The victory at Oakhaven was a spark in a very large, very dark room. By mid-morning, the village was a hive of grim activity. The thirty loyalists had grown to forty-five, but they were an army of shadows and rags.
Prince Valerius stood on a stump in the village square, his five-hundred-count aura still humming with the residue of Centurion Hax's life force. He was map-making in the dirt with the tip of a dagger.
"The Draksis invasion changes the geometry of this war," Valerius said, his voice carrying the weight of his new power. "If they've crossed the River Sunder, the Southern lowlands are already gone. Malakor has sold our borders to buy his throne. We can't fight a two-front war with forty men and a handful of pitchforks."
"Then we need the Old Blood," Captain Thorne said, rubbing his scarred jaw. "We need the Hermit of the Grey Peaks."
Sir Kaelen, who had been leaning against a charred fence post, stiffened. "The Hermit? You speak of Vesperas the Oath-Breaker. He was exiled for a reason, Thorne. He tried to unbind the Ledger. He's a heretic, not a savior."
"He's the only man who survived a Ledger-Burn," Elara countered, her voice sharp. "If Malakor's Ebon-Guard are as powerful as the scouts say, we need to know how to fight men whose counts exceed five thousand. Valerius, we have no choice."
Archibald sat nearby, sharpening his kitchen knife on a river stone. Every time the word "Ledger-Burn" was mentioned, the small heat in his chest—his count of 68—seemed to throb in sympathy. He felt... different. His eyes, once dull and tired, now picked up the minute vibrations of the wind in the leaves.
"We leave at noon," Valerius decided. "Archibald, pack the remaining salt pork. We're climbing."
The Grey Peaks were not merely mountains; they were the jagged teeth of the world, stained a permanent, ghostly ash color by volcanic dust and ancient magic. As the group ascended, the lush greens of the Oakhaven forest gave way to stunted, skeletal trees and air so thin it felt like swallowing needles.
Archibald struggled. His scrawny frame wasn't built for high-altitude trekking. He carried a heavy pack of supplies, his boots slipping on the loose shale.
"Keep moving, Scullery," Kaelen muttered as he stepped effortlessly over a crevice. The knight didn't even seem to be breathing hard; his 150-count Ledger provided a constant stream of metabolic reinforcement. "If you fall, don't expect us to fish you out of the gorge."
Archibald didn't respond. He was staring at a patch of snow up ahead. It looked... wrong. It wasn't white; it was a pale, bruised violet.
"Lord Valerius?" Archibald called out, his voice thin. "The snow. It's glowing."
The Prince halted. He knelt, touching the violet frost with a gloved hand. He swore softly. "Draksis Shadow-Magic. They aren't just invading the South. They've sent Stalkers into the Peaks to find the Hermit before we do."
"Shadow-Stalkers?" Julian asked, his face paling. "The ones who eat auras?"
"Precisely," Valerius said, drawing his golden blades. "They don't have counts of their own. They are 'Negative-Ledgers.' They hunt by sensing the heat of a stolen soul. Kaelen, Thorne—defensive perimeter. Elara, get the boy and Julian behind the rock-line."
The mountain went silent. The wind, which had been howling only moments before, died into a suffocating hush.
Then, the shadows moved.
They didn't come from the rocks; they rose out of the violet snow. The Stalkers were tall, thin creatures wrapped in tatters of black silk, their faces nothing but voids where features should be. They moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, like puppets on invisible strings.
One of the Stalkers turned its head toward the group. A low, vibrating hum filled the air, a sound that made Archibald's 68-count flare in agony. It was like a vacuum was trying to pull the life right out of his pores.
"Engage!" Valerius roared.
The battle on the narrow mountain pass was a nightmare of physics. The Stalkers didn't bleed; when Valerius's swords struck them, they erupted into clouds of black soot that reformed seconds later.
Archibald was shoved back against a sheer rock wall. He watched in horror as a Stalker bypassed Kaelen's guard, its long, smoky fingers reaching for the knight's violet aura. Kaelen let out a strangled cry as his light began to dim, his strength literalizing being inhaled by the creature.
