Chapter 48 #2
Eldrik’s eyes widened with pure, soul-deep terror.
He was already screaming when Rune began tearing him apart. His cries broke the stillness, splintered, and bloodcurdling.
Rune took his time enacting his vengeance.
And such a terrible thing it was.
He unmade the prince piece by piece.
Bone by bone.
His claws sank into flesh, peeling sinew from muscle and tendon with a predator’s patience.
Eldrik’s begging screams weakened to gurgles, body spasming.
The forest rattled and branches twisted.
Wind howled and fled the clearing entirely.
The air thickened, heavy with blood and the fury of the night.
Rune eventually saw nothing but red, hardly noticing the quiet and stillness of death. There was only motion now.
Purpose.
He carved open the chest, tearing through the heart. Then he reached in and withdrew the glowing tether of Eldrick’s soul.
It shimmered like trapped light, flickering, frayed. Rune lifted it in his claws and a tempest howled.
The earth heaved.
Somewhere far above, the stars dimmed as if looking away as he committed utter desecration.
Rune held the soul in his palm, watching it flicker with light. Stripped of sin and wickedness, a mere thread of creation. The purest and most sacred thing beneath the Heavens. The soul vibrated in his palm, warm as breath.
For an instant, Rune felt the sanctity of what he held.
And he crushed it.
The soul shattered like a scream. Echoing across planes. A final, eternal silence bleeding into the dirt.
It left behind no light. No ghost.
But a void in the world.
That was his justice.
Even then, Rune wasn’t satisfied.
He wanted to destroy more. To break, to tear, to unmake. But no more of the prince remained.
Alora stirred faintly in his consciousness, her heartbeat pulsing in his chest. The tether to his sanity silently calling him back.
Rune returned to himself slowly, shadows coiling back under his skin like loyal beasts fed and sated. He turned from the carnage when the smell oddly sickened him. Or perhaps it was the dark stain of his malicious deed.
He ignored the feeling and reached for the glowing knapsack in the bush when something glinting in the grass caught his eye.
A black shard with molten red crevices. He picked it up but nearly dropped it, hissing as the stone burned his skin.
His shadows lifted it in the air and his pulse drummed loudly in his ears.
Hellstone.
It pulsated faintly, like it sensed him.
For a moment, Rune thought he heard it whisper.
Faint, indiscernible words in the old tongues. The kind buried beneath mountains and time, uttered in places where light had never lived.
His shadows recoiled. They lashed at his feet like startled serpents, hissing. The last time he’d seen this kind of stone was in the darkest of places. The forgotten ones, beyond the Seven Hells of the Netherworld to the depths of the Abyss.
Where Titans were chained.
The ground shook beneath his feet and a potent energy rippled through the atmosphere with such a force it droned loudly. He winced at the sound, as if the earth itself had split open. The earth quaked, and it sent another tremor through the world.
And crimson washed through the clouds.
His gaze lifted to the small tear in the sky. A glowing red gash like a scar in the fabric of stars.
A soft voice cut through the night like silk through fire. “What have you done?”
Sunneva stood in the still forest, pale hair glowing silver in the moonlight. Her white gown shimmered like frost kissed by starlight.
Rune’s chest heaved. “What is this?”
“You destroyed a soul, Rune.” Sunneva’s glowing blue eyes lowered to the ground where Eldrik had once stood. As the Goddess of Death, she came to collect a soul, but there was none left of it to take. “The most consecrated thing beneath the Heavens.”
The sharp weight of guilt bore down on him.
But Rune shook it off. “After what he has done to my wife, he deserved far worse.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “You did not merely kill him, Rune. You obliterated him. That desecration tore a Rift into the Realm.” She looked up at the sky. “Pray the world is prepared to face the consequences.”
His stomach dropped.
When Sunneva looked at him, he read the fear and sorrow in her gaze. “A storm is coming.”
He swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“Your actions tonight have disrupted the balance of the Realms… and formed the first fracture in Vorak’s cage.”
The shard in Rune’s palm burned. His mind spun, fear churning in his stomach at the name.
“He is confined!”
“As were you,” Sunneva mused. “Yet you found a way to escape your chains. Did you believe he would not do the same? Vorak has planned for a millennium to reclaim his throne, and at last the final pieces are in place. He will break free and unleash ruin upon us all. For she holds the power he has been waiting to consume.”
Rune’s heart thundered.
“You suspected who she was the moment flowers bloomed from her blood. And it was confirmed in that dark chamber.”
Vorak’s voice echoed in his head.
Lashar, he’d called her.
