Chapter 1
Unfinished
A single corpse was left behind. Two armies, marching more or less together, left it behind to rot. Palos, the Lord of Lightbridge, his head crushed to a bloody smear, hadn’t been buried. Captain Holte had let the thought cross his mind once or twice, but it hadn’t been worth it in the end. The air was dry, the sun was hot, and the men were restless. There hadn’t been the time for a proper burial, and Holte wasn’t sure the man had deserved one. But no, that wasn’t exactly true. Holte knew there was plenty of time. After all, burying a solitary body didn’t take much time with so many able backs available for labor. The crows would come, and they would feast on Palos’ broken flesh until there wasn’t anything left but bone and bits of fine-spun clothing.
Shaking his head, Holte had turned from the sight of his lord’s rotting body.
“A bastard of a man,” one of Hademar’s soldiers had said upon viewing the corpse just moments before. Holte knew the judgement had been correct. That same resentment was shared among all the men like a dark storm cloud misting their minds. With Palos dead, the cloud hadn’t dissipated at all, though perhaps it had changed. When they returned to the west, King Gottfried might handle the death of a lord and member of his court much differently than Hademar. In the back of his mind Holte wondered if returning to his home would be just a long march to his own grave.
Other ideas soon came to take up residence in his thoughts as he marched. Some of them were useless, others intriguing, but either way they helped to pass the long hours in silence.
*****
When the tomb of The Shadow King was three days behind them, Alster and Elsey felt a bit lost amidst the host of soldiers travelling on either side. Hademar’s small force had taken quite well to the two, but the royal force from Karrheim, clean shaven and brightly arrayed in blue and white, kept their distance, a bit of trepidation on their faces whenever he caught a glimpse of Alster. He was, more than anything, the boy who had slain their lord. Regardless of the fear between them, the two groups marched at a steady pace, both eager to return to the west, though for far different reasons.
It was close to dusk when the combined force made it out of the Red Mountains and back onto flat ground. Hademar’s soldiers remained half a mile or so behind the contingent commanded by Captain Holte, their older legs slow and tired on the hard-packed red soil. The men knew their epic campaign had come to a conclusion, and the weight of all their trials was finally catching up to them.
Somehow unfazed by the events at the tomb, King Hademar bore the journey with a uniquely positive demeanor—perhaps even a newfound spring in his step. He didn’t talk to many people as he marched or rode his horse, though there were always words on his lips, almost all of them directed toward his deceased wife several hundred miles away. When the wind shifted just right, everyone in the column could hear his exclamations, though no one could truly say they understood. Most only shook their heads. Alster wondered if the mad king would succeed and bring his wife back from the dead. Regardless of what would transpire, he hoped more than anything that the man’s mind would eventually find peace.
“Do you miss any of it?” Elsey asked quietly from Alster’s side as the sun made its slow descent, casting long shadows behind them toward the Red Mountains.
“My father?” Alster had been focused on Hademar, and he had to remind himself of what Elsey was probably referring to.
“No,” Elsey was quick to correct. “Just your old life. Do you miss the estate? Who you used to be?”
Alster had to think for a long moment before answering. His mind reeled with memories, and most of them were less than enjoyable. “I don’t think so,” he finally said.
“I do.”
“Who do you think you are?” Alster asked with a bit of apprehension. He could see something playing behind Elsey’s eyes in the waning light, and he had no idea what it was. Anger? Longing? Confusion? Whatever it was, it scared him. Elsey was always the strong one, the confident one. Never him.
“I… killed someone,” she quietly answered. “I know it wasn’t murder, not like that, but… I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“El—”
“How do you get it out of your head?” she asked all at once, meeting Alster’s gaze with an expression so full of pain it made him wince.
“You just have to stop thinking about it,” was all Alster could say. In truth, he hadn’t thought much about the patricide he had so willingly committed. Killing Palos had been a moment of release, one that had brought a palpable rush of joy, not something he had grown to regret. But he knew Rai’s death was different. He hadn’t seen it happen, but he knew.
“I can’t stop,” Elsey murmured. “Whenever I close my eyes, I see Rai’s frozen body next to the ocean.” Her eyes shut tight, she took a moment to collect herself before pressing on. “You killed your own father, and you keep going as though nothing has happened.”
Alster shook his head. “There’s nothing you can do about it,” he told her. “Rai is dead, and it really doesn’t matter how. He could have frozen to death just as easily as you pushed him. It doesn’t matter.” To himself, Alster began to silently wonder if he would ever grow to regret what he had done. It had only been a few days. Perhaps in time the weight of it would crush him.
