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Prologue

Before

They say the world was whole once, and that the Umbralyn made it so.

That is the version told to children, at least, over mended nets and guttering fires. Told in the hour when the dark comes off the sea and the cliffs go quiet.

They say that long ago, the land tore open into a violent fracture and things came through it. Most were made of death, and whatever they became afterwards was worse. But some of those creatures looked back at the wound they had crossed and chose to stand in it: to hold the gap, so that the worse could not follow. They bound themselves to it freely, out of love for a world that was not yet afraid of them. A vow to protect.

For this, some came to call them guardians. Others have only ever called them what they are.

Monsters.

What they look like depends on who is telling it. Men, mostly. Tall, pale men, with veins made of glass that catch the light if you look close enough. Creatures that do not age, and that can break a human the way a human breaks bread.

And then there’s the shadows. Point a lantern towards an Umbralyn from any angle you like, and its shadow will not obey you. It always leans north, towards the Fracture, as though something on the other side of that wound still knows where to find it.

But then, almost no one telling these stories has ever seen one or known one properly. The stories keep disagreeing after that.

Some say the Umbralyn were thanked, and that the thanks curdled the way gratitude does when a debt gets too old to keep paying down. Others insist there were never thanks to begin with, only fear wearing gratitude’s clothes until no one alive remembered which it had started as. Most old people will refuse to talk about it, and the ones who do lower their voices when they say what the Umbralyn are, as though the cliffs might hear them.

And the children, if they are listening closely, always ask the same thing. If the Umbralyn came through the wound as well, how is anyone certain they are different from the things they hold back?

No story has ever answered that to anyone’s satisfaction.

And what no story tells you - because no story knows - is what the Umbralyn were promised in return. Whether they were even promised anything at all. Whether, when they agreed to stand in the gap forever, anyone thought to ask what forever would cost them.

That part was never written down.

Or it was, and someone made certain it would not be found.

1

Shadows over Eryssan

The bells were already ringing when Maia reached Eryssan, but the rest of the city seemed too quiet for bells.

She could smell frying fish and spiced wine on the evening air, the smells she’d been promised. The laughter she’d always pictured spilling from the taverns was thin and guarded; the kind of laughter that keeps one eye on the door.

Around her, eyes flicked beyond the city walls, up towards the sky, and quickly away again. The way people glance at something they’ve taught themselves not to see.

But she looked. Of course she looked.

Beyond the northern rise, the cliffs bore their wound.

The Fracture.

It split the skyline into a jagged seam, and even from here, even in the failing light, you could see it pulse with a low, angry violet glow.

She’d grown up only three days’ walk down the coast, where the Fracture was something argued about over half-empty wine cups by people who’d never left the village. A story.

But the stories had not prepared her for how alive it looked. Nor how it seemed to loom over everything here.

Maia drew her shawl tighter and forced herself to turn away. The autumn wind chased her, pulling loose strands of pale-gold hair free of her braid. The last of the season’s warmth had left the air weeks ago.

As she walked through the square, she noticed how people moved differently here. Like everyone was keeping their own secret, scurrying between the light and dark of the city’s hollows.

Near at hand, a figure crossed the square carrying a lantern of his own, its flame leaning towards him as thought it wanted to be closer. He was tall and cloaked, his hood pulled forward enough that she caught no more than the light sliding off his jaw before it was gone again.