Kier's POV
The worst part about stealing someone's soul isn't the screaming after. It's the moment right before, when you press your fingers against their skin and feel how warm they are. How alive.
I crouched on the rooftop, staring down at the sleeping merchant through his bedroom window. Gareth Voss. Fat, rich, and according to my client, guilty of selling poisoned medicine to poor families. The kind of man who deserved what was coming.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
My hands shook as I pried open the window. Not from fear—I'd done this a hundred times. My hands shook because I was dying, and my body knew it.
I slipped inside, landing silent as smoke on the carpet. The merchant snored in his bed, one arm thrown over his face. Moonlight painted everything silver and gray. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked. Each second felt like a tiny hammer against my skull.
Do it fast, I thought. Get in, take what you need, get out.
I moved to his bedside. Up close, I could see the lines around his eyes, the gray in his beard. He looked like somebody's grandfather. My stomach twisted, but I pushed the feeling down deep where it couldn't stop me.
I needed this money. Needed it more than he needed those memories.
Pulling off my glove, I pressed my bare palm against his forehead.
The connection hit like jumping into frozen water.
His mind opened beneath my touch—a vast ocean of memories, feelings, secrets. I could feel everything he was: his pride in his business, his love for expensive wine, his fear of getting old. Deeper, darker things too. The way he'd watered down medicine to make more profit. The faces of children who'd died because of it. The guilt he buried under layers of excuses.
My soul—my broken, hungry, dying soul—reached out like a starving animal.
And I pulled.
The memories came tearing out of him in streams of ice and fire. They poured into me, filling the cracks in my soul like liquid metal. His fifth birthday party. His daughter's wedding. The first time he'd cheated a customer. The exact moment he'd decided money mattered more than lives. All of it became mine, tangling with my own memories until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began.
It felt like drowning and flying at the same time.
It felt like murder.
The merchant's eyes snapped open. For one heartbeat, we stared at each other—his eyes wide with terror, mine glowing with stolen light.
Then he started screaming.
"Who are you?" he shrieked, thrashing in his sheets. "Where—where am I? What's happening?"
I stumbled backward, breaking contact. My head spun with his memories, his emotions, his entire life crashing through my mind like a flood. I could taste his favorite foods. Feel his wife's hand in his. Remember his children's names—
Wait.
His children.
I watched in horror as he looked around his own bedroom like he'd never seen it before. "Where's my mother?" he gasped. "I want my mother! Who are you people?"
He was staring right at the portrait of his family on the wall—his wife, his three children, all smiling—and he didn't recognize them.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
I'd taken too much.
"Guards!" the merchant screamed. "Help! There's a monster in my room!"
Footsteps pounded up the stairs.
I ran for the window, my legs barely holding me up. The stolen memories made everything blurry, wrong. For a second I couldn't remember if I was Kier or Gareth, twenty-four or fifty-three, thief or merchant.
Then my survival instincts kicked in, sharp and clear.
I dove through the window as the bedroom door burst open. Guards shouted behind me. I hit the rooftop rolling, came up running, and didn't look back.
Behind me, the merchant's screams faded into broken sobbing. "I don't remember," he wailed. "Why can't I remember my babies' faces?"
I ran faster.
I made it back to my room in the Hollow Quarters just before sunrise. The slums spread out below my cracked window like a gray ocean of poverty and desperation. My people. My home.
I collapsed against the wall and lifted my shirt with shaking hands.
The black cracks had spread.
They crawled across my chest like broken glass, each line showing where my soul was splitting apart. Six months ago, they'd been small as spider webs. Now they covered my ribs, reaching toward my heart.
I pressed my fingers against the largest crack. It didn't hurt. That was the scary part—it should have hurt, but I couldn't feel anything there at all. Like that part of me was already dead.
Soul-Hollow, the street doctors called it. Born with an incomplete soul that slowly tears itself apart. Most people with my condition died before twenty.
I'd made it to twenty-four by stealing pieces of other people's souls to patch the holes.
By becoming a monster.
I counted the money my client had left in the dead drop. Forty silver marks. Enough for food, rent, and maybe one dose of medicine that would buy me another month.
One month of life, bought with a man's memories of his children.
Worth it, I told myself. Had to be worth it.
A knock at my door made me jump.
"Kier?" The voice was familiar, urgent. "Kier, open up. It's Riven."
I shoved the money under my mattress and opened the door. Riven stood in the hallway, and my heart sank. I'd known him since we were kids stealing bread together. He'd taught me everything—how to pick locks, scale walls, survive in the Hollow Quarters when you had nothing.
He was the closest thing to family I had left.
And right now, he looked terrified.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I messed up." His voice cracked. "Kier, I messed up bad. I tried to steal from a Dragonsouled noble and got caught. They're going to extract my soul in three days. Complete extraction—I'll be an empty shell. I'll be alive but not living."
The words hit me like a fist. "No. No, there has to be—"
"There's one chance." He grabbed my shoulders, his eyes wild. "One thing valuable enough to buy my freedom."
He pulled a folded paper from his jacket. When he opened it, I saw a map of the Sovereign Keep—the most protected building in the entire world.
"There's a dragon in the lowest vault," Riven said. "Vash'thar the Unbroken. He's been in magical sleep for eight hundred years. There's a gemstone in his skull worth a fortune."
I stared at him. "You want me to break into the Sovereign Keep and steal from a dragon."
"I want you to save my life."
The room felt too small suddenly. Too hot. The black cracks on my chest seemed to pulse with each heartbeat.
"Riven, that's—"
"I know it's impossible. But you're the best thief I know. And I…" His voice broke. "I raised you, Kier. After your mother died, I kept you alive. Please. I'm begging you. Three days. That's all I have."
I looked at my best friend—my only friend—and saw the naked fear in his eyes.
I thought about the merchant screaming for his mother, unable to remember his own children.
I thought about the black cracks spreading across my chest.
I thought about what three days meant. Seventy-two hours. Then Riven would be gone, really gone, in a way worse than death.
"Show me the map," I said.
Riven's face flooded with relief. He spread the map on my table, pointing at the lowest level. "The vault is here. I've got the guard schedules, the ward passwords, everything we need. We can do this. Together."
I studied the map, my mind already planning routes, timing, escape paths. It was suicide. Absolute suicide.
But what did that matter? I was dying anyway.
"When?" I asked.
"Tomorrow night. We don't have time to—"
A piece of paper slipped from between the map's folds and fluttered to the floor.
I picked it up before Riven could stop me.
It was a diagram. Medical, technical, covered in symbols I didn't understand. But I recognized the drawing in the center—a human figure with something dark and twisted where the soul should be.
My exact Soul-Hollow pattern. The cracks mapped out in perfect detail.
"What is this?" I asked slowly.
Riven's face went pale. "Kier, I can explain—"
"How long have you had a medical diagram of my dying soul, Riven?"
The silence stretched between us like a blade.
Then he smiled, and it was wrong. All wrong. Like a mask slipping to show something ancient and cold underneath.
"I've had it," Riven said quietly, "since I created your condition. When you were six years old."
The world stopped.
"What?"
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "But we needed you broken. We needed you desperate enough to consume a dragon's soul. And tomorrow night, when you touch Vash'thar…" His eyes gleamed with something that wasn't human. "You'll finally become the vessel we've been preparing for three thousand years."
My best friend. My family. My entire life.
All a lie.