“I’m a killer. And that’s exactly what someone would expect from a shadowlith…” Elsey’s voice trailed off as Ingvar approached from behind, walking steadily with his horse’s reins in his hands.
“You’ll be off to Mournstead?” the old lieutenant asked. His beard still had a bit of blood crusted in the fibers.
“To find a soul prison, whatever that is,” Alster responded. “Do you know what one looks like?”
Ingvar shook his head. “I have no idea, truth be told. But I’ve spoken to the king about you two, and I’d like to accompany you to Mournstead, if you’d have me along.”
“Why would you want to go there?” Alster asked.
“I suppose for many of the same reasons you two want to go,” Ingvar said with a long sigh. “Vecnos needs another savior, or it will soon enough. I don’t think that person will be me, but I’d like to help any way I can.”
“The last person who tried to help us is dead now,” Elsey cut in.
Ingvar halted a moment to regard her, looking for some indication that her words had been meant as a joke or something else. When all he found was hostility spread across the young woman’s face, he turned back to Alster. “I’m aware of the risks,” he said with determination.
“Then you’re free to come with us, I suppose,” Alster said. “You’ve been to Mournstead, haven’t you?”
“I have,” Ingvar answered with a nod.
“What’s it like?”
Ingvar thought for a moment before responding. “Dark. Everything there is dark and dreary. This… haze,” he mused, gesturing to the specks of black clinging to the air all around them, “it’s everywhere in Mournstead. Shadows envelope the city, and even in the brightest hour of morning, it still feels like the world is dead. We spent several days in and near the place after returning from Nevansk, and every hour brought a little erosion to the edges of my mind. I could feel myself slipping away. The haze certainly didn’t do any King Hademar any favors.”
Alster didn’t realize he had stopped walking, so caught up in Ingvar’s retelling as he was. “You’d willingly return?” he asked, taking a few quick steps to get back in line with the other two.
“Vecnos is my home,” Ingvar declared. “All of it. The east and the west are all Vecnos, and everything will fall apart if The Shadow King returns. I swore an oath to defend this country. In the past, that meant duty to my king. Now, my oath means the preservation of the people on both sides of the rift. I can better serve that oath with you two in Mournstead than I can by returning to the west.”
“Do you think we can save them all?” Alster asked. The moment the words left his mouth, he suddenly dreaded what the answer might be.
“I don’t know, Alster,” the old man conceded. He brushed a hand through his tangled beard.
Alster looked north toward Mournstead. “All I wanted to do was find Alistair’s tomb. I never asked to save the world. I just wanted to see the tomb and know that it was real. I wanted to have a past I could believe in. Now I’ve doomed us all. I’m going to die in the east. An orphan.”
Almost out of nowhere, Ingvar started to laugh. He slapped Alster on the back with a meaty hand. “With all that armor, you don’t have anything to worry about, kid.”
“Besides,” Elsey added, “you’re a Lightbridge. Saving the world from abominations like me is kind of your thing, right?”
*****
When night fell, Alster’s legs ached. He hadn’t ridden his stolen horse much, opting instead to test the strength of his newly forged limbs, and a bit of his old sadness crept back into his mind like a long-lost friend’s greeting after several seasons away. Alster rubbed the muscle along the sides of his legs, and they panged in response to his touch. “Still there,” he told the pain.
He smacked his leg hard with a nearby rock, and his left thigh flared briefly with a hint of Alistair’s armor, preventing the new pain from being added to the ever-present soreness. “Still there,” he said a second time. The budding smile on his face continued to grow as he hit himself a second time, again eliciting a flare of dull red that blocked the blow.
Across the sputtering campfire, Elsey watched Alster’s movements with one eye finding light from the side of her thin blanket. Deep down, she feared everything about Mournstead. Especially when she thought about entering the city herself, she found her mind lurking closer and closer to Alster’s armor. She knew he would protect her if anything happened, there wasn’t the slightest doubt in her mind of his loyalty and friendship, but his wondrous armor was useless against the turmoil swirling through her thoughts from within.
*****
After several more days of marching farther and farther from the towering Red Mountains, the time came for Alster, Elsey, and Ingvar to turn north while the rest of the men continued west toward the Rift and their homes. The three of them each had a horse, and Ingvar’s steed was laden with supplies, but none of it did much to relieve the unease of watching the column continue on without them.
