The trees swept past in streaks of black and ice, their branches like skeletal hands clutching at his cloak. Snow swirled around Kael in ghostly eddies, stirred up by his boots as he ran through the forest, panting, his breath ragged. There were no footsteps behind him, nor voices. But he didn't slow down, he didn't dare.
The shard burned hotter in his pocket, pulsing with a rhythm that didn't match his heartbeat.
No, that was someone else's heartbeat.
The wind howled louder now, whistling between the pines like a beast growling in anger. The cold gnawed at Kael's fingers, biting past his thin gloves. He ducked under a fallen log, slipped on some frozen mud, and stood up again, swearing.
"Find him and kill him quickly," they'd shouted.
'Who were they? Why the broken Sun sigil?' And why had he felt his soul trying to crawl out of his own body when he touched the shard?
He didn't want answers. Not really. But the questions stuck to him like wet wool, useless to brush off.
His legs finally gave way under him. He fell behind a hollow rock out of sight, halfway up a steep slope where the forest thinned out and the cliffs overlooked the frozen river. He pressed his back to the rock and concentrated on breathing quietly, his heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
Silence, no footsteps, no lights, he'd lost them.
For now.
Kael slid the shard out of his coat pocket, holding it at arm's length. It looked smaller now, maybe half the length of his palm. But it still pulsed, like a heartbeat, silver veins lighting up faintly like breath through dying embers.
"Whatever you are," he muttered, "you're worth dying for. Which means you're not worth keeping."
He should throw it, toss it into the ravine below and walk away.
But his fingers wouldn't let go.
Instead, he pressed it to the cold rock beside him. "Stay here," he muttered, then tore a strip of cloth from his tunic and tied it around the shard, hiding the glow. He tucked it in a crack beneath the boulder.
Only then did he slump back, and exhaustion hit him like a tide. His body ached, not from running, but something deeper, like his muscles were being unravelled and stitched back again by unseen hands.
His head pounded, visions flickered behind his eyes.
'A throne of bone.
A circle of kneeling corpses, whispering in unison.
Nine shards orbiting a crown of black fire.'
He snapped upright with a gasp. "What the hell is happening to me?"
He was only met with silence.
Kael closed his eyes, trying to slow his breathing. He thought of the graveyard--the only place he'd ever call home. He'd grown up under stone crosses and half-buried saints, learning to pick lockboxes and unlace coffins with the same ease. The dead didn't judge. They didn't lie. They didn't come back.
A crunch echoed in the woods below.
Kael froze.
Another crunch--closer this time.
He slid his knife from its sheath. The blade was chipped, dull near the hilt, but it had kept him alive longer than any prayer.
Then came a voice. Low. Tired. Female.
"If you're going to kill me, thief, do it where I can see your face."
Kael blinked. That wasn't one of the cultists.
He rose slowly, peering over the stone ledge.
A woman stood a few paces down the slope, one hand braced against a tree, the other holding a broken spear shaft. Her armour was dented and frost-covered. A red sash hung from her belt--tattered and torn. Blood had dried on her cheek, and a long, old scar crossed her left brow.
Kael didn't lower his blade. "You followed me?"
She gave a weary scoff. "I could barely follow my own breath. I saw the starfall too. Got here just in time to see you running like hell from some robed bastards. Thought you might know what they were."
Kael's grip tightened. "And you just decided to follow me?"
The woman shrugged. "They tried to kill you. I'm not them. And I figured anyone who survives a shardfall might be useful."
He narrowed his eyes. "You're after it."
"I was," she admitted, "until I saw what it did to you."
That gave him a pause.
"Who are you?"
She straightened, eyes sharp beneath tired lids. "Name's Veyra. Used to command the Third Blade of Eramoor."
Kael blinked. "You were a general?"
"Was. Before politics and priests decided I wasn't holy enough to burn prisoners alive." She pointed at his knife. "Now, either use that or lower it. I'm too tired to die pretty."
Kael hesitated, then slowly lowered the blade.
"You shouldn't be out here," he said.
"Neither should you."
Silence stretched between them, filled only by the sound of wind moving through the trees.
"I didn't ask for this," Kael muttered.
Veyra looked at him for a long moment. Then, to his surprise, she sat down beside the outcrop, cradling her ribs.
"No one does," she said softly. "But we don't always get to choose the stories we end up in."
They sat there in silence for a long while. No fire. No camp. Just the frozen hush of the forest and the distant, lingering glow of the shard beneath the stone.
Kael couldn't stop thinking about the voice.
The images.
He didn't want to be part of any story. He just wanted to survive. To vanish into the shadows like he always had.
But something had found him now. And it wasn't going to let him go.
He looked at Veyra -- bleeding, exhausted, yet unflinching.
"Those cultists," he said. "They're not just after the shard. They said something about stopping it before it takes root."
Veyra's brow furrowed.
"You think it's... inside you?"
Kael hesitated.
Then, quietly: "I think it is."