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Rippling beneath his feet, darkness pooled like water as Rymedur waded forward. Thick and oily, the shadows pulled him under, gripping at his legs and catching him in a snare.

Swish! Something blew past. A gust of windless air wafted strands of midnight blue into his eyes, obscuring his vision.

Whirling around, Rymedur followed the movement as it breezed past once again.

‘You have lost your faith,’ a disembodied voice called.

Brows pinched together, Rymedur squinted his eyes to see who, or what, had spoken—but the whispers came from everywhere, making it difficult for him to pinpoint where the voice had come from.

Trudging forward was like moving through tar. The shadows resisted any movement. Concentrating, Rymedur tried to bend them to his will, but they wouldn’t listen.

They always listened.

‘You do not know who you are.’ Again, that whisper of a voice grew with the shadows.

‘Who are you?’ Rymedur pulled against the shadows that tried to shackle him in place. ‘What is this? Where’s the rest of my company?’

‘Is that your worry?’ The voice moved, shadows growing denser. ‘No. That is not it. Your worry—’ the whispers moved closer, and an unnatural breeze swirled around Rymedur, rustling his clothes. ‘Ah! You want to know where your wife is.’ It hissed the word as if it were poison on its tongue.

But Rymedur noticed the lack of sound. The absolute silence, as dead and stale as the darkness before him. ‘What are you?’

Only the whispered voice rasped in the endless abyss. ‘What, not who? How quickly you changed your tone.’

‘Stop this!’ Rymedur whirled again when the voice moved, wrapping around him like a twisting and bending thing. ‘Answer me.’

‘You know me.’ The voice crawled up his spine, ice-cold touch creeping up every inch of his skin. Rymedur clenched his fists—the only part of his body he could move—to force down the shiver. He would not give this thing the satisfaction! ‘You are me, Deathless Shadows.’

Rymedur’s emerald gaze darted to the shadows clinging to him, then to his own, which lay dormant, unmoving, across his chest and down his arms. ‘I’m nothing like you. I don’t even know what you are!’

‘You are more like me than you care to admit.’

Rymedur couldn’t stand the way the voice spoke to him, familiar yet unlike anything he had heard before. He had thought Ryyen’s voice was an unnerving, daunting thing. But this? This was far more sinister. Other-worldly.

‘Do you know what your wife is?’ the disembodied voice asked, and a new kind of chill skittered through Rymedur’s bones. Why was it so interested in Areanel?

His movements became more urgent. Pushing against the shadowy bonds that kept him in place, Rymedur tried to shake off their hold.

Its low, raspy tone flittered back and forth. Constantly moving, as though it was struggling to find a fixed point without a body to hold it.

‘That girl should not be alive.’ The whisper was right beside his ear, and Rymedur flinched away. The burning sensation of icy breath frosted over his cheek. ‘She should never have been created.’ It moved behind him, and a talon of fear scratched his shoulder blades, locking his spine. ‘I missed my chance, but you will not.’

Shadows piled onto one another, forming into a towering silhouette. ‘Go north, to the clans.’ The silhouette leaned close, taking up Rymedur’s space. ‘She will not win this time. My faithful will guide you. Kill her before she can destroy what is left of this world.’

There was a beat of silence where shadows frantically swished around him. A deathly kind of quiet overran his senses, drowning out all else but the looming figure before him.

With an excruciatingly slow and deliberate movement, Rymedur lifted his glare to the silhouette. ‘What—’ the growl reverberated deep within his chest ‘—did you say?’

Low and deep, he snarled, baring his teeth at the shadowed figure.

‘She will use a harbinger to bring down the veil that separates our worlds. If you do not stop her—’ the shadow stood taller ‘—the veil between the realms will fall. Going down this path threatens everything I have tried to prevent. Worlds will clash, and everything you know, everything you love, will perish. Tell me, Commander,’ the silhouette tilted its head in mock curiosity, ‘would you ever forgive yourself if you let them die, knowing you could have stopped it?’

Separates our worlds. Those are the words it used.

Was this a god, then? One of the Elvadora?

But which one?

Rymedur turned over every memory; his mother must have mentioned a dark wielder.