“You’re sure about coming with us?” Alster asked from the back of his stolen horse. Even though he had ridden the animal for so long, he still felt a sense of dishonor toward its origins and regarded it as stolen.
Ingvar nodded. “We shall do what is best for the realm,” he replied. When he spoke of such lofty ideals and higher purposes, Alster couldn’t help but imagine him as a knight clad in armor flying Alistair the Fourth’s glittering banner.
Even more, Alster believed the man’s conviction. He saw a fire in Ingvar’s eyes, a passion he had never seen in anyone before, and it managed to push most of the doubt from his mind. Most of it, but certainly not all.
Not far away, King Hademar sat on the back of his own horse amidst a retinue of his retainers. Beyond them, the commingled force waited for the command to set off once more. “I’ll miss you, my friend,” the mad king called to his closest companion.
Ingvar bowed his head and placed a hand over his heart. “So long as I take breath, you have my sword, my liege,” he said solemnly. “I only leave with your permission, and when my task is finished, I will return to your side once more.”
Hademar smirked, an expression that struck Alster as odd for the somber occasion. “I have no doubts concerning your loyalty, Ingvar,” the king said, his eyes wandering.
“Thank you, sir.”
“And when Petra is safely back in my arms, we shall dine together in Whitecliff!” King Hademar added cheerfully. He turned his horse from the three, not waiting for anything more, and trotted off toward his men.
“Well,” Ingvar began, “shall we?”
“How far is Mournstead?” Elsey asked. The morning wind was strong, and it whipped her long hair around her mouth as she spoke.
Ingvar tightened his grip on his reins. “Two weeks, maybe less if we move quickly,” he answered.
The two turned to their right, to the north, almost in unison, and Alster thought he caught a glimpse of bright red in his friend’s otherwise deep crimson hair. He thought of his own eyes, of what Elsey had said about them, wondering if The Shadow King’s tomb had changed them both somehow. He wondered if the people in Mournstead looked like him. He knew most of them would share Rai’s features and accent, but he worried he would appear too much the outcast. If they thought he was a spy, there was still more than enough bad blood between east and west to lead to trouble.
Urging his horse forward, Alster had to stifle a laugh. All his life he had been an outcast, a crippled son of a noble lord. Trying to conjure up methods for blending in was a completely foreign concept, and one that struck him as nothing short of comical. Still, he knew that his eyes, should they ever catch the sun just right to glint with red, would give him away as a shadowlith, or whatever it truly was that he had become.
As the three rode northward, Alster found his right hand instinctively drifting toward the place on his belt where he used to keep Alistair’s dagger: the Umbral Blade. Something he had once thought to only exist in legends. The weapon’s absence sent an unsettling chill through Alster’s spine that he could not shake. Part of him felt like giving the blade over to its original possessor had been a mistake. He hoped desperately that he would not need to fight against shades once more, though he knew he was foolish. Mournstead was the epicenter of shadow magic. He would ride into its pitch-black heart before long, and no matter where he had chosen to go since leaving the estate, shades had always found him.
Mournstead would be no exception.
Chapter 2
Refuge
It only took eight days for Alster, Elsey, and Ingvar to reach the outermost limits of Mournstead. They hadn’t seen any signs of human life along the way, and the utter absence of civilization had been unnerving to all three. The landscape south of the city was almost exclusively barren, though the empty husks of dead vegetation sprang up in occasional bursts, breaking the bleak monotony of the trek with dry, black fingers like rotten hands pointing into the hazy sky.
When they had still been two days from the farthest reaches of life, Alster had noticed the thickness hanging about the air. His breathing had become shallower, and he had needed to spit globs of blackened saliva from his mouth every few hours as the suspended particulate had found its way to his mouth. With a bit of his shirt lifted up to cover his lips, he had managed to keep most of the darkness from entering his body, and for that he was thankful. The black hanging in the air had a subtle, foul taste that he couldn’t quite describe. Though he had never been poisoned, he likened it in his mind to willfully inhaling toxic particles. The more he considered it poison, the more his body fought to make him spit it out, but ingesting the air was unavoidable. The closer he travelled to Mournstead, the worse it became, and the more he wanted to turn back.
“There,” Ingvar announced, lifting a hand to indicate the single building interrupting the otherwise perfectly unbroken horizon. They had officially arrived at Mournstead.
“Does anyone live there?” Alster asked.
