Chapter 2
Death-Touched
Theron
There was nothing more soothing and right than death. This was the first thing I’d learned as a newly woven, the first rule every monster in Asphodelia was taught. Death was our friend and our guardian, and it brought us both peace and sustenance.
And yet, the moment my team and I entered Agrion, I felt no such peace. The village clearing pulsed with energy, but it was not the clean, reverent power I harvested for Asphodelia. It was sharper, like it had teeth. My death sense screamed as we crested the ridge, leery of the strangeness.
A dryad’s body sprawled across an overturned fire pit, her wooden heart splintered by farming shears. Beside her, a faun’s throat gaped open, severed by his own ceremonial blade.
“Thanatos help us,” Skaros growled, his golden mane dark with shadow as he shifted to his humanoid form. “What happened here?”
I stepped over a woman who’d been disemboweled with sewing shears. “They tore each other apart. With farming tools, no less.”
Aion surveyed the scene, his bronze features impassive and unreadable. Underneath his metallic skin, his core pulsed in quiet agitation. “The death energy patterns are highly concentrated. Too focused for random mob violence.”
“They went completely feral,” Skaros called out. My manticore friend had always had a nose for these things. “Look at the wounds. They weren’t trying to disable or drive off. They were trying to destroy.”
I let the energy flow over me and shook off my unease. “They received Thanatos’s blessing, regardless. And now, they will give us their gift.”
My team spread out, death spheres ready for harvest. The crystalline orbs hummed softly as they began working on the corpses, glowing brighter with each extraction. Standard work, though nothing about this place felt standard.
Phonos landed heavily behind me, folding his black wings against his back. His gaze zeroed in on a particular corpse near the center of the clearing. “Look. That’s the same satyr noble who fled our battle on Shift Day.”
His keen assessment momentarily gave me pause. Caught up in the chaotic mess of the scene, I’d missed this interesting tidbit. I followed Phonos’s gaze to the dead satyr, and indeed, there he was. Syagros of the Moonhorn Clan.
One week ago, my team and I had found a group of woodland creatures at our borders.
Their ritual had interfered with the sacred power of Shift Day.
We’d given most of them the gift of a worthy end, but their leader, Syagros, had fled with the few remaining survivors.
Apparently, he had made his way here. “If there were side effects from the disturbed ritual, it could explain the massacre.”
“It’s one of the few things that would make sense,” Aion said as he knelt next to a dead dryad. “Woodland creatures aren’t known for turning on their own.”
The explanation didn’t entirely satisfy me. There was something else here, something that went beyond the traces of a ritual gone awry. My claws vibrated with an awareness I’d never experienced before. I needed to keep looking. But… For what?
I didn’t particularly care about Syagros or his fate, but my feet carried me toward him, anyway. The grass sizzled and turned to ash under my paws. Why was I doing this? I should be finishing the harvesting instead of lingering over one dead satyr. Why was this important?
I only needed to take a couple of steps forward to find my answer. A unique scent hit my nostrils, clean and kind, despite all the violence around it. Like home, tingling mist, and asphodels in fresh bloom. Alive, and holding the unmistakable resonance of death energy.
I found her pinned underneath Syagros’s corpse. The beautiful, golden-haired human who had drawn me here. There was so much blood, on her, around her, everywhere I could see. But even with her unconscious and dying, something in my chest recognized her.
What I felt was not just desire, though that crashed through me with so much force I could barely breathe. This was deeper, a pull as unavoidable and undeniable as Thanatos himself. This broken, dying human was meant to be mine.
Every monster in Asphodelia was woven from death by the Moirae’s hands.
Within our weave, there lay a secret. Our ability to bond.
It was only a possibility, a hope and a dream.
We could only bond with humans, and only when they were death-touched.
I’d never given the possibility much thought, not for myself.
And yet, here she was. My soul bonded. My mate. The one my weave responded to.
I shoved Syagros aside and reached for her. The moment I touched her skin, every protective instinct inside me awoke. Keep her safe, my beast roared, and I intended to do just that. When my team approached, I had to resist the urge to snarl at them.
“What a valuable find,” Phonos hummed under his breath, assessing her with a predator’s keen eyes. “A death-touched woman, and one of great worth.”
On some level, I knew he wasn’t wrong. Such women were priceless for Asphodelia. But the way he said it, the way he phrased it… It made every muscle in my body go taut.
Skaros read the tension in my posture immediately. “Theron found her. She’s his responsibility.”
“We’re here together,” Phonos protested. “As a team.”
Normally, I might have laughed. He’d never been happy with joining us on our harvests. Compared to a Keres, all of us were inferior weaves.
But I didn’t have time for Phonos and his arrogance. My mate was injured, and she needed my full attention. Everything else could wait.
Ignoring Phonos and the others, I placed my hands over her wounds. Hellfire existed to burn, and that was what it demanded. But as a hellhound, as a Cerberus aligned to the past, I could twist my skills into something else.
Amber light flowed from my palms, wrapping her injuries in a fiery stasis field. The bleeding stopped immediately. Her shallow breathing steadied, but she didn’t open her eyes. This wasn’t enough. “Hold on,” I begged her. “Don’t you dare leave me now.”
Not when I’d just found her. Not when every fiber of my being was screaming that she belonged with me.
Skaros frowned, his leathery wings twitching at the sight of my struggle. “Your hellfire’s flickering, Theron.”
