As far as birthdays go, this would rank pretty low. Charlie Hobbs just turned 20 as he was being pushed to the front of the line of pikes at the wall of his small home settlement of Guinmill.
Yeah. That was me. Charlie.
My knuckles bled white around the splintered ash-wood shaft of a militia spear. Rain turned the dirt beneath my boots into a slick, treacherous paste, smelling strongly of copper and turned earth. A heavy hand slammed into my shoulder blade, nearly sending my face into the sharpened stakes of our makeshift barricade.
"Hold the brace, boy!" Miller barked. Miller's breath hit my neck, hot and reeking of sour ale and panic. "You drop that point, we all die."
"I know," I rasped. My throat felt like it was coated in sand.
To my left, Elian leaned against the damp timber of the palisade, his chest heaving. He held a rusted pitchfork. The tines rattled against the wooden planks.
"They're not stopping," Elian stammered, his voice cracking on the last syllable. "The drums—they've been going since midnight."
"Shut up and plant your feet," Miller snapped.
I didn't tell Elian to quiet down. He was right. Beyond the ten-foot wall of lashed pine logs, the mountain basin echoed with a chaotic, rhythmic pounding. It wasn't just drums. It was the guttural, overlapping roars of the horde, the snapping of branches in the forest edge, and the heavy, synchronized thud of hundreds of boots tearing up the valley floor.
Guinmill wasn't a fortress. We were a logging camp that grew too big, tucked into a forgotten crease of the northern peaks. We had mud walls, a dozen actual guards who had died in the first hour of the raid, and a terrified mob of farmers holding sharpened sticks.
A massive impact shook the palisade.
The shockwave traveled through the damp wood, vibrating up my boots and into my teeth. Dust and pulverized bark rained down on my shoulders. A sickening crack echoed down the line, followed by a chorus of panicked shouts from the men twenty yards to our right.
"Brace!" Miller roared, stepping into my back, using his weight to pin me against the timber.
Another impact. This one hit directly in front of us. The pine log I was leaning against buckled inward. A rusted iron spike holding the lashings together snapped with a sound like a musket firing, pinging off the rocks behind us.
Through the widening gap between the logs, a stench rolled over me—wet fur, spoiled meat, and something acidic that burned the inside of my nose.
A hand shoved through the gap. It wasn't human. Thick, gray skin stretched over misshapen knuckles, ending in jagged, dirt-caked talons. It grabbed the edge of the timber and ripped outward. The wood groaned, splitting down the grain.
"Thrust!" Miller yelled, shoving me forward.
My muscles acted on pure, unthinking terror. I drove the heavy pike forward. The iron tip scraped against the palisade gap and sank into something soft on the other side. A wet, tearing sound followed. The shock of the impact traveled down the ash shaft, jarring my shoulders.
A shriek tore through the night, high-pitched and completely alien. The gray hand released the timber, flailing wildly. Warm, thick liquid sprayed through the gap, coating the front of my tunic and the side of my face. It smelled like rusted iron and bile.
I tried to pull the pike back. It wouldn't budge.
"I'm stuck," I grunted, planting a boot against the wall and yanking. The shaft slicked with blood, my hands sliding down the wood. "Miller, it's caught in bone—"
Before Miller could answer, the top of the palisade above us exploded.
A beast vaulted over the barricade. It hit the mud three feet in front of Elian, a mass of wiry muscle, coarse black hair, and elongated limbs. Its face was a nightmare of protruding teeth and blind, milky eyes. It scrambled upright, claws gouging deep trenches in the mud.
Elian froze. His pitchfork dipped.
"Elian, move!" I screamed, abandoning my stuck pike. I scrambled backward in the mud, my hands desperately searching for a rock, a dropped blade, anything.
The creature lunged. It didn't roar; it just released a hollow, clicking hiss as it tackled Elian to the ground. Elian's scream was cut short by a wet crunch.
Miller swung a heavy woodcutter's axe, burying the wedge of steel into the beast's spine. The creature thrashed, spinning violently. The backswing caught Miller in the chest, lifting the older man off his feet and throwing him into the mud.
The line was breaking. All down the wall, beasts poured over the top, dropping into the militia like wolves into a sheep pen. The screams of my neighbors mingled with the tearing of flesh and the relentless, driving rain.
I scrambled to my feet, slipping in the blood-slicked mud. The creature that had dropped Elian pulled itself free from the pitchfork, the axe still lodged in its back. It snapped its head toward me. Black blood dripped from its jaws.
I backed up, my heels hitting the stone foundation of the village well. I was unarmed. I was cornered. The beast coiled its muscle, the milky eyes locking onto my chest.
It sprang.
I threw my arms up to cover my face, bracing for the teeth, the tearing, the end of twenty very unremarkable years.
The beast's jaw snapped shut on empty air.