Ingvar nodded. “Almost certainly,” he said. “Look around you. A lot of the east used to be inhabited with cities, farms, villages, and everything you have back in the west. Then, as the legends go, everyone moved to Mournstead as the years went by. They abandoned their homes and their farms, and the structures themselves fell apart. If anything is still standing, it likely means someone lives there currently, or else it would be gone to time as well.” He swatted at a particularly dark patch of haze lingering near his face. “Maybe whatever is in the air has something to do with it.”
“How safe is it to breathe?” Elsey asked from the man’s right. She had her shirt pulled up to her mouth as well.
Ingvar let out a single, sharp laugh. “Probably not at all,” he admitted. “But we don’t have much of a choice, do we?”
“Do people in the city wear anything over their faces?” Alster wondered.
“Not that I ever saw,” Ingvar answered. “Maybe it kills them, maybe it doesn’t. But either way, I’ve never seen someone trying to actively avoid it.” Unlike Alster and Elsey, Ingvar had not fashioned any kind of mask for himself, though he still had to lean over in his saddle to spit just as often as they did.
Alster saw more and more buildings as they drew nearer to Mournstead. Each one they passed was decrepit and barely standing, showing extensive signs of repair as though each and every day was a constant struggle to keep the roofs from collapsing. Some of the small homes had quaint patches of tilled land next to their walls, and even in those micro-farms the vegetation was sparse. After they passed a group of several shacks all leaning against each other, Alster finally saw one of Mournstead’s citizens out in the open. He was an old man, stooped with age and supporting himself with a cane, his fiery red hair gone almost entirely to silver.
“He’s watching us,” Alster said, flexing his hand over the space where the Umbral Blade used to be tucked into his belt. “Why? Are we that conspicuous?”
“Just let him be,” Ingvar casually remarked. “He’s only curious. They don’t get many travelers here, as you can imagine.”
Finally, after traversing several miles of sparsely populated outskirts, the road beneath their horses became something close to substantial, though it was still a far cry from the well-maintained thoroughfares of the west. Alster saw what he believed to be broken statues lining some sections of the road. Many of them had been reduced to square bases with feet broken at the ankles and worn smooth by the weather. He imagined the city must have been grand at one point, perhaps as spectacular as Karrheim, and he longed to know what that old grandeur had been like.
The city itself—once the trio reached its proper center—was sprawling and densely packed with buildings, though only a handful reached more than a single story into the air. The buildings also lacked any semblance of formality. There were no walls or gates, no guardhouses to facilitate policing the populace, and most of what appeared to be businesses lacked the typical adornments indicating their purpose. Where Karrheim was rigidly organized and meticulously maintained, Mournstead was the exact opposite, like a city occurred in the middle of the vast plains by accident.
“Where should we go?” Alster asked hesitantly. Some of the nearby people, their pale skin covered in splotches of dark dust, were staring at the newcomers with apprehension on their faces. The one thing they all had in common was that they were armed, and their hands weren’t far from the blades at their sides. Travelling in the west, friendly faces often outnumbered those looking for trouble by a wide margin. In Mournstead, the opposite was true. Everyone was on edge. Everyone looked like they were a single provocation from murder.
Ingvar let out a sigh. “I’m not exactly sure,” he admitted. “Perhaps to the governor? Truth be told, the government in Mournstead is much more fluid than in Karrheim. I’m not even sure they have a governor. Still, someone must be in charge, and they might be able to help you find what it is you seek.” He urged his horse toward the very center of the city, and Alster and Elsey followed closely behind.
“These people don’t look friendly,” Elsey whispered.
Alster nodded. “Stay close,” he quietly replied.
They rode for quite some time through the dirty, black-marked streets of Mournstead, twisting and turning their way toward the center. Deeper in the heart of the town, the majority of buildings they passed were full of people, usually drunk people, and Alster felt like the only industry Mournstead had to speak of was its booming alcohol trade. He noticed a distinct lack of almost everything else. There were no blacksmiths’ forges spewing smoke into the hazy air, no bakers displaying their various breads in beaded glass windows, and no markets bustling with farmers trading produce and meats. Metallic tubes reached up at odd angles from ramshackle huts all over the place. They belched white steam into the hazy, dark air, and the new clouds smelled heavily of booze.
“What do the people eat here?” Alster wondered loudly enough for Ingvar to hear. They hadn’t passed any farms large enough to feed more than a single family, and they hadn’t seen a single livestock animal either.
“Anything they can get their hands on,” the grizzled captain said over his shoulder. “Mournstead trades somewhat with Nevansk in the north, though foreign goods are incredibly expensive. But boiled shoe leather, with the right spices, is edible, or so I am told. And there are a handful of small farms on the eastern side of the city. Everything they grow is covered with the darkness clinging to the air so the crops aren’t very large or bountiful, but the people eat. When the stores get particularly low, I’m sure some of them even eat each other.”
