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Other hollows are greedy. The human souls sometimes fight back, and the greedy one might be driven into the aether—for good. Nur isn’t like that. He wants to survive.
But why?
Like the others, he’s nothing but a shade. A piece of history clinging foolishly to the present. But unlike the others Nur is curious about the humans, and that’s enough to keep him going.
So he follows the soul into the ruins. This soul is different. He carries a wound from his past life, a missing arm. He doesn’t wander aimlessly—he walks with purpose.
Nur trails the soul for many days, until they come to a shale pit, and beyond that a mountain that reaches into the haze. When Nur perceives the mountain with its great walls and its terraces high in the sky and its grand columns, he is frozen by an avalanche of memory.
He remembers those terraces. He remembers seeing them burn. He remembers falling. The human soul disappears inside, but Nur is stuck, his weak mind bludgeoned by the past.
After three days, the soul returns.
“Why are you following me?” the soul asks. His voice is powerful enough to shake Nur out of his memories.
He’s never spoken to his prey before. “I was hungry,” he tells the soul.
“Was it you biting at me like a rat?” The soul scoffs. Nur notices then how solid he seems, how confident his step. And where there had been one arm, now he has two: one grey, one red.
“It must have been,” Nur admits.
“You’re not like the other rats. You tracked me all the way here. But not inside—why not?”
Nur shudders. “This place is poisonous.”
“You’re wrong,” the soul replies. “I don’t see poison. I see potential. Inside the mountain I was given knowledge others would kill for.”
Nur stays silent. The soul is stronger than him now, and he fears it.
“I see potential in you, too. Or are you nothing but a scavenger?” A smirk twists that handsome mouth. “I know your name now. Nicephore. I know what you are.”
Perhaps it’s time to return to the aether for a bit. As he sinks back into the nether-realm, the soul grabs his wrist with his red hand.
The pain is immense and sudden. A horrible noise rips from Nur’s half formed throat. He cannot pull free—the soul holds him in place with no effort at all.
“My name is Branok,” he says. “I want to make you a deal.”
Chapter 46
NUR
Nur gasps and wakes.For a terrible moment he’s back in the pit. Frozen to the core. Empty. Alone. Then the dreamscape whirls around him, melting into the air.You’re not him anymore,his vergis whispers in time with the crackle of the fire outside. And old, bitter Nicephore is quiet for once.
Because it’s true: he isn’t a hollow anymore. But neither is he anything else. He’s something between—no longer what he was, not yet what he will become.
He sits up.
The same all-encompassing fear roars to life, chasing away the dregs of his dream, and the words that were trapped unspool all at once in a stream. His fears are always about the past and future, just like his dreams. It’s not the bond that’s making him feel this way—it’s a premonition. Arsene is in danger.
He has to go back.
He throws off the blankets and tugs his boots on. Rhys was right—he owes the caravan, but the reason he owes them is the same reason he has to leave. The humans don’t need him. They never have. His mate does.
He finds Myra by the fire, alone, her chin on her hands as she watches the flames burning low. She looks up as he approaches, her gaze knowing as always.
“I have to go to back for him.”
Myra nods. “I knew you wouldn’t stay.”
