The screaming in the courtyard turned to shrieks, then to wet, gurgling silence.
Evelyn clutched the infant—Kaelos, the Devourer, her son—against her chest. His star-eye burned through the fabric of her shift, painting her skin violet. She did not let herself flinch.
Tyrus was already moving, barking orders to the guards. "Bar the doors! Archers to the—"
The chamber doors exploded inward.
Not from force. From decay.
One moment the oak stood firm, iron-banded and imposing. The next, the wood blackened, splintering like rotten bone. The hinges crumbled to rust mid-swing. Through the wreckage staggered something that had once been a man.
Vareth.
His skin clung to his bones like melted wax, stretched too thin over a frame that had not eaten in centuries. His eyes—gold and pupilless—locked onto the bundle in Evelyn's arms. When he smiled, his jaw unhinged like a serpent's.
"My king," he rasped, and the words slithered.
Tyrus' dagger found his throat.
Or should have.
The blade passed through Vareth's flesh like mist. Where steel touched decayed skin, black veins spiderwebbed up Tyrus' arm. The lord gasped as his fingers blackened, nails curling like dead leaves.
Kaelos watched, fascinated. Ah. The Rotting Touch. He remembered teaching Vareth that spell—how to make flesh surrender to time.
Evelyn backed toward the hearth, one hand fumbling for the fire iron. The infant in her arms twitched, his star-eye flaring brighter.
Vareth's head cocked. "You would protect him? From me?" A laugh like breaking glass. "Motherhood is truly madness."
Beyond the shattered doors, the castle echoed with new sounds:
- The snap of bowstrings firing—then the wet thud of arrows finding home in human flesh.
- The scritch-scratch of claws on stone—too many legs, too many joints.
- And beneath it all, a hum, the sound of a thousand flies circling a corpse.
Kaelos' tiny fists clenched. His body was weak, but his will—
The hearth fire leaped.
Flames coiled up Evelyn's arm, painless, wrapping around her like a lover's embrace. The fire iron in her hand glowed white-hot.
Vareth paused. "Clever."
Tyrus writhed on the floor, his arm now withered to the elbow. "Evelyn—"
She struck.
The fire iron pierced Vareth's chest—not through flesh, but through the empty space where his heart had once been. The general looked down, amused, as the metal cooled in his ribs.
"Sweet summer child," he sighed. "Did you think I kept that?"
Then the first of the Duskborn crawled through the windows.