The façades of Palthonheim’s man-made structures faded into shadow, revealing their true form—twisted, broken.
Sul waited for her on every corner, scowling, empty eyes mocking her.
She ran past him and through an archway. He was there again, on a rooftop, laughing, pointing.
She ran across an amphitheatre stage—every seat was filled by Sul, a crowd of identical images, their laughter filling Serena’s ears.
It’s not real.
She sprinted towards the Great Library, structures turning into pillars of dust around her, Sul’s laughter echoing every step of the way.
The shotgun kicked back, and the walking statue’s shoulder exploded, then its head.
Gallows wiped sweat from his eyes. A sour, acrid smell filled his nose and throat. ‘We gotta find a way out.’ He loaded two more shells into his weapon—it wouldn’t be enough.
Reinforcements came, an endless swarm of half-human, half-stone monsters. Gallows and Tiera fought their way to the library’s main hall, Ventris sticking close by. Bullets pinged off stone armour and sunk into flesh. There was no uniformity to the enemy—only that they weren’t human.
Ventris’ blade whirled in a blur, hacking at the monsters closest to human and splattering blood on the floor.
‘Six o’clock!’ Tiera yelled.
Gallows spun and his shotgun roared, splitting two stone skulls.
One more shell.
Living statues crawled from the shadows, through cracks in the ceiling, from the ground. Gallows got close to a monster and unleashed the last of his ammunition. Dust and shards of stone erupted, slicing into Gallows’ skin. He brandished the shotgun like a club, caving in one side of a semi-human skull and mashing its brain.
Tiera fired round after round at the oncoming horde, but half the time, the bullets ricocheted. ‘Screw this.’ She peeled an ignium charge from her belt, activated it and lobbed it among the enemy.
They exploded in a shower of stone and blood.
Gallows followed Tiera through the gap in the enemy lines, towards the exit. His blade swung in a wide arc, hacking into hard skin, blood and pus spraying.
He had no idea if the library door was still sealed. He didn’t know if that was worse than it being open.
His legs burned but he kept running towards the door as debris rained from above—
Then a section of the wall crumbled, filling the exit with rubble.
Gallows swore. ‘We’re sealed.’
‘No—we’re not.’ Tiera hurled another ignium charge towards a damaged wall—it exploded, punching a hole in the stone.
Tiera raced towards the gap and slipped through, Ventris on her heels.
‘Hunter!’ Tiera roared.
Gallows raced towards her, but one of the stone men tackled him to the ground. It punched his jaw once, twice, before Gallows kicked it from him. He swallowed blood and a back tooth.
Dizzy and filled with pain, he stumbled towards Tiera.
Then the floor quaked—a chasm opened and sent him sprawling.
‘Come on!’ Tiera yelled.
But the chasm between Gallows and Tiera expanded too fast, and enemies closed in.
‘I’ll find another way!’
He ran alongside the widening gap—a living statue grasped out at him but the ground swallowed it.
Need higher ground.
Gallows leapt up one of the library’s wide staircases. Walls crumbled to dust around him.
Typical—I die right after I decide to live.
Palthonheim’s mist swirled through gaps in the ceiling. Gallows twisted past lumbering enemies, kept running up the staircase, further away from Tiera’s makeshift exit. He climbed higher and higher, monsters on his heels every step of the way.
Get high enough to double-back and jump the gap—easy.
A tall, onyx-black statue with crown-like tines hewn into its skull marched towards him, its gleaming black skull frozen in a rictus grin.
Gallows didn’t even attempt to fight it—the living statue had the reach and the strength. It stomped close behind him, its fists scything through stone pillars like they were butter.
Gallows twisted around a corner. His instincts screamed at him to keep running—he struggled to make sense of his position and had no idea if he was heading towards the exit. Pillars toppled and more sections of the vaulted ceiling sailed down towards him. He had to get to find a way out before the ground swallowed him.
