he drove the iron straight into one creature’s skull. It dropped instantly.

But the others came on.

Snarling.