The rain began without warning.
Ashovar's trees swayed under its weight, their black leaves gleaming like glass. Lightening cracked above, white fire slicing the clouds.
Kael moved ahead, cloak soaked through, the scent of wet earth and ash thick around them. He said nothing. Since the fight, since the pulse that nearly burned through them, words felt dangerous.
Rayne followed close, her dagger drawn. The runes along the blade glowed faintly with each strike of lightening, responding not to danger but to him. Every time he looked back, the glow sharpened.
"We should find shelter," she said.
Kael's eyes swept the treeline. "Shelter means stillness. Stillness means death."
"You're bleeding again," she countered.
He touched his side where the spear had pierced him. The wound was closed too quickly. The skin beneath his fingers was cold, smooth. Wrong.
"It's nothing."
Rayne's tone hardened. "Don't lie to me."
His jaw clenched, but he didn't answer. The storm grew heavier, blurring the forest into streaks of gray and shadow.
They pressed forward until they reached a break in the trees, a ridge overlooking the misted valley below. From there, Kael could see the faint glimmer of Varathis's outer watchfires to the north.
"Your home," Rayne said softly.
He didn't answer. The sight made his stomach tighten. That place had never been home. It was a cage of marble and lies.
Lightening flashed again, and something moved in the mist below, dark figures shifting against the rain. Not hunters this time. These ones didn't ride. They crawled.
Rayne stepped beside him, power gathering at her fingertips. "What are they?"
Kael's voice was low. "Shadows bound to the court. The kind my father sends when he wants something erased."
"They shouldn't be here," she said. "This far from Varathis..."
"They were sent for me." His eyes darkened. "Or for us."
The shadow creatures crept up the slope, their limbs too long, faces hidden behind bone masks. The air thickened with the smell of iron and rot.
Rayne's flames rose, small but steady. "We can't outrun them in this storm."
"Then we end them here."
Their gaze met, light against shadow, flame against blood. The bond between them thrummed like a living thing.
Kael lifted his blade. Rayne's fire bloomed brighter.
Together, they stepped into the storm.
The storm swallowed sound. Rain hissed off steel and flame.
Kael met the first shadow as it lunged up the slope, its bone mask splitting with a hiss that sounded almost human. He drove Veindrinker through its chest, black ichor spilling over his hands. The blade drank greedily, pulsing faint crimson where blood touched it.
Rayne's fire arced beside him, her flames twisting like living serpents. The shadows burned, their forms unraveling into smoke, but for every one that fell, two more took its place.
"Too many," she said through clenched teeth.
Kael moved to her side, their backs nearly touching. "Then we don't count."
Their rhythm found itself again, the same synchrony that had turned the tide in the Hunt. He swung, she struck. Fire traced the edges of his blade, blood darkened the air around her light. Together, they were a storm within a storm.
But it came at its cost.
Every pulse of their bond stirred something inside him. His senses sharpened beyond reason. The rain slowed. The world brightened. He could hear the thrum of blood in every creature around them, their hearts, their veins, the very essence that fed them.
He fought to breathe. To stay in control.
"Kael!" Rayne's voice cut through the haze.
He blinked and saw her face, lit by flame and rain. The sight grounded him for a heartbeat and nearly killed him. A shadow lunged at his blind side, claws raking across his shoulder.
Rayne's dagger flashed, splitting it apart before it reached him. The runes flared gold where her blade met his blood, and for a heartbeat the entire storm paused.
Kael's blood struck the rain and hissed, glowing faintly red before dissolving.
Rayne's eyes widened. "Your blood..."
"Later," he growled. He moved faster now, too fast. His strikes blurred, precise and merciless. The creatures fell like paper before wind, but every kill left him colder. The hunger beneath his skin stretched and yawned awake.
Rayne's flames began to falter. Her magic was strong, but not endless. HE felt her fatigue through their bond like a second heartbeat stumbling. Without thinking, he reached for her wrist, channeling his own strength through the link.
Power surged between them. Her fire exploded outward, devouring the last line of shadows in a ring of gold and scarlet. The light tore through the forest, banishing every remnant of darkness for a breathless instant.
Then silence.
The rain softened. Smoke curled from the scorched ground. The air smelled of iron and ash.
Rayne dropped to one knee, panting. "Don't... do that... again."
Kael knelt beside her. "You would have burned out."
"And you would have lost what's left of your soul."
They stared at each other, the bond pulsing faintly between them like a warning heartbeat neither wanted to acknowledge.
Kael stood first, his voice low. "We move before they send more."
Rayne looked at him, her gaze lingering on the red still faintly glowing under his skin. "You're changing faster than you think."
He said nothing. The storm had passed, but inside him, something darker had just begun to wake.
They moved through Ashovar beneath the dying rain. Smoke trailed from the charred earth where the shadow creatures had fallen, vanishing into mist like ghost refusing to rest.
Kael's steps were uneven now. The blood he'd shed wasn't slowing him, it was feeding him. His senses had sharpened to painful precision. He could smell the faintest trace of ozone from Rayne's fire, hear the rhythm of her pulse matching his own. The bond refused to fade.
Rayne noticed. "You're not steady."
"I'm fine."
"That's a lie you're bad at telling."
She caught his wrist before he could turn away. His skin was ice cold. The faint light beneath it pulsed in sync with the runes on her dagger.
"It's not just hunger anymore, is it?" she said quietly. "It's calling to you."
Kael's eyes flicked towards hers. "You think I don't know that?"
"Then stop pretending you can fight it alone."
Her tone was sharper than before, less accusation, more challenge. The kind that demanded truth.
He looked away, jaw tight. "You don't understand. The bloodline doesn't just awaken. It reclaims. Once it takes me, there's no turning back."
"Maybe," she said. "But it hasn't yet."
Lightening flashed again in the distance, a final echo of the storm. The forest shimmered under its brief light, revealing what lay ahead. A path carved through the trees, old and overgrown, leading toward the low, black silhouette of a ruined tower.
Kael frowned. "That shouldn't be here."
Rayne followed his gaze. "What is it?"
"An outpost of Varathis. Abandoned since the War of Thorns."
"Then it's the only shelter we have."
They approached cautiously. The tower leaned like an exhausted sentinel, half swallowed by roots and moss. Its stone walls bore the sigil of a bloodline long erased, one Kael recognized from his grandfather's ring.
The moment he stepped inside, the air shifted. The mark on his neck burned, and every candle long dead within the ruin flared to life, igniting in crimson light.
Rayne's hand went to her dagger. "Kael...?"
He turned toward her, but his reflection in the broken glass behind them wasn't his own, it was older, colder, eyes red as embers.
A whisper brushed through the room like wind through ash.
"Welcome home, heir of blood."
Keal staggered back, clutching his head as pain tore through him. Images of chains, thrones, and a voice he knew but could not name, flashed through his mind.
Rayne reached for him, but the red light erupted around both of them, binding shadow to flame in a violent pulse.
And far away, in Varathis, a man wearing the same mark opened his eyes and smiled.