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Chapter
One
MAREINA
The celestial glow of the moons spilled into my bedroom as I peeked outside the curtain before climbing into bed. Every hair on my body stood on end at the sight of the ominous, shadowy, hooded figure standing - or perhaps, floating - brazenly out in the open beneath a beam of the aforementioned moonlight.
Taunting me.Or so I’d begun to think.
Mors is coming for you,it seemed to whisper in my mind silently.
Fuck. Off,I replied. Also, silently and from the protective shell of my own mind lest the creature hear me and seek out its vengeance.
Despite the fact that my home was a formerly abandoned fortress ruin that I’d put my heart and soul into reclaiming and infused with every protective ward ever conceived, it did absolutely nothing to keep The God of Death’sPharalakioff my property.
My days were consumed by death. If there was a place I’d hoped to escape it, it would be my secluded haven, sitting at the edge of the Falcweard Mountains on the furthest outskirts of Bastrina, the capital of the Kingdom of Atratus.
My heart galloped in my chest as thePharalakiglided closer as if lured by my gaze. I quickly flung myself into bed, tightly tucking myself beneath the covers.
For all the lives I had taken, one would think I would be immune to death.
No such luck.
It wasn’t dying or the pain that would likely come along with it that terrified me.Akashknew I had faced that too many times to count.
No, no. As if some infantile part of my brain had never matured, the sight of those dark, whorling specters cloaked in darkness never failed to send icy tendrils of terror seeping through my veins.
My gaze remained fixed on the window, half expecting thePharalakito walk straight through it.
You deserve no less.
Time passed slowly as I tried to keep my mind from wandering down deeply carved paths long engraved into my psyche with an unforgiving blade. Finally, just as the moons began to slip beneath my window, my eyes slid shut, and I drifted into peace and nothingness.
Blackness as in the cool, blessed respite of night.
A blanket of calm.
As I did almost every night, I found myself floating here for an interminable amount of time- as this seemed to be a place that lay beyond time.
A distant pinpoint of light caught my attention, and I felt myself drawn to it, like a moth to a flame. As I did, that pinpoint of light seemed to break apart into dozens, hundreds, thousands, infinite points of light. Stars. Blazing in the limitless cosmos.
A deep, soothing voice that rumbled like distant thunder filled my mind, speaking a language I'd never known yet understood perfectly.
"O ziton irini feri polemon, al o kaloumenos 'O Vasiléfs mou' synaxi. Protá dio emisfaíria tou auto olo én genisete, ke tote panta pesite."
"The one who seeks peace will bring war, but it is the one you call, 'My King', who will unite. If two halves of the same whole become one, all your kingdoms will fall."
"Mi lanthonéti, oti kei mortatum eiaeternitate ma skhimata dothate. Essita me, Guardatore Vitum, na evris tin oikisí sou.”
"Born between realms, forget not that you are eternity given form. You are never alone. Seek me, the Guardian of Life, to find your home."
The voice began to grow stronger, louder, sounding like one and many, as a great weight began to press upon me. I felt myself being pulled towards a distinctly black space in which everything, even light, was absorbed.
The voice within my mind grew so powerful that every molecule in my body began to shudder just as pain burst through me, swiftly and enduring until light consumed me. The pain disappeared as quickly as it had come.
The voice returned to a whisper, no longer inside my mind but outside of what was both distantly familiar and a strange, unsettling corporeal form that felt like a cage to my spirit body.
Water lapped at my feet at nearly the same temperature as this body. I found myself sitting up in a cave from what little I could make out in the brightness of the light that appeared to be emanating from some fixed point across the room.