The Onyx Knight fought through its own kind on its way to Gallows. He felt its approach even over the collapsing floor and walls. Gallows pushed his legs as hard as he could, slid beneath a collapsed pillar and darted across the crumbling floor. He leapt over chasms, frantic, desperate.
The Onyx Knight grabbed him and wrenched his arm around. Gallows screamed, and the thing pushed him against a stone pillar.
The empty sockets of its skull face bore down on him—and the spike protruding from its jaw pierced Gallows’ collarbone.
The floor quaked, sending the thing twisting and lurching backwards. Gallows charged at the Onyx Knight’s back and forced it against a wall, grabbing the spikes on its head and ramming it into a stone wall again and again.
Its head twisted around, then its limbs, contorting and righting itself—and then it faced Gallows.
It headbutted him, sending a flood of blood down his throat. Gallows staggered back, feet slipping on the uneven floor. Blood stung his eyes. He swung his sword, blind, connecting with nothing.
The Onyx Knight forced him to the edge of a balcony. It swatted his shortsword away.
With no other choice, Gallows retreated and clambered onto the rail of the balcony. The ground floor below convulsed, cracked, and disappeared, but some of the colossal bookcases still stood.
The Onyx Knight reached out for him.
He leapt.
Warm air filled his mouth as he flailed.
He grabbed the edge of the stone bookshelf and hauled himself onto its surface and ran to the next, leaping, grabbing and climbing.
The statues copied him. They flung themselves over the balcony, some landing on the bookcase, others striking it and shattering on the ground below.
Gallows ran and jumped onto the next bookcase, then the next, letting the momentum carry him to the other side. The surface of the bookcases was only spacious enough for three or four steps before he had to jump.
A sickening creak filled his ears. Stone ground against stone. Gallows craned his neck—the statues had given up the chase in favour of a better tactic.
The first bookcase he’d leapt onto lurched and toppled, striking the next. The second toppled faster, the third faster still.
Like dominoes falling, the bookcases fell, throwing dust and rubble into the air. Gallows sought a path to the other side of the room, inching closer to the hole Tiera had escaped through—but the floor beneath it was an empty, black hole.
Shit.
Gallows ran the length of the bookcase. He leapt to the next, and the next, running towards the destroyed wall on the ground floor. The cacophony roared in his ears and pain lanced his lungs.
The final bookcase slipped and shuddered. No space for a run-up, no time to catch his breath—all he could do was jump.
He leapt over the gap—cold filled his mouth and his stomach lurched, boiling bile into his throat.
He landed hard on the ground at the other side. The impact punched the breath from his lungs. He twisted and rolled down a slope of scree and dirt, head ringing and rock jabbing into his ribs.
But he was alive.
Palthonheim flitted by in a haze.
A fire coursed through Serena’s veins, burning ever since she witnessed Musa’s death. Something inside her had changed—she sensed the veins of ignicite running through the ground, sensed the ignerium in her pocket blazing.
The empty windows and doorways flew past, Serena’s feet pounding and echoing in the empty avenues. Sul’s apparitions stared at her, their empty gaze making
the hair on her neck stand on end.
But they disappeared one by one, like the rest of the illusions in this place.
Enoch deserved better than to die here—but Serena would remember him for his kindness and his valour. The world might not know his name, but she did.
All she had to do was find Gallows and Tiera.
All she had to do was survive.
A great shadow loomed over her—she gazed up at the sky; something flitted through the filthy mists above—big, dark.
It descended, and its silhouette expanded, like giant batwings unfurling.
As it got closer, the fire in Serena’s veins raged harder.
It wasn’t the ignicite in the ground she could sense—it was the ignicite in the shadow dragon prowling the skies.
‘Move!’ Tiera yelled
The ribbon bridge leading out from the library transformed, its golden gleam turning dirty and tarnished. Sections of its arch crumbled and fell away, the undulating bridge creaking.
Gallows’ body screamed at him, a stitch knifing his side as he ran.
