The road to Blackspire Castle was paved with bones.
Not whole ones—those had long since been crushed into the stone—but pale fragments that glimmered faintly beneath the ash, reminders of what happened to those who arrived without invitation.
Elowen walked it anyway.
Her hands were bound, not tightly, but with enough care to suggest she was meant to arrive intact. The men escorting her rode ahead and behind, careful not to look at her too long. Humans learned quickly, in lands ruled by monsters, that attention could be mistaken for intent.
The castle rose from the mountains like a wound in the world. Black towers clawed at the sky, and heat bled from the stone itself, as if something immense slept beneath it.
Elowen felt it then.
A pressure behind her ribs. A warmth that was not fear.
She swallowed it down.
She was ordinary. She had always been ordinary. Born to a village that barely remembered her name, raised to be useful and quiet. Whatever this sensation was, it was nothing. It had to be.
The gates opened without a sound.
Inside, the air shimmered with heat and old magic. Demons watched from the walls—some horned, some winged, all silent. No chains bound them. They did not need them.
At the center of the great hall sat the ruler of this place.
Kael Draven did not rise.
He lounged upon a throne carved of dragon bone and black steel, one leg draped carelessly over the armrest, fingers tipped with rings resting against his jaw. His eyes—burning gold, unmistakably inhuman—lifted lazily to the humans who dared approach.
"She is the offering," one man said, voice shaking. "As agreed."
Kael's gaze slid to Elowen.
He paused.
Not because she was beautiful. She was not. Not because she was powerful. She felt like nothing at all.