Chapter 1 #2
I take one last look at Edon’s emaciated, drained form, stomach acid burning my throat. Then I turn and run, plunging deeper into the forest, away from the village.
My foot catches a root. I stumble, barely upright, and the yowl that escapes me is swallowed just as fast. Sound carries. Sound brings things.
I keep running. The trees close in the deeper I go, branches snapping out like gnarled fingers, and I don’t know how long it’s been since I stopped being a person and became just legs and lungs and the taste of iron in my throat.
A toll of a bell in the distance makes me stop short. The village alarm.
Someone’s found Edon’s body. Of course they have. He’s a husk lying in the middle of meadow.
The pitchforks will come out. And they’ll be pointed at me, Verily Holbrook, the quiet crop picker turned feared sorceress.
I run until my vision narrows to a tunnel of peeling bark and luminous thickets. My lungs are shredded. My legs are someone else’s problem.
I collapse against a massive shadowbark, its deep purple leaves coating the ground around me, and for a full minute all I do is press my forehead to the wood and breathe. I have no destination. The small pockets of my apron hold a few tokens, no extra clothes, no water, no food.
The neighboring town is maybe three hours away. My cousin Jessin lives there, and he’d help. He’d ask questions first, too many of them, but he’d let me grab what I need.
To go where?
I’ve lived in Belgrave Village my entire life. I have no skills, save for the innate knowledge of when a greyberry ripens and the perfect time to pick it.
After I’ve caught my breath, I force myself to my feet, branches whipping against my face again as I break into a wayward sprint, leaving behind stinging welts on my cheeks.
This isn’t the woods I grew up alongside. Or perhaps it is, and I’m only now seeing it for what it truly is. A world hidden from ordinary eyes, revealed only to those touched by soul-resonance.
Night falls. The shadows stretch and keep stretching. Every twig snap jerks my head around, but it’s never a threat, just rustling flora and the dart of a nocturnal animal searching for food.
But something is following me. I know it the way I know my own breathing, and no amount of spinning to check the forest behind me changes what I find. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Then—
A loud rustling in the brambles to my left freezes me in place. Is it a villager? Have they found me already?
But the creature that emerges has rippling black skin pulled taut over protruding bones. Its eyes are empty sockets filled with black smoke. And when it opens its mouth, instead of teeth, rows of squirming, needle-like protrusions emerge, each tipped with a tiny, gnashing maw.
A Void hound.
It tilts its head, studying me with an unsettling intelligence. A low sound emanates from its throat, and the needle-like protrusions in its maw tremble with eagerness to sink into my flesh.
I bolt in the opposite direction, crashing through the underbrush in a blind panic. More branches claw at my face and snag my hair.
Behind me, an unearthly howl pierces the night, a sound of agony and hunger that chills me to the marrow.
Its footfalls pound closer. Wood snaps. Leaves crunch. It’s gaining on me.
A fallen log looms ahead, half rotted and covered in lichen. I leap, but my skirt catches on a protruding knob. The fabric tears as I tumble over and land hard on the other side, the impact driving the air from my lungs.
I lie there, stunned, as the Void hound launches over the fallen tree, its claws carving divots in the packed earth on either side of my body as it slides to a halt, its glittering saliva dripping onto my forehead.
My hands fly up. Useless and shaking, with no blue light in them when I actually need it.
“Oh gods.” I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the agony of thousands of little teeth shredding my flesh…
Flashes of blinding light and the Void hound’s ear-splitting shriek make me scrunch my eyes tighter, my swallowed scream so pressurized in my throat, I’m about to implode from it.
The weight pinning me vanishes as something flings the creature back, sending it crashing through the undergrowth to a sprawled, whimpering stop.
Then silence.
I choose that time to unleash my scream, my jaw popping from its force, the sound of my terror ricocheting off trees and climbing so high, even Lux herself might hear it.
Throat raw, I struggle to sit up, blinking spots from my vision. As my sight clears, a man with a lustrous sword snaps into view, the blade’s shimmer casting an iridescent light across his face.
He spares me a glance, enough for me to notice the gold rimming his pupils and the silver gleam of chest armor before turning to the Void hound as it regains its footing, shaking its head with a snarl.
“You shouldn’t have made a sound,” the man clips out.
I gape at the stranger, his sharp features set in a scowl as he positions himself between the hound and me, adjusting his grip on the sword, the light along the blade expanding.
“Screams attract more of them.”
I scramble to my feet. “What do you mean, more of them?”
The hound circles us, its movements jerky and peculiar.
I swallow, all saliva in my mouth depleted.
Of course. As if being chased by one nightmarish canine wasn’t enough, I had to go and summon the whole pack.
“Stay down,” he orders, not taking his eyes off the hound.
I nod and plop back down on my rump, too terrified to do anything else.
The Void hound lunges, its fangs bared, barreling into the man and sending them both tumbling to the ground in a tangle of thrashing limbs and snapping jaws.
He grunts when the hound’s talons rake across his chest, shredding through armor and flesh. But the man retaliates, sending a surge of blinding magick from his free hand, stunning the creature long enough to arc his blade and swiftly slice the hound nearly in two.
It lets out a gurgling shriek as it collapses, its body dissolving into tufts of oily black smoke.
I stare in horror at the spot where the Void hound liquefied.
The man rises to his feet, grimacing as he presses a hand to his bleeding chest. His blade sputters with that curious light before he flexes his fingers, and it … disappears into the air.
“H-how did you do that?” I stammer.
He turns. I register the shine of blood on his armor. Gold in his eyes. But not a naturally warm gold, like hazel or caramel brown. No, this is the kind that looks stamped there by force.
“The same way you drained the life from that boy.”
My heart seizes. He knows.
But I inject anger in my voice when I reply, “You’ve been following me?”
“I’ve been tracking the Void hounds.” He doesn’t acknowledge me when he says it. He’s busy scanning the treeline, one hand pressed to his shredded chest plate like the wounds are an inconvenience he’ll deal with later.
“Your lack of control is painfully evident.” Still scanning the trees. Still not looking at me. He nods at the ash stain on the ground. “There will be more of him.”
I flinch at the thought of more of … that.
“I didn’t mean to. I don’t even know how I did it.”
He finally addresses my existence, but it’s with flat, forged eyes.
“Falcen Reaves,” he says. “Elite Render of the Resonance Academy.”
Oh, Nox below. This man’s an Elite.
He strides closer.
“Stay away!” I blurt out, crawling backward, my hands slipping in the soft earth. “I won’t let you take me!”
“You have no choice.”
“I’m not one of you.” I clamor to my feet, putting a tree between us. “Soulren awaken in childhood. I’m three-and-twenty.”
“And yet.” He motions to the ash stain, a gesture that says everything his mouth doesn’t bother to.
“I’m not a Soulren. I can’t be.”
He takes another unhurried step, his boot crunching on the leaf litter. I cower, half expecting him to run me through with that glittering, vanishing blade of his.
“By the authority of the Keepers, I am to escort you to the academy for training.”
“Training?” I sputter. “I don’t want to be trained in anything! I just want to collect what’s left of myself and, and…”
“And what?” He waits long enough for me to hear my own whimpering. “Where will you go, Verily? To that cousin in Fenstead? Return to your grandmother?”
I suck in a breath. “There’s no way you can know my name. Or my family’s.”
“Both their lives are forfeit if you run,” he adds.
“I won’t go with you,” I declare. “You can’t make me.”
He looks me up and down, his first detailed scan since coming to my rescue.
Whatever he finds must disappoint him, because he exhales through his nose and summons his blade again.