Half-human stone men crawled up the sides of the bridge. Tiera cleaved one of their jaws away and kicked it back over the edge. Ventris took on two, cackling as their blackened blood sprayed over her.
All Gallows could do was run.
A section between him and Tiera tumbled into the valley below. Gallows ran to a jutting point and leapt, feet scrambling for purchase as he hit the other side. The bridge tilted, forcing Gallows to run uphill. He leapt to the next section, feeling the bed of the bridge crumble at his touch.
The pillars supporting the bridge evaporated into dust—Gallows jumped, fingertips scraping on the jagged edge of the broken section in front of him.
One of his hands slipped—he swung, bolts of pain shooting through his arm, feeling cracks crawling beneath.
The sight of the deep, black valley below sent his heart into his mouth. He brought his other hand up, clawing at the cracks for purchase and hauled himself over, breaking into a run.
A section of the bridge groaned at his back, toppling and crashing to the earth. The surface convulsed and trembled, dust concealing Tiera ahead. Gallows ran blind, coming to a precipice and skidding to a halt.
‘Jump!’ Tiera yelled.
Gallows did. He hit the other side, bounced over cracks, seeing stone men move within the dust.
‘Look out!’
Gallows raced forward. The end of the bridge was close, so close. He ploughed ahead, feet hammering the ground—
Tiera flew back, head over feet and rolling downhill on the collapsing stone.
Gallows reached out to grab her, sliding back the way he came, plummeting towards the valley floor.
His hand curled around a rail—with his other, he reached out to where Tiera hung, her legs dangling over the edge.
She grabbed his hand, the extra weight threatening to wrench his arm from its socket.
Pull…
Another crack split next to Gallows.
Gritting his teeth, he pulled Tiera up far enough for her to grab onto the stone.
‘Climb!’ he roared.
The bed of the bridge tilted, almost vertical. Gallows climbed, pushing up with his legs, handholds crumbling to dust. Rock tumbled and hit him in the face.
He forced himself to climb, adrenaline numbing the pain.
Gallows got to his feet, Tiera running at his side. She hacked into the half-stone men who didn’t have the sense to escape.
Together, they barrelled towards the mouth of the bridge, its bed buckling and warping every inch of the way.
Then it rose, like the end of a sinking ship.
Tiera pulled Gallows to the ground as the ribbon arch broke off and sailed overhead. Together, they rushed uphill without seeing the ground below, and leapt, twisting through the air.
Pain exploded inside Gallows as he hit the ground, but he was just grateful to be away from the bridge.
When he stood, Ventris stood before him, her face covered in blood and her blade readied.
The ground tremored. Tiera eyed Ventris, swearing in Phadrosi.
Gallows held his palms up and dragged breaths into his lungs. ‘Ventris—don’t do anything stupid.’
But she wasn’t looking at him—she was looking up.
Ploughing through the shifting mists, limned in amber, a giant beast emerged, its shadow dripping from the night sky. Wings like a bat’s stretched from its sides, looming over the landscape. For a moment, Gallows forgot about the destruction reigning across the landscape.
‘Run,’ Tiera growled. She backed away. Gallows followed her, but Ventris stood still.
‘Ventris!’ Gallows called.
Tiera grabbed him. ‘Leave her!’
‘Belios’ war dragon,’ the pirate whispered. She stared at it in awe.
The dragon erupted from the mists. Shimmering black scales covered its thick belly and long neck; a deep amber pulsed within. Its blood-red wings expanded from a smooth, crimson carapace, and a rigid, sharp tail hooked up at its back.
Not wings—sails.
‘It’s not a dragon,’ Gallows said. ‘It’s a godsdamn airship.’
It descended, coming in to land—but a tower buckled and collapsed, spewing masonry over its hull. It ascended and circled but couldn’t land.
The remains of the bridge disappeared, and the ground detonated.
‘Death, destruction, plunder and pillaging.’ Ventris cackled and wiped blood from her kukri before handing it back to Tiera. ‘Just like old ti—’
Tiera plunged her blade into Ventris’ gut.