Alster shuddered at the thought. There was no way for him to know if Ingvar was telling the truth or trying to make a joke. Either way, he made the rapid determination that he hated Mournstead. The sooner they left, the better. He saw a red-haired woman exiting one of the pubs with an infant child in her arms, and he couldn’t keep his mind from imagining the mother becoming desperate and eating her own offspring like some sort of wild animal.
Images of barbaric cannibalism had barely faded from Alster’s mind when they arrived at the collection of stone and wooden huts that Ingvar thought served as Mournstead’s administrative center. There wasn’t much to the compound, but a small handful of soldiers positioned haphazardly out front with spears and short swords told them the building was at least important.
“What must be done to gain an audience with the governor?” Ingvar asked as he reined in his horse, completely forgoing all formality.
An old soldier with black soot in his beard looked up from his boots with a grimace on his face. “What’s this about?” he demanded, brushing a bit of red hair from his face. The man didn’t correct Ingvar’s assumption about the building’s use, so he figured he had guessed correctly.
“I need to speak with the governor about something important,” Ingvar said.
“You’ll need to give me more than that,” the guard replied.
“Please, sir, I have urgent business, I assure you.”
The guard held out his hand expectantly. “You’ll need to give me more than that,” he repeated.
Ingvar shook his head and flipped open one of his saddlebags momentarily, then realized he had nothing with which to bargain. “What do you have?” he asked Alster and Elsey.
“We have some silver,” Elsey said, proffering her coin purse but not opening it. Her eyes darted from guard to guard, though none of them looked particularly suspicious, at least by comparison to everyone else in Mournstead. Everyone was suspicious, and that basically made none of them suspicious at the same time.
“Bah,” the guard spat. “Your filthy western coins aren’t going to get you far here, stranger. Mournstead runs on more useful things. Take your money elsewhere.”
Elsey put her bag away on the inside of her belt, feeling defeated. “We need a shado—”
“What is it you need?” Ingvar said loudly, cutting off Elsey before she could give them away or draw any unwelcome attention.
The guard shifted his weight from side to side, a smile showing beneath his matted beard. He eyed Elsey with a bit of a leer. “A pretty lass like that would certainly be worth a lot,” the man declared.
Alster felt a wave of hot anger suddenly spring to his mind. He flexed his hand, and a bit of red light began to shine out from between his knuckles.
“She’s not for sale!” Ingvar yelled back. He was still in front of Alster, and he turned his horse sharply to the side to be off, his mouth falling open at the sight of the boy’s armor returning.
“Get out—”
“Alster!” Ingvar shouted. Things were getting out of hand far too fast for him to get control of the situation. He moved his horse directly next to Alster’s and slapped the boy hard across the cheek. “Knock it off!”
The light faded, and Alster let his anger dissipate, though the flesh beneath his left eye stung.
“Let’s go,” Ingvar reiterated in no uncertain terms. He led the trio once more, keeping watch on the other two to ensure their obedience. When they were a fair distance from the city center, he spoke again. “We need to find somewhere that will take silver to stay for the night. Mournstead is dangerous, and doubly so with you shining your red light around and drawing attention.”
Alster hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“Don’t be,” Elsey added. Her voice was strong and fierce, conveying more venom than she had intended.
“No,” Alster interrupted. “I shouldn’t be so careless. I don’t know what came over me. I… I just got so mad. I wanted to kill that man.”
None of the bite in Elsey's voice faded at all. “I think we should have,” she stated evenly. “We can take them. You can’t be hurt, and I can rip their shadows apart. We should storm their pathetic capital and be done with it. Destroy Mournstead in a single day.”
Ingvar laughed. “Have you ever torn a shade from a person?” he asked Elsey.
“Yes,” she answered quickly.
“From an unwilling person?” the soldier went on. His laughter had been replaced with surprise and a bit of fear.
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Well then, you’re starting to sound like a real shadowlith after all.”
“What does that mean?” Elsey demanded.
Ingvar turned to fully regard her in the saddle. “Shadowliths were violent, bloodthirsty monsters. They killed anyone who crossed them, or so the legends say. There’s a reason your friend’s ancestor exterminated them all. And no one ever asked to bring them back once they were gone.”
Still wearing a grimace and seething just below the surface, Elsey was silent.