Archibald looked around desperately. He had no weapon that could hurt a shadow. His frying pan sat strapped to his pack, useless. But his eyes caught something—a high, overhanging slab of ice directly above the Stalkers. It was held in place by a single, frost-cracked pillar of stone.
It's going to break, Archibald realized. Not because he was a scholar of geology, but because he saw a tiny, rhythmic drip of melt-water hitting a specific crack. It was the "loose tile" of the mountain.
He didn't have time to explain. He grabbed a heavy iron piton from his pack and a mallet.
"Archibald, get back!" Elara screamed as she swung her staff to ward off a shadow.
Archibald ignored her. He scrambled up a side-slope, his hands freezing as he gripped the jagged stone. He reached the base of the ice-pillar. He didn't need to destroy the whole thing; he just needed to nudge the vibration.
He struck the piton. Clang.
The sound echoed through the thin air. The Stalkers didn't react; they had no ears. But the ice did. The crack widened.
Archibald struck it again. CLANG.
A shudder ran through the mountain. A few pebbles tumbled down. Then, with the roar of a collapsing cathedral, the ten-ton slab of ice and shale broke free.
Archibald tried to jump back, but his foot caught in a root. He tumbled backward, sliding down the slope on his belly.
The avalanche didn't hit the Prince or the knights. It fell with surgical precision, burying the three Shadow-Stalkers under a tomb of a thousand tons of mountain. The black soot was crushed into the earth, unable to reform under that much physical pressure.
The silence returned, heavier than before.
Valerius stood there, his swords still glowing, looking at the massive pile of debris that had just ended a fight they were losing. He looked up at the slope.
Archibald was hanging upside down, his cloak caught on a gnarled pine branch, swinging gently over a three-hundred-foot drop.
"I... I think I'm stuck," Archibald squeaked.
Sir Kaelen stared at the avalanche, then at the swinging boy. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated disbelief. "That was... that was impossible. The structural resonance required to trigger that specific shelf..."
"He hit it with a hammer, Kaelen," Thorne said, a grin breaking through his beard. "The lad hit the mountain with a hammer and won."
Valerius climbed up and hauled Archibald back onto solid ground. The Prince didn't say anything for a long moment. He just gripped Archibald's shoulder. The heat from the Prince's 500-count felt different now—less like a threat and more like a greeting.
"We move fast now," Valerius said. "The sound of that collapse will have alerted every Draksis scout for ten miles. And if the Hermit is still alive, he'll be waiting for us."
As they continued the climb, Archibald noticed something. The violet snow he had touched earlier? It hadn't just melted. It had left a faint, pulsing mark on his palm. A mark that looked suspiciously like a zero... with a crack running through the middle.
The air at the summit didn't just feel thin; it felt old.
They reached a plateau where the wind died into an eerie, pressurized silence. In the center of the frost-shattered rock stood a structure that looked less like a house and more like a tomb. It was a circular spire of black basalt, etched with thousands of names that had been worn smooth by centuries of ice.
"The Monastery of the Unbound," Elara whispered, her breath blooming in a thick white cloud.
Standing before the heavy stone doors was a man who seemed to be carved from the mountain itself. He wore no furs, only a tattered robe of hemp. His skin was the color of a bruise, and his eyes were a milky, sightless white. But it wasn't his appearance that stopped the group in their tracks—it was his aura.
Or rather, the lack of it.
In a world where every living thing hummed with the vibration of the Grim Ledger, this man was a hole in reality. He had no red mist. No violet flicker. He was a perfect, terrifying absolute zero.
"Vesperas," Prince Valerius said, stepping forward, his golden swords sheathed but his 500-count aura flared as a sign of respect. "I am Valerius of Aethelgard. I seek the wisdom of the Oath-Breaker."
The blind man didn't move. "You bring the scent of fresh blood and the arrogance of a King," Vesperas rumbled. His voice didn't come from his throat; it seemed to vibrate out of the very stone beneath their feet. "Your Ledger is heavy with the life of a Centurion, boy. But here, your five hundred is as meaningless as a single grain of sand in a desert."