The freezing mud, the driving rain, the stench of Miller's spilled blood—all of it vanished in the space between a heartbeat and a breath. A violent vacuum ripped the scream right out of my throat. The roar of the horde cut off into absolute, ringing silence. The pressure shift popped my eardrums, driving a spike of pain through my skull, and gravity released its hold on me.
I slammed hard onto baked, cracked earth. Jagged rock shredded the sleeves of my tunic and tore into my forearms. I rolled, gasping for air, but the oxygen here burned. It tasted like scorched copper and lightning.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, coughing violently. White ash coated my tongue. The mountain basin and the timber walls of Guinmill were gone. I was at the bottom of a massive, sloping crater. The ground beneath my palms was fused into smooth, dark glass in places, radiating a blistering heat that baked the sweat on my neck.
A concussive blast hit my chest like a physical wall, throwing me onto my back.
Purple light strobed across the sky. I scrambled backward, my boots finding no purchase on the glassy slope, my eyes watering from the acrid smoke.
Fifty yards away, in the deepest center of the impact zone, the air warped. Two figures stood locked in a clash that tore the stone apart beneath their feet.
One was a nightmare made physical. It towered nine feet tall, plated in jagged, obsidian-like armor that leaked violet smoke from glowing fissures. It held a massive, serrated blade that hummed with a sick, low vibration. The heat rolling off the creature smelled like sulfur and burning marrow.
The demon swung the weapon. The air screamed.
The second figure parried. A shockwave of golden light fractured outward, shattering the glass earth into a million razors. The man holding the line dropped to one knee, the stone buckling under the force of the block. He leaned heavily against an ornate, glowing longsword, his chest heaving under a ruined silver cuirass.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, suppressing a cough.
The man forced the demon's blade back and turned his head, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the ash.
My breath stopped in my chest.
My own face stared back at me. It was an exact mirror. He had the same sharp jawline, the same narrow eyes, even the slightly crooked bridge of his nose where I'd taken a stone as a kid. Every contour matched, heavily lined with an exhaustion that looked bone-deep. The only difference was the hair clinging to his sweat-slicked forehead—it was pitch black, a stark void against my own dirt-blond mop.
He didn't look surprised to see me shivering in the dirt. His eyes, a striking, luminescent silver, locked onto mine with cold, calculating resignation.
"You tear the fabric of the weave for this, Amore?" The demon's voice didn't travel through the air; it vibrated directly into my teeth, a grating, multi-layered rasp that made my stomach churn. "A mortal rat?"
The man—Amore—pushed himself upright. His silver armor crumbled at the edges, turning to ash. Behind the demon, the space began to tear. A jagged, swirling rupture tore through the air, completely devoid of light. A crushing gravitational pull dragged the loose rocks and ash toward the tear.
"It's..." Amore coughed, clutching his ribs. "It's enough."
The demon dug its clawed feet into the bedrock, fighting the pull of the void behind it. "You seal us both, you fool! Your realm burns without its Prince."
"I know." Amore didn't look at the creature. He kept his silver eyes pinned to me. He raised his left hand.
The air between us compressed. An invisible force yanked me forward, dragging me by my collar across the jagged ground. I thrashed, kicking my boots, but I couldn't break the current. I skidded to a halt mere feet from the prince.
Up close, he smelled like ozone and old blood.
"What—" My voice was a dry, pathetic croak. "Who are—"
"I am sorry," Amore interrupted. His voice was raw, empty of everything except duty. "For what I am about to do to you."
He reached out and grabbed the front of my tunic.
Agony. Absolute, unadulterated agony.
Liquid fire poured from his grip directly into my sternum. My back arched involuntarily. Every nerve in my body lit up, screaming as a pressurized ocean of energy forced its way into a vessel built for puddles. My veins bulged against my skin, glowing a faint, terrifying silver. I tried to scream, but my lungs were paralyzed. The heat cooked me from the inside out, burning away the cold rain of Guinmill, replacing my blood with molten iron.
The demon roared, a sound of pure, unhinged fury, as the black vortex behind it expanded. The creature lunged, its serrated blade whistling toward Amore's neck.
Amore released my tunic. The connection snapped. I collapsed to the dirt, convulsing, gasping for air that felt like broken glass.
The gravitational pull of the tear grabbed Amore. He didn't fight it. He let the vortex drag him backward, colliding with the charging demon. The two intertwined, light and dark, as the tear consumed them.
Amore's silver eyes met mine one last time before the void took him.
The tear snapped shut with a thunderclap that shattered the remaining stone in the crater. A shockwave of displaced air slammed my skull into the ground. White light flashed behind my eyelids. The roaring in my ears faded, swallowed by the overwhelming, burning weight expanding in my chest.
Then, the darkness rushed in, pulling me under.