The pirate tried to speak, words gargling as blood frothed from her throat. Her fingers reached out to Gallows, her eyes pleading, confused.
‘Let’s go,’ said Tiera.
The airship weaved between the twisting bone-towers.
Serena stood in the centre of its cavernous helm, hewn from ignicite. Cables from manufactured instruments hooked into ancient, glowing ignicite. None of it made any sense; the ship possessed no ignium for lift, no igneus for fuel.
It glided on the air at Serena’s command. Every inch, every particle of it spoke to her, the ignicite running through it feeding information back. It was sleeker than the Liberty Wind, longer, but not much bigger. It was Musa’s, once—her memories filtered through Serena—she knew every inch of the ignicite but not its modern machinery. Serena didn’t understand how the thing worked, why it was here or what the scholars of Palthonheim had installed—all she knew was that it was hers.
Musa’s light flowed through her, connecting Serena to every Siren who had ever lived.
She was the only one left, but she’d carry their memory forever.
Palthonheim changed in front of Tiera as she bolted through undulating streets and alleys—decomposed corpses appeared inside motorcarriages and hanging from windows. Bony fingers reached out and mouths stretched in anguish. Palthonheim’s illusions fell away as the city disintegrated.
The people never left—they were here all along.
She darted through a gap between two collapsed buildings, bounding across avenues littered with decayed corpses. The stench of death cloyed in her nose and throat, worsening the closer she got to the town centre.
‘There!’ Gallows pointed to the broken hull of the Queen of the North; jagged fissures rose and fell around it, swallowing it bit by bit.
Then the ground swallowed it.
The dragon ship bled out of the sky and hovered above the expanding pit, wind whipping dust and dirt into Tiera’s eyes. A hatch in its rocky hull parted. The ship shuddered in the air, the crumbling surroundings throwing it off-balance.
Tiera exchanged a look with Gallows.
Together, they sprinted and leapt across the gap, diving into the dragon’s belly, Ventris’ blood still warm on her hands.
The dragon ship ascended. Palthonheim’s irradiated mists clenched around its hull like a fist squeezing a dragonfly, but couldn’t penetrate it.
A proximity warning rang, and a curving, off-white arch loomed from out of the mist. With a thought, Serena commanded the ship to swoop underneath and shoot upwards.
She sensed Gallows running through the dragon ship’s passages, approaching the helm.
‘Serena!’ he panted. ‘What the hell?’
‘Little busy!’
A chunk of rock plummeted towards the helm’s skyglass.
‘Shit!’ Gallows yelled.
It bounced and broke away without leaving a mark.
Serena’s heart pounded, electricity in her muscles and fire in her veins. She stood, back straight and shoulders squared, the enormous power of the dragon ship listening to her every thought, obeying her every command.
‘How are you doing this?’ Tiera demanded.
Without looking, Serena said, ‘By talking to it.’
‘Do not tell me this thing’s alive,’ said Gallows.
Serena shook her head. ‘It’s not alive, but... It’s tuned to me, if that makes sense.’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Tiera.
The dragon ship burst through the mist, arrowing towards the clear, black sky, leaving Palthonheim behind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Four years ago…
Caerith, Sateo and the rest stood over piles of dead bodies, beaming. Their blades dripped with blood—Damien smelled it from the rooftops, among the rain and mud.
The bodies were those of innocents—not brigands or thieves, but the people of Hawthorn Gnarl.
Adravan’s final test.
‘You have all ascended,’ Adravan said. Azima stood next to him, proud. ‘You are Nyr-az-Telun. Worry not for these souls, for you have saved them from the coming torments. They are clasped within the merciful embrace of Nyr.’
Before following his former brothers and sisters back into the Solacewood, Damien’s gaze lingered on the bodies.
After their night in the mountains, he’d told Azima of his plans to leave—Adravan would get his wish and be rid of him, and Azima would claim the credit for killing him.
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