The hounds came at midnight.
Three of them, larger than any wolf should be, their fur matted with blood and filth from countless hunts, their eyes burning with unholy red light that seemed to see through flesh, to see the blood beneath. They moved with unnatural silence, their paws making no sound on the mud, as if they walked between worlds, as if the rules of this world didn't apply to them.
Thorne stood at the tavern door, his borrowed sword in hand—a weapon he had taken from a dead inquisitor three days ago, when he had killed his first hunter since the wound. The wound in his side throbbed with every heartbeat, a constant reminder of his weakness, of the poison working its way through his body, but he ignored it. Pain was an old friend, a companion he had learned to live with, to fight through, to use rather than be used by.
"Stay inside," he told Lyra without turning around, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Lock the door. Bar it. Whatever it takes to keep them out. Don't open it until I say so, no matter what you hear."
"You can't fight them alone," Lyra said from behind him, her voice tight with fear, with the sight of death shadows that coiled around Thorne like snakes, showing her three paths he could take tonight. "You're wounded. The poison's still in your blood. If they bite you, if their claws tear you..."
"I've fought worse," Thorne said, and there was truth in his words. He had fought inquisitors, had fought paladins, had fought things that shouldn't exist, things that defied reason, that defied life itself. "With worse wounds. With less hope."
The first hound sprang, its muscles coiling like springs, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow a man's head, its eyes fixed on Thorne with a hunger that went beyond food, beyond blood. It wanted death, wanted to end, wanted to feed the darkness that had created it.
Thorne didn't dodge. He couldn't—his body was too slow, the wound too deep, the poison too heavy in his veins. Instead, he met the creature mid-air, sword flashing in the moonlight, a desperate strike that had no skill behind it, only desperation, only the will to survive.
Steel met supernatural flesh, and the sword bit into the hound's shoulder, sinking deep, finding purchase in meat that should have been too tough to penetrate. Black blood sprayed across Thorne's face, hot and foul, carrying the scent of decay, of death, of something that had died long ago and refused to stay dead. The creature howled—not in pain, but in rage, in fury that its prey had dared to fight back—and knocked Thorne backward, sending him crashing into the mud with enough force to drive the breath from his lungs.
Thorne rolled to his feet, his movements desperate, clumsy, but the second hound was already on him, its jaws snapping at his throat, its teeth seeking the life that flowed beneath his skin. He barely brought his sword up in time, the blade catching in the creature's teeth, metal screeching against bone, a sound that made his teeth ache.
He was going to die here. In the mud of a forgotten village, torn apart by Church hounds, his blood feeding the darkness that had created them. The poison would finish what the hounds started, and he would become one of them, another dead thing serving the Church, another weapon in their war against magic, against life itself.
Then something inside him snapped.
Not pain. Not fear. Something older. Something that had been slumbering in his blood for twenty-six years, waiting for this moment, waiting for the moment when death was close enough, when the need was great enough, to wake it up.
Fire.
Thorne's right eye blazed with golden light, and for a moment, the night was as bright as day, illuminated by the dragon fire that burned in his veins. The wound in his side stopped hurting—instead, it began to burn, but not with pain. With power. With the heat of transformation, with the fire that was changing him, cell by cell, drop of blood by drop of blood.
Black flames erupted from his skin, wrapping around his body like armor, like a second skin made of fire, of darkness, of power that shouldn't exist in a human body. The hound froze, sensing something it had never encountered before, something that shouldn't exist, something that made its death-hunger seem small, insignificant.
Thorne swung his sword, and this time, black fire trailed behind the blade, leaving burning lines in the air, lines that lingered like scars on the night itself. The sword cut through the hound's neck as if through smoke, as if flesh and bone meant nothing to dragon fire, and the creature's head separated from its body, black flames consuming it instantly, reducing it to ash before it could hit the ground.
The remaining two hounds backed away, whining, their tails between their legs, their ears flat against their skulls. For the first time in their unnatural lives, they felt fear. Real fear. The fear of prey that had met a predator.
Thorne took a step forward, and the black flames around him intensified, growing hotter, brighter, more real. He could feel the dragon blood awakening, ancient power flooding through his veins, healing his wound, strengthening his body, changing him into something that could stand against the darkness and not fall.
"Come," he said, and his voice had changed—deeper, layered with something inhuman, with something that spoke from a throat that shouldn't exist in a human body. "Come and meet your death."
The hounds turned and fled, abandoning the hunt, abandoning the Church's orders, abandoning everything but the need to survive, to put distance between themselves and the fire that had burned their brother.
Thorne stood in the rain, black fire still burning around him, and watched them go, watched them disappear into the darkness, watched them become nothing but shadows in the night. Then the flames died, fading like embers, and he collapsed to his knees, exhausted in a way that went beyond physical tiredness, in a way that touched his soul.
The tavern door opened behind him, and Lyra ran out, wrapping her arms around him before he could fall, holding him up when his body wanted nothing but to rest, to surrender to the mud, to the darkness.
"I saw," she whispered, her voice trembling with something that went beyond fear, beyond awe. "I saw the fire. It's real. The dragon blood. It's real."
Thorne looked up at her, his right eye still glowing faintly gold, the last ember of the fire that had burned the hound, that had changed him forever. "Yes," he said, and there was weight in the word, weight that went beyond simple confirmation. "It's real. And now they know it too."
"Who?" Lyra asked, her mind racing with implications she didn't want to face. "Who sent the hounds?"
"The Church," Thorne said, and the name was poison on his tongue, was the taste of ash in his mouth. "The Church of Holy Light. And they won't stop with hounds. Next time, they'll come with inquisitors. With paladins. With armies. They'll burn this village, and every village between here and wherever I run. They'll never stop."
He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't hold him, his body too exhausted, the transformation too recent, the change too profound.
"We have to leave," he said, forcing the words out through a throat that wanted to close, that wanted to surrender to sleep. "Tonight. Before dawn. Before they send something worse than hounds."
Lyra helped him up, supporting his weight, her small frame surprising him with its strength. "Where will we go?"
"North," Thorne said, looking toward the dark horizon, toward the frozen wastelands where his life had begun, where the Plague had begun, where everything had begun. "To the frozen wastelands. To where the dragon blood came from. To where the Iron Plague began."
Lyra looked at him, purple eyes searching his face, seeing the determination there, the acceptance of a path that led only to darkness, to death, to the end of everything. "You think you can stop it?"
Thorne laughed weakly, a sound that held no humor, only the weight of too many years running, too many deaths seen, too much loss carried. "I don't know. But I have to try. Because if I don't, there won't be anything left to save. The Plague will consume everything, and the Church will burn what remains, and the darkness will have won. And I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen."
And Lyra heard something in his words, something that went beyond determination, beyond courage. She heard the voice of someone who had seen the end, who had looked into the darkness and refused to look away, who had accepted that death was coming and had decided to meet it standing.