“Something beyond the physical is threatening her,” Aion said, his voice tight with tension.
Out of all of us, Aion was probably the best at sensing that. He’d been crafted with a unique attunement to death energy, a bronze colossus meant to both contain and use our power source. But even he could not help me now.
“What are you going to do?” he asked me.
There was only one option. One last thing I could attempt. A selfish act, perhaps, because such a perfect creature surely belonged to Thanatos himself. But I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t let her go.
I’d never attempted what I was considering.
My abilities let me read memories from the dead, catch glimpses of their final thoughts.
But diving into a living person’s mind - even one barely clinging to existence - could destroy me.
My soul could wither away into nothing, and even the Moirae wouldn’t be able to drag it back.
The pull toward her made the choice easy. If she died, my existence became irrelevant. The resonance between us guaranteed it.
Following the threads of her lost consciousness, I allowed my mind to travel beyond the stasis field. The clearing faded around me, replaced by something infinitely more dangerous. Her memories of the massacre.
“Barren witch!” someone screamed at her, and I felt and heard it all.
Suddenly I was experiencing her trial, feeling her emotions carved into my bones.
The rope cutting into her wrists. The burning shame of her secret laid bare, sterility that marked her as worthless to her people.
Her supposed curse, which had damned other women in her village, just because they wore the dresses she’d woven.
Callista. That was her name. A woman who’d hidden her dark secret for years, and had given it up to save others. To save Syagros, of all people, after the clash between us and his forces.
She’d paid a steep price for her kindness.
Everyone she’d ever known had rejected her.
They’d all glared at her, spouting outrageous accusations.
And in the center of it all, there was the satyr.
In here, he wasn’t harmless and dead. He loomed larger than life, his aristocratic features twisted with malice.
I felt her terror as the mob turned violent. Felt her desperate courage when she fought back with his own broken horn. Callista had refused to beg even while dying. She’d made her enemy pay in blood.
“Die with your cursed threads, barren whore!” The memory-Syagros charged, horn lowered to pierce her heart.
“Come and get me!” She raised his broken horn, brave to the bitter end.
I forced myself between them at the crucial moment. The horn meant for Callista punched through me instead, and agony beyond description exploded through my borrowed form. My ribs cracked like kindling, Syagros’s horn tearing through me in a way it never would have in life.
Her grief poured into me like poison, years of shame and self-loathing so suffocating my lungs seized under the strain. I absorbed it all, took her suffering into myself until the memory could no longer destroy her.
“Mine to protect,” I gasped, and against all odds, Callista saw me.
She stared at me with wonder and disbelief. “Who are you?”
“The one who will always stand between you and your pain.”
As I bore the weight of her agony, the nightmare edges of the memory began to soften. The threatening colors faded to normal. The demonic satyr shrank back to human size. Peace settled over the scene like snow covering old wounds.
I pulled my consciousness back to the present. Sweat matted my fur despite the cool air, but it had worked. Her life force was stabilizing, growing stronger with each heartbeat.
Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused but beautifully alive. “You’re... warm...”
Relief crashed through me so hard my claws shook. “Stay with me. Can you hear my voice?”
Her fingers traced my muzzle with a gentleness I’d done too little to earn. “I remember... you stepped in front...”
I covered her small hand with mine, amazed by how fragile she felt against me. “I’ll always protect you.”
She was a human. She didn’t have the same instinctive knowledge of the connection we shared. But the memory we’d shared had created something between us. Something almost as powerful as the gift the weave had given us.
Her breathing deepened, and she focused on my face. “Who are you?”
“Theron. And you’re safe now.”
The trust in her eyes nearly undid me. After everything she’d endured, she looked at me without fear. More than that - she looked at me like I was her salvation.
Maybe I was.
Phonos cleared his throat, interrupting our exchange. “Impressive intervention, but she needs immediate transport to proper healers. My wings can have her in Asphodelia within the hour.”
Did he think I was stupid? Did he think I wouldn’t understand what he was doing? Phonos wasn’t offering efficient transport. He was making a claim.
My inner beast roared to lunge at him, to claw that too-beautiful face of his open. Instead, I gathered her carefully against my chest. “Flight will tear her wounds open. I’ll be the one to carry her home.”
She fit perfectly in my arms, just like I’d known she would. How dare Phonos challenge that claim?
Phonos tilted his head in an almost bird-like gesture. “Your attachment is clouding your judgment. She’s worth more than our entire harvest combined. The swiftest possible care serves her best interests.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I did not believe him either. Nothing he said or did would be in Callista’s best interest, and she knew that. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
“Never.”
The single word carried more weight than any argument. Phonos heard it too - the absolute commitment that meant this conversation was over.
His face twisted with frustrated fury. His purple eyes flared crimson in the way they only ever did when he was in a rage. “This isn’t over, Theron. When the Moirae learn how you prioritized sentiment over her survival...”
“Tell them.” I turned my back on him, shifting her weight so she could rest more comfortably against my shoulder. “Tell them I chose her life over your ambition.”
Phonos glared at me, and I had no doubt he’d keep his promise. But looking down at her peaceful face nestled against me, I knew I’d make the same choice a thousand times over.
Let Phonos do his worst. I had something worth fighting for now, and for her, for Callista, there was nothing I wouldn’t do.