It had two meanings and both were true.
Inheritor of destruction.
Daughter.
Rune’s breath caught. His veins turned to ice as his gaze fell on the knapsack at his feet, the edges of the opening glowing faintly.
“How do you suppose she is able to absorb your power?” Sunneva said.
“She bears the blood of both light and shadow. She was dying tonight, would have died if she had not touched you. Her dark essence is consumption. Alora absorbing your power is an echo of the purpose etched into her soul. She is a devourer—like her father.”
Rune’s entire body went cold.
Sunneva approached him, frost swirling into the night air with every step.
Her gaze lifted to the sky, a crimson hue gleaming on her cheeks.
“Vorak consumes light and shadow alike. Stars. Wolds. Creation. Anything that could give him more power. Alora was bred for that purpose. She carries both bloodlines lauded by Heaven and feared by the Abyss. Primordial and divine.”
Rune swallowed, his fists clenching. “Why?”
“To feed him,” Sunneva answered simply, her blue eyes falling on him. “She is a sacrifice meant to restore his power and to ascend it. That is her true purpose.”
Through her, I will rise. Through her, I will feed. Beginning with her.
His stomach roiled.
Sunneva reached in the knapsack and drew out the jar. The strands within shone like veins of white flame.
“You must have felt it,” Sunneva murmured as they gazed at the glowing tendrils of divine fire. “The nectar in her blood, her scent, her kiss. It calls to you because she was fashioned to be consumed. The purest kind of feast.”
Rune hated that his mouth instinctively watered as he recalled Alora’s scent. It had not been so strong in their first life. He had been obsessed. He had waged war on the world for her, but his madness and craving for her wasn’t merely lust and longing.
It was hunger.
A predatory instinct that wanted to tear into her because he craved that powerful essence in her veins, that power that demolished his.
For Alora was both Primordial and a goddess.
The first of her kind.
And such a being should not have gone unnoticed.
“He knew,” Rune said through his clenched teeth. It wasn’t a question.
Sunneva only looked at him, and that was answer enough. “Elyōn sees all.”
His jaw tightened, fists clenching so tight his claws pierced his palms. “Then why allow it to happen? Why let it get this far?”
The Heavens didn’t suffer flawed creations.
He would know.
Sunneva’s gaze returned to the bleeding sky. Her voice softened into something ancient. “Because even the Fates must allow the threads of destiny to intertwine.”
The words hung heavy, like dirt settling on an open grave.
Rage stirred low and venomous in Rune’s gut. Of course.
His teeth bared in a soundless snarl. “This is regarding the fate of the world, Sunneva. The very Realms themselves.”
“Since when did the God of Shadows care about the world?”
Rune’s shadows coiled at his feet. He never did care about it before. His purpose had been destruction and wickedness, festering sin, damning souls.
But he cared now because of her. Because Alora at last looked at him like he was more than what they made him.
If I asked you to remake the world into a better place instead of filling it with darkness, would you?
But now, with Sunneva’s quiet truth twisting in his mind, something else rose like smoke. The future he’d seen in the Scry Mirror.
His death.
And Rune realized, with a cold certainty, that he may have brought about his own demise.
“Elyōn can seal the tear,” Rune growled, his claws clutching the jar. “He is a Primordial, the creator of the Realms and all living things. He would never allow Vorak to break free.”
“It can be done but not without cost,” Sunneva said. She met his gaze with no judgement, no anger but sorrow. “The scales must be balanced.”
His blood turned to ice.
“A soul for a soul.”
For a moment, he lost the ability to breathe.
“It is out of my hands, Rune.” The Goddess of Death retreated into the night, walking backward. Her eyes glowed vivid blue. “A Primordial may perhaps prevent a Rift from spreading, but only a powerful soul can become the Soul Anchor to bind it.”
He already knew which one she meant, and the knowledge tasted like ash.
“No.”
“Alora is our hope for balance. Without her, the Realms will be no more.”
He snarled, shadows lashing around him. “You are asking me to sacrifice my wife!”
To bind Alora within the Rift.
For all eternity.
Frost drifted through the air with Sunneva’s sigh. “I did warn you not to break Divine Law. Your sins will extract a great price.”
Rune shook his head, the world caving in on him, the air thinning.
Never.
“I would sooner see the Realms burn.”
A faint smirk hovered on Sunneva’s lips. “I know.”
Because no one else knew him better than she did.
“Hold her close, Rune,” Sunneva said, fading into mist and snow. “For when the Blood Moon falls, Vorak will rise.”
And he comes for her.