"We are hunted," Sir Kaelen barked, his hand on his hilt. "The Ebon-Guard are coming, and the Draksis have crossed the Sunder. We don't have time for riddles, Hermit."
Vesperas turned his blind gaze toward Kaelen. A sudden, invisible pressure slammed into the knight, buckling his knees. It wasn't the weight of a Kill Count; it was the weight of absence.
"Patience is the only count that matters in the Grey Peaks, Sir Knight," Vesperas said. Then, his head tilted. He sniffed the air, and his milk-white eyes fixed unerringly on Archibald. "But why... why have you brought a Void-Anchor to my door?"
Archibald shivered, instinctively hiding his soot-stained hands behind his back. "I'm... I'm just a servant, sir."
"Come here, boy," the Hermit commanded.
Valerius looked at Archibald and nodded. Slowly, the scrawny scullery boy walked toward the man who had no soul-weight. Vesperas reached out a gnarled, frozen hand and grabbed Archibald's palm—the one marked by the violet frost of the Shadow-Stalkers.
The Hermit froze. His sightless eyes widened.
"Luck," Vesperas whispered. "That is what they call it, isn't it? When the world bends to keep you breathing? When the chimney falls and the ice breaks?"
"How do you know that?" Archibald stammered.
"Because the Ledger is a cage!" Vesperas suddenly roared, his voice cracking the silence. "The rest of them—the Prince, the Knight, the General—they are all slaves to the tally. They take a life, they grow stronger, but they become predictable. The world knows where they are. The world knows how they will strike."
Vesperas leaned in close, his cold breath smelling of ozone. "But you... you are a Null. Your Ledger didn't just record that knight you killed in the kitchen. It rejected it. That '68' you feel in your chest isn't power—it's a leak. You are a glitch in the design."
The Hermit turned to Valerius. "You want to know how to defeat the Ebon-Guard? You cannot out-slaughter them. Malakor's men have counts in the thousands; they are more mist than flesh. To kill a god of the Ledger, you need a weapon that doesn't play by the rules of the Ledger."
"You mean Archibald?" Elara asked, her voice trembling.
"I mean the boy's 'Luck' is actually his soul subconsciously screaming at reality to change," Vesperas said. "But luck has a price. Every time the world bends for him, it builds a debt. A Karmic Backlash. If he keeps 'tripping' into victory, eventually the mountain won't just fall on his enemies—it will fall on him."
Archibald looked at the violet mark on his hand. It was pulsing faster now, a tiny, jagged crack in the skin. "How do I stop it?"
"You don't stop it," Vesperas said, a grim smile touching his lips. "You learn to aim it. You learn to be the disaster that Malakor never saw coming."
Suddenly, a horn blast echoed from the slopes below. It was a low, mournful sound that felt like a funeral dirge.
"They're here," Captain Thorne shouted, pointing down the pass.
Emerging from the mist were three figures. They didn't walk; they glided. They were draped in armor made of blackened bone, and their auras were so massive they blotted out the light of the setting sun. These weren't soldiers. They were the Ebon-Guard.
Each one carried a count of five thousand.
"Three of them," Kaelen whispered, his face turning the color of the snow. "Against forty of us. We're dead."
"Not yet," Vesperas said, stepping back toward his monastery doors. "Prince, if you want your kingdom back, you must hold the pass for one hour. I must take the boy inside to 'unseal' the debt. If I fail, the backlash will erase this entire peak from the map."
Valerius drew his golden blades, his 500-count aura flaring to its absolute limit, a tiny candle against the approaching darkness of the Ebon-Guard. He looked at Archibald one last time.
"Go," the Prince said. "And Archibald... for once in your life, try not to be lucky. Try to be dangerous."
Archibald followed the Hermit into the darkness of the basalt spire, the heavy stone doors slamming shut behind them. Outside, the first of the Ebon-Guard raised a sword of black glass, and the slaughter began.