I move through the shadows, my heart a wild drum against my ribs. I can feel the psychic scar, that phantom link, throbbingwith a dull, distant ache. He is far away, and getting farther with every beat of his powerful wings. He is a monster, a violator, but the power now humming in my veins is his legacy. He gave me the key to my own cage.
I find a supply closet, the door left ajar in the haste to respond to the alarm. I slip inside and find a discarded blacksmith’s apron and a small, heavy hammer. The roughspun leather is a comfort against my skin. The weight of the hammer in my hand is an anchor, a solid, tangible promise of a fight I was never allowed before.
Under the cover of the shift change, as the entire fortress is focused on the escaped Vrakken, I make my way to the refuse chute, a foul, disgusting tunnel that leads directly outside the stronghold’s walls. Without a moment’s hesitation, I plunge into the darkness.
I emerge into the biting wind of the pre-dawn mountainside, covered in filth but breathing free air for the very first time in memory. The sky is a pale, bruised purple, the stars fading. I do not look back. I run.
I run until my lungs burn and my legs scream. I run until the dark elf stronghold is a mere speck behind me. As the first rays of the rising sun cut across the jagged peaks, I finally stop, leaning against a frozen pine tree to catch my breath.
A strange, unfamiliar sensation makes me pause. A deep, internal flutter. I place a hand on my flat stomach, over the rough leather of the apron. It is impossible. It is a mad thought born of trauma and terror. But as my fingers press against my own skin, a flicker of impossible dread and absolute certainty takes root in the deepest part of my soul. I am not alone. I did not escape alone.
Five years later, I stand on the battlements of Haven. The wind whips my hair back from my face, cold and clean. My fortress, carved from an ancient ruin, is a sanctuary, a promiseI made to myself and to the hundreds of freed slaves who live within its walls: no one here will ever be powerless again. My hand rests on the hilt of the dagger at my hip, the cool metal a familiar, comforting weight.
Below me, in the snow-dusted courtyard, a child laughs. His hair is the silver of an icy winter moon, a stark contrast to the dark training leathers he wears. He swings a wooden practice sword with a fierce, determined grace that is far beyond his five years.
My son. Lyren.
My heart aches with a love so fierce it is a physical pain. He is my life, my world, the impossible, beautiful consequence of a night of fire and violation.
And in the quiet moments, when the wind dies down and the world goes still, I can still feel it. The faint, distant hum of a psychic scar. A phantom cord that connects me to a monster with abyss-black eyes, a monster who does not know that the most dangerous part of himself was not the part that escaped.
It was the part he left behind.
6
EOIN
The rogue Vrakken snarls, a sound unbecoming of our kind. His name was Lyros. He was once a scholar, his mind a precise and beautiful instrument. Now, his silver hair is lank and dull, and a tremor runs through his left wing. But the worst sign is in his eyes. They are wild, chaotic, filled with the most vulgar of emotions: fear.
He is afflicted. The Fading has taken root.
“You will not take me, Enforcer,” he hisses, crouching like a cornered animal. “Brinda will not make a specimen of me.”
I do not respond. Words are a symptom of the decay, a frantic attempt to give shape to the chaos that is consuming him. My purpose here is not to debate, but to conclude. My stillness is my only statement.
He lunges. His movements are sloppy, telegraphed. A desperate, clumsy attack where once there would have been lethal grace. I sidestep his charge, my own motion, a fluid, economical whisper of displaced air. My blade, forged from the heart of a fallen star, is already in my hand. It makes no sound as it slides between his ribs, a clean, cold kiss of finality that severs his connection to this world.
His eyes widen for a moment, the fear replaced by a flicker of something akin to gratitude. Then the light fades completely, and he collapses to the frozen ground. Another one of our kind erased.
I withdraw my blade and wipe it clean on the pristine snow, the crimson blood a stark, ugly stain. I look at my own hand, at the skin that is as pale and flawless as sculpted marble. Almost flawless. On the back of my wrist, hidden unless I look for it, is a small, thumbnail-sized patch where the natural, faint luminescence of my skin has dimmed. It is barely perceptible, but I know what it is. A beginning. A timer.
The Fading. It is the great, unspoken truth of the Vrakken. A slow, creeping decay that leeches our power, frays our minds, and unravels our immortality. It begins by stealing our connection to the future—it has rendered all Vrakken of my generation barren, the strongest of us. Then it comes for our control, replacing millennia of discipline with the hot, messy chaos of emotion. In the end, it takes our bodies, turning us into the quivering, terrified creature I have just dispatched.
I have watched friends, warriors I have known since the world was young, succumb to this quiet plague. I have been the one to grant them the mercy of a clean death when their minds finally broke. And I have done so with the cold, practiced detachment that is the only true shield against the terror of our slow extinction. Apathy is not a choice; it is a necessity.
A summons echoes in the silence of my mind, a chime of pure thought that bears the signature of Matriarch Brinda. It is time. I sheath my blade and take to the sky, the execution of Lyros already a memory I am walling away.
The Vrakken citadel of Kryll is a spire of black ice and obsidian that pierces the clouds, a monument to our cold, ordered existence. I land silently on the balcony of the Matriarch’s chambers and enter.
She stands before the vast, crystalline window that overlooks the frozen peaks, her back to me. She is even more still than I am, a being so ancient she seems a part of the stone itself.
“The rogue has been culled,” I state, my voice a low monotone that does not disturb the chamber’s oppressive silence.
“As expected,” she replies, her own voice like the grinding of glaciers. She turns, her starless eyes fixing on me. “A report has arrived from one of my spies in the southern territories. A matter concerning an old mission of yours. The dark elf stronghold at Valthos. Aethel.”
My composure does not shift. My heart rate does not elevate. But deep within the walled fortress of my mind, a sleeping beast stirs. The memory of a cellar. The scent of blood. The taste of fire.
“I recall the mission,” I say. “It was a failure.”
